In order to keep a job these days, a worker seems to need one essential quality: a heart rate.
Some professions have always required little more than the ability to stay awake. In the tightest job market in half a century, even those in higher positions may get by just by going through the applications.
“You have to be incredibly bad” to get fired from a software developer right now, says David Cancel, who is the managing director of Drift, a Boston-based marketing firm that uses artificial intelligence and employs about 700 people. “Most companies – and we in some cases – keep people who wouldn’t be on the team in a looser market. The standards would be higher.”
Although some economists are warning of an imminent downturn, layoffs and layoffs have been at or near an all-time low in recent months, according to the Labor Department. Less than 1% of workers get pink slips, about half the norm, with job security being particularly good in finance, education, healthcare and the public sector.
For those who don’t try hard or just can’t get the job done, your boss probably knows. But there’s little guarantee you’ll find someone better anytime soon, so chances are you’ll keep cashing that paycheck.
As much as companies love to advertise their ambitious corporate culture — and have many ways to track employee productivity — some would happily settle for mediocrity right now.
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When HR software company UKG recently surveyed around 2,000 managers, around two-thirds said they would be willing to rehire mediocre ex-employees and 16% said they would hire anyone, regardless of ability.
“I call it bird-in-the-hand management,” says UKG vice president David Gilbertson, who leads the company’s human resources research. “The companies I speak to are all worried about recruitment.”
Companies in a variety of sectors are making commitments to upskill or reskill the employees they already have, adds Jim Link, chief human resources officer at the Society for Human Resource Management. Hiring a new employee cost thousands of dollars before the pandemic, according to SHRM, and has become increasingly tedious since many people work part-time, if at all, in offices.
Employers “are considering ways to improve the skills and abilities of their employees, and they go to great lengths to do so,” says Mr. Link.
That can mean teaching workers how to do their current job better, or moving them to other positions in hopes they’ll be decent at something else.
Basically, managers are trying to be like Bill Belichick, the New England Patriots football coach who turned wide receiver Troy Brown into a solid defensive back, turned quarterback Julian Edelman into a prolific passcatcher, and used linebacker Mike Vrabel to score touchdowns as a tight end score in two Super Bowls.
Not that I’m advising you to slack off. The national unemployment rate hit 14.7% in April 2020 at the start of the pandemic, before falling to 3.6% last month. Now, some companies that boomed during the recovery may have exceeded their growth plans. That seems to have been the case with Carvana,
which announced last week that it would reduce its headcount by 12% and cut around 2,500 jobs.
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Joshua Presnall says he was stunned to lose his job supplying cars for the Chattanooga, Tenn., company after watching his office staff quadruple in two years. However, he soon regained confidence in the labor market.
Mr. Presnall created an online spreadsheet where fired former colleagues could post their contact information and recruiters could do the same. Within days, more than 200 recruiters had entered their details, many of them soliciting applications from former Carvana employees.
Mr. Presnall, 23, says he’s had about a dozen job interviews and is hoping to land a job that makes better use of his marketing degree.
“Being fired was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to my career,” he says.
To find out how bad you can afford to be at your own job, ask yourself this, says Benjamin Friedrich, associate professor of strategy at Northwestern University: “How valuable is what you’re doing to the bottom line of the company?”
Unless you’re particularly important, your achievement (or underachievement) probably won’t hurt much, and the irony is that you’re worth keeping in some form or another. dr Friedrich says he’s hearing about companies giving mediocre employees menial tasks instead of firing them.
The stakes are higher for people in bigger roles. Several HR specialists told me that executives who report disappointing results may be at risk because their mistakes are more costly.
Companies’ willingness to accept underperforming employees could prompt good employees to look elsewhere if they don’t feel they’re being adequately rewarded.
Wall Street banks, which paid hefty bonuses after last year’s big gains in the stock market, may not be able to offer such hefty payouts this year, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down about 13% so far in 2022.
Mark Ross, a former vice president of banking turned financial careers coach, says a bad year can stunt hard workers’ careers by reducing the number of promotions available. At a time when those who miss their numbers avoid harsh consequences, standouts can miss out on the usual incentives.
In teams where little distinction is made between good and bad work, morale can erode over time.
“You show your top performers the lower limit of what you will tolerate,” says Jessie Wisdom, co-founder of Humu, a company that helps companies motivate their teams. “When I work really hard but see that management doesn’t treat me any differently than someone who does the bare minimum, it’s very demotivating.
“Why should I still do my best?”
Write to Callum Borchers at [email protected]
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