Australian Financial Review Feb 10, 1999 http://www.afr.com.au/content/990210/news/news10.html Job security makes sense Work Relations, By Stephen Long Job security is dead, right? Not if you work for some of the best companies in America. At Southwest Airlines, Harley-Davidson and the FedEx parcel delivery company, employees toil secure in the knowledge that their jobs are protected by official "no lay-off" policies. These three successful companies -- which collectively turn over about $19 billion in revenue -- feature among the 100 Best Companies to Work For in the US, as ranked by Fortunemagazine. Commitment to peoples' jobs was not unusual among its list of employers-of-choice. "While conventional wisdom holds that job security is a thing of the past, it is a recurring perk among the best 100," Fortunewrote. Aside from the companies with formal no-layoff policies, another 37 had informal policies against retrenchment. Three-quarters have never had a mass lay-off. They retain people during lean times because they don't want to lose employees in whom they have invested heavily -- and because they view loyalty as a two-way street. "These companies aren't being charitable," the author of The Loyalty Effect, Fred Reichfeld, told Fortune. "Their employees are much more likely to dig in and commit, even in tough times." The bias towards job security went hand-in-hand with investments in employee education and training. On average, the 100 Best lavished 43 hours of training on each employee last year. Stockbroking firm Edward Jones spends a minimum $US50,000 ($77,000) on training new brokers who are immersed in 17 weeks of classes. USAA Insurance at San Antonio, California, devotes 80 hours of training a year to each worker, and one in four employees undertakes tertiary study outside of work -- with costs fully reimbursed by the company. When you invest so much time and money in people, job security makes sense. Fortune observed: "Education is a sensible investment for employers only if they can hold on to the minds they have expensively trained. A partial but obvious remedy is a policy, or at least a strong bias, against lay-offs." Some companies also invested in the sustainability of the communities they inhabit: giving employees paid time off for volunteer work or requiring parents to take time out at the company's expense for activities at their child's school. Outrageous philanthropy? Not when you consider that the shares of the 100 Best outperformed most listed companies in the US, posting average returns over five years of 25 per cent per annum. This was no half-baked study. Together with the "Great Place to Work Institute" of San Francisco, Fortunepolled 27,402 randomly-selected employees from 1,000 companies. Each candidate company had to fill out a 31-page questionnaire and supply supporting material. Of course, the "great places to work" are swimming against the tide. Loyalty is an ebbing quality in a world where, says sociologist Richard Sennett, the dominant motto is "no long term". But as employers shun job security in favour of flexibility on their terms, they should realise it cuts both ways. Expect employees to place their careers ahead of the firm and its goals. Expect self-interest to triumph over obligation, trustworthiness and commitment. [EMAIL PROTECTED] .au ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List As vilified, slandered and attacked by One Nation mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
