“Rome” is burning. The “Rome” I am talking about is the private sector of the U.S. economy. Last month, the only job sector that grew was government jobs. I get this feeling that we are pulling a “Nero” watching this thing happen and are hopelessly standing by not doing anything about it. I read HR Blogs, including my own, and think, we’re walking around an elephant in our proverbial living room. Our own jobs in HR are in jeopardy if businesses don’t flourish. If something is not growing, it is dying. If we don’t fix this humongous problem, we won’t have to worry about engaging our employees, there won’t be any employees. I really don’t think I’m being Chicken Little here by expressing my concerns.
Yesterday, we heard from the automobile industry that if they go under, three million jobs or more will be eliminated and the unemployment rate will double. When those three million people drastically reduce their spending, more companies will have to cut back, and so on. We have just seen the beginning of a downward cycle.
What can we in HR do? Well, recently there was a huge Recruiting Expo that many Human Resource people attended. That was fine and dandy and we will sure need all that great information when we start hiring people again instead of planning layoffs. Just, maybe, we should have a “Save our Private Sector Expo” and bring together the finest minds of the Human Resources community and brainstorm capitalistic ideas on how to reignite the economy. Bailing out inefficient companies is not a capitalistic solution. What did Ireland do years ago to attract high tech companies to set up shop there? Gee, I think it had to do with making it easy for companies to be in business. How about ideas on how to become a business friendly country again? Am I smoking funny cigarettes when I propose that HR should lead the way? You tell me.
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