Reflection January 28, 2010

The class on thursday talked about designing jobs that motivate. We talked about forecasting a lot, and I think that it is a very important topic.
If used appropriately, it can save your company a lot of money, or even help it make a lot of money. In the case of the mass retirement move projected for the next few years down the road a company can find out how many of their employees are going to reach retirement age in the next few years and start recruiting for replacements so they can take a few months to a year to train the new hire for the job, which would cost less than to have to bring the retiree back later on to do the same thing.
If used inappropriately, or not at all, a company would miss that the opportunity to get as much of the knowledge and experience out of the retirees before they leave, or in an economic downturn would not have time to prepare their employees for any lay-offs, cut-backs, etc. They could prepare by finding out if people would be willing to take paycuts so they didn't have to lay anyone off, or do a hiring freeze, or hire temps rather than regular employers.