Reference no: EM132279611
Information plays a vital role in all organizational activities. Marketing managers need information about customer preferences and competitor products. Operations managers need information about inventories and product demand. Financial managers need information about interest rates and cash flows. And human resource managers need information about all of these areas so they can insure they have the right employees with the right skills in the right places at the right times. Consider, for example, three recent developments related to employment in the United States. In one, major employers in the U.S. pharmaceutical, financial services, and energy sectors cut more than 100,000 jobs in 2014 and 2015. Some of these cuts were due to industry slowdowns and corporate restructuring. But surprisingly, some of the cuts were also related to improvements in the economy. Some banks, for example, had hired extra loan officers to help process a surge in home refinancing. But an improving economy was pushing interest rates up; higher rates, in turn, led to a drop in home refinancing and a reduced need for extra loan officers. Meanwhile, plunging oil prices led firms such as Chevron, Shell, Schlumberger, and Halliburton to lay off thousands of workers. On the other hand, during the last three months of 2015 and again in 2016, following an annual ritual, major U.S. retailers and related businesses announced that they were planning to hire hundreds of thousands of temporary workers for the holiday season. For example, Kohl’s typically adds more than 50,000 seasonal workers; Macy’s added 75,000 in 2015; and Target added almost 90,000. Similarly, both FedEx and UPS also hire thousands of seasonal workers to help keep up with sharp increases in package deliveries. And, as each holiday season ends, some of these workers are offered permanent employment, some are extended (temporarily), but most see their temporary jobs come to an end. Finally, Starbucks recently announced a long-term plan of increasing its global workforce from around 200,000 now to more than 500,000. Within this total, the firm will seek to hire at least 10,000 veterans and active-duty spouses. Similarly, Walmart indicated that it intended to hire around 100,000 new permanent employees within the next 5 years. What do these examples have in common? They each illustrate that human resource managers must rely on a variety of information sources as they make plans to hire new employees, either temporarily or permanently.
Think It Over
1. What industry sectors are most likely to add jobs during a down economy? During an improving economy?
2. Are there employment sectors that are essentially unaffected by economic fluctuations?