{"id":286088,"date":"2018-10-05T06:06:28","date_gmt":"2018-10-04T20:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=286088"},"modified":"2018-10-05T06:06:28","modified_gmt":"2018-10-04T20:06:28","slug":"without-people-us-companies-wont-be-successful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/without-people-us-companies-wont-be-successful\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Without people, US companies won\u2019t be successful\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Society for Human Resource Management president and chief executive officer Johnny Taylor Jr.\u00a0 understands the need for workers. (Bea Cabrera)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Editor\u2019s Note: The following is part of a series that examines what is being done today to prepare for the end of the foreign worker program in 2029.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Third part of a series<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many companies are struggling to fill job vacancies\u2014an experience that is not only prevalent in the CNMI but worldwide, according to Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president and chief executive officer of the Society for Human Resource Management, who visited Saipan and spoke at the group\u2019s recent monthly meeting. <\/p>\n

Growing up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida\u2014an island detached from the U.S. mainland and where tourism is the economic driver similar to the CNMI\u2014Taylor understands the need for foreign workers under the CNMI-Only Transitional Worker program. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe CW issue that you are experiencing in the CNMI is a really a complicated issue because, on one hand, what we want to do under the President\u2019s initiative is to ensure that Americans who need jobs can get jobs. The problem is, many of the jobs that the CW-1 workers perform, Americans don\u2019t want to [do them], so there is a dilemma,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

He said that SHRM supported a recent law that extended the CW program by 10 more years. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur position is we need to make sure that all Americans have the opportunity to work, but if those jobs can\u2019t be filled, we must rely on talent elsewhere, no matter where it is on the globe\u2026,\u201d he said. \u201cUltimately, American companies will not be successful if they don\u2019t have people.\u201d <\/p>\n

Taylor believes that the manpower shortage\u2014which is occurring all over the United States and its territories\u2014are caused by many factors, one of which is a drop in America birth rates.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmericans are having fewer children, therefore you have fewer potential workers 20 years from now. There\u2019s a mismatch\u2026so whatever the problem is in 2018, years from now it\u2019s going to be exacerbated because we are having fewer children, which means we\u2019ve got to sort out responsible immigration, which the U.S. Workforce Act might do. You need to supplement your domestic workforce and we are supportive of doing that, as long as it doesn\u2019t mean that Americans who want to work don\u2019t have jobs.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you think about the eras, we had the agricultural era and the industrial revolution era. We were automating and using fewer people… But now that we\u2019ve gotten into this augmented space, this new era where it\u2019s knowledge-based, people are becoming more important,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Investing in the future of the workforce\u2014today\u2019s children\u2014may be the way to help with the ongoing obstacle of lack of manpower, Taylor said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the U.S., companies are recruiting kids right now in middle school and high school to feed their needs in the future. No one is doing that in agriculture or construction industry. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we are trying to do is partner with employers who are in those industries that are high-need and future growth areas to introduce their careers to students earlier in K2-12 education.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe call it \u2018employment and education\u2019\u2026making sure that students know about all the opportunities available and so we are trying to figure out how to get employers and educators to talk. The rationale behind this is every kid is not going to go to college, every kid is not going to go to law school or medical school, but they need to know the career opportunities for them. There are great paying jobs out there that some people don\u2019t even think about because they are not the traditional professions,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

This is where SHRM could play an important role. Taylor wants SHRM to be dynamic in the human resources field. <\/p>\n

\u201cToo often, HR gets involved in the back end and we are the people that execute the details once decisions have been made and policies laid out. That is a mistake\u2026SHRM will be involved in whatever phase because there is an opportunity for us to be at the table,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur biggest issue is our birthrate problem, which\u2026is a major call for a responsible and smart immigration reform, which SHRM is supportive of. We fundamentally believe that not allowing foreign workers or limiting the workforce to just a pool of Americans means we are going to limit our ability to grow,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: The following is part of a series that examines what is being done…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":286089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[15239,67,1538,320],"class_list":["post-286088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-human-resource-management","tag-people","tag-shrm","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}