The ACSESS Conference - Day 2

Today was an easier day for me at the annual conference because I didn't have many official duties. Eagle won a huge award in recognition of our Community Service and that is a big win when so many of the companies in our industry are very generous with their charitable support.


The other duty I had was to help with a session for our technology sector and unfortunately the speaker couldn't make it at the last minute because he injured himself. If I was a polite person I wouldn't mention the words "unfulfilled commitment", but then again if I made a commitment to speak at an annual conference I wouldn't bail 24 hours before my commitment either! In the end it was not a big deal, but I feel it was a black eye for our IT special interest group in an otherwise great conference agenda.


The up side of our "no show" was that I got to attend a session on differentiation which was based upon the book Blue Ocean Strategy. This is a great book that I can't believe I haven't reviewed at some point on this blog!!! I will commit to doing that sometime soon ... but it is basically about redefining your companies market space to eliminate competition. The presenter was a former ACSESS President, friend and industry colleague Bruce McAlpine.

In addition to Bruce's session and the industry awards I attended a very credible session from Fran Goldstein, who wishes her clients a Frantastic day. Definitely a high energy lady with a slightly more aggressive sales style than the typical Canadian (she is from East Coast USA)... but some very good ideas and messages.

I went to an presentation from the WSIB (Workers Compensation people in Ontario) which was another good presentation, that explained their corporate focus on zero accident workplaces in Ontario.

Perhaps my favorite session of the conference thus far was one on mergers and acquisition that featured three well known industry leaders herein Canada talking about their experiences as acquirers and as acquirees! Good information based on real life experiences, with no BS or posturing! Good stuff!

Once again I am convinced that conferences can be one of the best educational tools for any business leader, providing content, networking and the opportunity to establish a reputation for supporting the industry.

For me the 10th anniversary ACSESS conference has been the best one yet and we still have another day to go! If you are given a chance to attend high value industry conferences then grab the opportunity! If you are a business leader then absolutely support your industry association by sending some staff to their conference. I am extremely disappointed that some of the leading companies in our industry are not represented at this event ... in the same way that I think everyone needs to be association members, I also think we have a duty to support these events

The Return on investment is significant in pure learning opportunity, but the networking and reputation building opportunity is probably just as important!

Statistics and Facts About the Staffing Industry

I have been on the National Board of Canada's Staffing Industry Association (ACSESS) for more than 8 years now ... and one of my beefs has been our inability to gather consistent and regular statistics that give a picture of our industry. It is something we are working on, and will correct, however there are some other sources of facts that are relevant.

Today ... at the 10th Annual ACSESS conference I was treated to a number of facts and thought that I would share some of them.

A presentation from Statistics Canada gave the latest data on our industry which is for the calendar year 2006. Canada's staffing industry is an $8 Billion industry, up 8.6% from the previous year. This means that we provide a huge number of people with jobs, we pay a lot of money in taxes, we make a major contribution to the Canadian economy and we support a huge number of charitable causes. We also represent a significant lobby capability when discussing our industry agenda with various levels of government.

Ontario has still by far the largest concentration of staffing business, representing 57% of the revenues generated, although Alberta did surpass Quebec in size representing 17.6% of the business, no doubt driven by the hot Alberta oil economy.

For those who think that the staffing industry are "fat cats" think again ... with average profitability of 3.5% (2.6% in Ontario) this industry operates with very skinny margins. This is a fact that seems out of sorts with an economy experiencing greater and greater skills shortages ... which by the laws of supply and demand should mean increasing margins.

Later in the day I listened to a debate about the industry and the President of the American Staffing Association was one of the speakers. The ASA do have strong data gathering capability and Richard Wahlquist was able to give out some very interesting statistics related to the temporary industry in the States ... much of which should be similar here in Canada.

Surprising to some, but not those in the industry, was a statistic that suggests 90% of "temporary workers" are satisfied with their staffing company experiences. This was validated in the UK and Netherlands in addition to the US. This might fly in the face of some "anecdotal" stories of disaffected temporary workers which can always be found if you look hard enough ... and clearly it is "bad news" stories sell newspapers!

75% of temporary workers saw their assignments as a bridge to something else, which might have been a career change or just a full time position ... and most of them achieved their goal. 88% of temporary workers felt that their temporary assignments added to their resume, thus making them more employable. 20% of temporary workers would not want to be anything else! Validating the fact that there is a segment of the population that enjoys the flexibility afforded by the temporary worker lifestyle, for many and varied reasons.

Less than 5% of workers work for staffing companies, meaning that 95% of workers are in full time employment with some other type of company. I would have thought that the temporary workforce would have represented a larger number, but I guess not. So ... just 5% of the workforce (and typically a rotating 5% as temps take full time employment) provide our economy with the flexibility it needs to meet the ebb and flow of work and keep Canadian companies competitive in a global economy.

This is an industry that I believe in strongly ... I work hard to represent the industry's membership on our board and will see this industry rise in prominence over the coming years as demographic pressures and skills shortages underscore the value we can bring. Its nice to have a few facts and statistics to support these views!

Join Your Industry Association ... NOW!

Today I spent a good portion of my time in an Industry Association board meeting, tomorrow I will do the same and for the next three days I will be attending our annual conference. Our industry association is called ACSESS (Association of Canadian Search Employment and Staffing Services). Our website has information about the association and about the content of our conference.

I choose to be active in the association because I believe in the work it does (a) to support all companies in our industry and (b) to help our industry continue to grow and evolve as times change. The staffing industry has a huge role to play in the economy, allowing companies access to the resources they need to compete in a global market and with the added demographic pressures added by the boomers retiring.

Whenever I am particularly active in these activities I am reminded that not ALL companies support their associations the way that they should.

Here are a couple of previous blog entries that talk on this subject ...

From September 2006 ... Be Passionate for Your Industry Association.
From December 2006 ... Staffing Industry Leadership.
From October 2007 ... A Trip to the Industry Association Board Meeting.

This entry is really a reminder to any company that is not paying its dues to an industry association ... stop freeloading and start paying! That is the minimum acceptable behaviour of any company ... but better still, get involved and donate time to make a difference for you industry.

Mentoring

Sometimes when I am searching for a blog topic that might be of interest I will go to some of my regular sources and see if there something there to stimulate an idea. Today I found my inspiration in the CPSA (Canadian Professional Sales Association) newsletter, which has quite often provided me with input for this blog.

The article in the newsletter, The Value of Mentors from Brian Tracy was interesting to me. Tracy is a motivator who can sometimes be a little intimidating, but he does have good ideas and his success speaks for itself.

I have varied experience with the mentor "concept" and I'm not sure that I know how to be a good mentor. In the past we have had formal mentoring programs that meant I would spend an hour a month with certain people. That had some success ... if that person knew what they wanted from the sessions. It had much less success when I was left to try and guess what was important to them.

Over time I would insist on them taking full responsibility for the sessions ... scheduling them and providing an agenda. that had a little more success, but quite often the agendas were a little bland. In the same way that I didn't really know what I knew that might be interesting to them ... they had trouble figuring our what they needed to know! Catch 22!

The best success for me has come when there is something very specific to discuss, that I feel I can bring some value and the recipient feels it will help them. Tracy's article seems to support this.

I have spent time with your entrepreneurs looking for advice, with other business people who thought I might know something and with employees looking to progress in their careers. I have belonged to peer groups that gave me access to knowledgeable people but have never had a formal mentor. I don't know what i would look for in a mentor ... I don't expect Bill Gates or Larry Ellison would be happy to offer up time for me!

The article is worth a read and while I still struggle with how to make the mentor role work, it is a work in progress and perhaps this article gives me a little more insight.

PS. CPSA membership in Canada is a great bargain ... for salespeople and for business owners. Great discounts on hotels and car rental in addition to super materials monthly in their magazine.

April IT Industry News

Every month I take a 30,000 foot look at events in the ICT industry. This is my overview of April's news, with a brief reminder of what was news in April a year ago! What you see here is a precis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available at the Eagle website over the next day or two.

Last year in April 2007 Google had a busy month, paying a whopping $3.1 Billion for Doubleclick, in addition to buying Marratech’s videoconferencing software; other big deals included CSC paying $1.3 Billion for Covansys; Mitel paid $732 million for Inter-tel, Software AG paid $546 million for webMethods and Business objects bought Cartesis for about $300 million. Also this time last year Lenovo announced cutbacks of 1,400 staff.

The big M&A deal in April 2008 saw a merger of the third and fourth largest chip makers STMicroelectronics and NXP into a $3 Billion company. IBM was busy, making three acquisitions this month Diligent, FilesX and InfoDyne; Yahoo bought Tensa Kft. despite spending time fending off the attentions of potential buyer Microsoft; and speaking of Microsoft they had a couple of acquisitions Farecast and Komoku; EMC also had a couple of forays into the M&A market with Iomega and Conchango plc.

Other than M&A activity this month there was some bad news from DELL, Symantec and AMD who all announced layoffs. Juniper Research tell us that more than 800 million consumers will be accessing banking services though their mobile phone over the next three years. Despite the US recession IT jobs increased 12% last quarter, which is a good reason to get your kids into IT … but it is engineers that rank as the hardest job to fill according to a Manpower survey. Finally the email scams are getting more sophisticated and “spear phishing” has been getting some press due to its levels of success.