Thursday, June 26, 1997

Survey finds many employers, workers are still mismatched

By STEPHEN FRANKLIN / Chicago Tribune

SAN DIEGO - After grilling job candidates and checking their backgrounds almost as far back as their babysitting days, are American companies getting the workers they want?

Nope. And that's the case despite the flood of high-tech personnel-testing programs and cutting-edge advice from hiring gurus.

Nearly half the human resource officials nationwide surveyed by a division of Chicago-based Aon Consulting said they were not matching applicants up with the right jobs. The number was up slightly from a similar survey four years ago.

The reason companies are not getting the right people, the survey suggested, is that existing procedures don't really test the workers' skills or find out what the individuals are like.

The result of that and other surveys dealing with key personnel issues facing companies were released at the start of the convention in San Diego of the Society of Human Resource Management, the nation's major organization for human resource professionals.

U.S. workers, according to these surveys, appear to be working harder and faster, but their wages are not climbing along with the pace.

With all that has gone on around them and continues to swirl in the workplace, workers' and managers' biggest problem is dealing with change, the surveys also indicated.

And as the unemployment rate seems likely to continue cruising along nationally at record lows, human resource officials are increasingly concerned about workers flitting from one job to another in search of higher pay and better conditions.

But a survey by the Society of Human Resource Management showed that half the companies responding had no change in the last five years in the number of workers who voluntarily left.

Employee turnover is not much higher because many workers, recalling the waves of layoffs only a few years ago, still feel insecure about the job market and their futures, suggested Mark Lifter, a consultant with Aon Consulting in Detroit.

Whereas many U.S. firms' highest priority once was improving workers' skills or creating more cooperation on the job, the Aon survey showed that companies' greatest single concern today is boosting productivity.

The surveys also depict the growing inclination of workers to take their complaints to the courts. One study pointed out an ever-widening river of employee lawsuits, an issue of concern for human resource officials.

In what was described as one of few major surveys on employee lawsuits, six out of 10 companies said they have been sued in an employment-related case in the last five years. Four out of 10 firms said they were being sued by current employees.

In addition, nearly one out of four companies said individuals at their firms had been sued personally in recent years.

"The employment law revolution is alive and well in the U.S.," said Michael Lotito, an attorney in San Francisco for Jackson, Lewis, Schnitzler & Krupman, the firm that conducted the survey.

Nearly half the suits identified by the firms dealt with workers' complaints of race, age or sexual discrimination.