By Dan Baldwin
As a business owner, which of the following best states your attitude about jobs in your company?
1. I only hire additional employees when absolutely necessary to increase long term profit,
2. I feel a patriotic duty and personal responsibility to create as many new jobs as possible,
3. I'd like to eliminate jobs in my company so I can increase my own shareholder equity.
For myself, I mostly fit description number one and sometimes number three. I feel like I met the patriotic "job creation obligation" in number two when I hired myself - right after I created my own company. As a "recovering Democrat" and a Christian though, I can see the personal and societal benefits of creating new jobs when I can.
Does Improved Employee Productivity Resulting from Office Technology Kill or Create Jobs?
I believe the short answer is "Yes!" Take myself for example. I used to work for other people because even though I could "do big sales deals" on my own I could never support what I sold without working for a big company because of all the administrative staff I'd need to hire to take care of my customers.
Fortunately "office automation" and business office software packages have eliminated the need to hire large admin staffs. Since starting my own business, I've sold gargantuan sales deals requiring large amounts of support but all the support tasks are outsourced to experts around the planet. I have customer facing support people all across the US and I outsource my IT software writing needs to US and overseas experts. The Internet and low-cost, "cloud based" software has allowed all of this.
So while I eliminated one job (when I quit working as a salesperson for a large phone company), I created several jobs for myself and my immediate family when I started my own company. And what about the admin & support positions no longer needed at my previous company when I (and other salespeople like me) moved on? I still do business with many of them (the best ones) by outsourcing work to them as independent contractors.
How Many Jobs Can You Create (or Eliminate) by Improving Your Office Technology?
Whether you're an ultra liberal or an ultra conservative business owner, improving your employee's productivity by improving your office's technology will help you both eliminate and/or create jobs.
Look no further than Apple or Verizon for immediate examples of how improved technology is both destroying and creating jobs. This blog post by tech industry thought leader Larry Walsh suggests that technology ultimately destroys more jobs than it creates.
While that may be true for single large companies, as cited in my own example above, many of the best "laid off workers" end up hiring themselves by creating their own small businesses. This new job creation is only possible because of the office technology tools that budding entrepreneurs have at their disposal.
Today's ongoing strike by thousands of union Verizon workers showcases an additional example of how technology both destroys and creates jobs. This article states how Verizon has laid of 20% of it's work force in the past five years in response to the fact that 30% of American households have cancelled their wired phone lines and have become "wireless only".
Fortunately for Verizon, they've made themselves one of the biggest employers in the wireless industry. While it does not appear that they've created more new wirless jobs than the wireline jobs they've eliminated, Verizon does continue to hire new workers in areas that pursuit of margin dictates.
What Should You Do Today About Office Technology & Creating or Eliminating Jobs?
Give us a call.
None of our business clients have purchased Ethernet over Copper, MPLS wide area network data solutions or the newest hosted VoIP IP-PBX from us because they simply wanted to show off their use of the latest data services technology or business office phone systems to their golf buddies.
Business owners and decision makers specifically invest in new and upgraded office technology so they can eliminate or create jobs in their company - usually it's both. Growing and successful businesses are constantly eliminating "low tech" jobs with new software or outsourced services so they can pay for needed new jobs to take advantage of new market opportunities where they have an advantage.
So give us a call.
We'll help you look at your own business and let you know how others like you are eliminating and creating jobs by improving productivity through the use of communication, IT (information technology) and other office technologies.
Looking for a Southern California based, vendor neutral business communications technology service expert that can help you out with your multi-location telecom or data network problems?
Click here to learn about how we might be able to fix your problem for free, then contact me directly at 951-251-5155 or [email protected].
BaldwinTel helps multi-location businesses across the United States but specializes Southern California especially San Diego County, Orange County, Los Angeles County, Riverside County and San Bernardino County.
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