I live in Jupiter, Florida. It is a beautiful place to live. I don’t remember which esteemed organization voted my home town one of the top ten places in America to live in but, I for one, think they got it right.
But there’s another side to the story. You see, Palm Beach County has its challenges as far as work is concerned. Our primary industries are service-oriented, and we have near full employment. Unemployment runs at 2.7%. Employers who need talent to drive and grow their businesses must have a solid strategy for sourcing passive candidates and had better have an understanding of why and how to manage private talent pools if they are to compete for the fewer and fewer number of available candidates. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of local employers do.
Enter stage left: Scripps Research Institute. Our California-based hero will be coming soon to transform Florida from an economy driven by delicatessens and money laundering to one powered by science and technology. My wife and I are so excited that we have taken both our daughters out of public school and are home-schooling them in anticipation of the coming technology boom for which our education system and teachers seem so ill-prepared.
But yet another side to the story. In the three years since floating their intentions to come to Jupiter house prices have gone up by around 300%. Unemployment has gone down 3 points. What three years ago looked liked a great place to come to live and work in today looks like a dubious decision. After all, La Jolla has a more favorable labor market – not easy, but better – a 3.7% unemployment rate and an economy already established as a biotech hub.
Scripps is bringing more jobs. That’s great, but who’s going to fill them? Today’s workforce planning snafu will turn into tomorrow’s recruiting nightmare. For any employer, poor assessment of economic conditions and forecasting will lead to nothing but heartache for talent managers who ultimately will be expected to cope.
We theorize and debate about how to win a seat at the strategic table and, as a CFO client of mine pointed out when making all of the above observations, this is what HR does when we get there?
Another side to the story? When the housing market, currently overvalued by 57%, corrects itself, and people who have relocated here find they now need a second job to cover their inflated mortgage, there’s always TooJay’s. Now where I live, that’s one growth business we can all rely on.
