WORKSHIFTER - Dispatches from the New Executive Frontier

White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett sent out an email today asking what steps do we think government should take to help American businesses spur job creation in preparation for his speech at tomorrow's Business Roundtable event. It is their hope that a dialogue is started about how to spur job growth. I've pasted Linda Stewart's response below.

"As a result of the market correction, businesses are forever changed.  They are not hiring today because they are afraid to take on all the fixed costs associated with traditionally employing people and building up their high fixed cost infrastructure again.  However, after maintaining very lean organizations for almost two years, they recognize that they now need to move forward and get things done and they don't have the human capital to do it.  As a result of their reluctance to traditionally hire, companies should be allowed and encouraged to bring people in on a temporary or a project basis.  This will put hundreds of thousands of people back to work and will help companies more effectively manage their fixed costs.  Their labor costs will become variable and they will be much more willing to spend the dollars when they know that they can "turn it off" if market conditions or business results deteriorate in any way.  With labor costs being an average of over 80% of total fixed costs, being able to be more responsive to changes in market conditions creates a much more flexible and manageable workforce. In addition, it will give people, currently unemployed, access to jobs, (albeit a bit more unstable than traditional employment). It will still, however, provide them an income stream that doesn't exist today, to help rebuild the economy.  Let's face it, the fundamental relationship between people and organizations has changed.  It used to be that in exchange for loyalty, you got employment security.  In today's highly competitive global economy, organizations need to deploy and utilize talent very differently. Companies can no longer guarantee employment and people cannot give them complete loyalty. Instead, people give companies their time and skills in exchange for compensation for doing specific work for specific periods of time.  A permanent temporary workforce is going to be a vital part of our new economy moving forward and could effectively stimulate the economy very rapidly. I would welcome the opportunity to speak more about this with anyone.  Jobs need to be redefined.  This is the beginning of a new an important period in the history of jobs and the workforce."