This problem isn’t limited to specific professions or industries or trades. It is an across-the-board problem that is getting worse. I have seen it where I work as it has been increasingly difficult to hire engineering staff. It isn’t limited to just my company as this is something I have been hearing from a number of friends and acquaintances also in the engineering field. I have also been hearing similar observations from people I know working in a wide range of industries. Stores are having problems getting checkout clerks and shelf stockers, restaurants are having problems getting wait staff and kitchen help, construction firms can’t find enough experienced personnel, and on and on.
Why is it becoming more difficult to find good help? There are a number of reasons, some of them self-imposed. One of the big ones: the competent opting out, aka ‘Going Galt’.
What happens with the competent retire, burn out or opt out? It's a question few bother to ask because the base assumption is that there is an essentially limitless pool of competent people who can be tapped or trained to replace those who retire, burn out or opt out, i.e. quit in favor of a lifestyle that doesn't require much in the way of income or stress.One of the many reasons listed is one that I have found to be bothersome in the past, one that caused some issues in my company in the past.
The drivers of the Competent Opting Out are obvious yet difficult to quantify. Those retiring, burning out and opting out will deny they're leaving for these reasons because it's not politic to be so honest and direct. They will offer time-honored dodges such as "pursue other opportunities" or "family obligations."
The steady increase in workloads, paperwork, compliance and make-work (i.e. work that has nothing to do with the institution's actual purpose and mission) that lead to burnout. There is only so much we can accomplish, and if we're burdened with ever-increasing demands for paperwork, compliance, useless meetings, training sessions, etc., then we no longer have the time or energy to perform our productive work.I know in my case my workload kept increasing as my productivity fell as I had to spend more time on mostly useless paperwork and endless meetings. Most of the meetings could have been handled via e-mail as the info presented at the meetings was just for the director of our division. Fortunately, some of those issues disappeared when the director of our division was told it would behoove him “to seek employment elsewhere” as our division’s performance metrics tanked under his leadership.
Healthcare workloads, paperwork and compliance are one example of many. Failure to complete all the make-work can have dire consequences, so it becomes necessary to do less "real work" in order to complete all the work that has little or nothing to do with actual patient care. Alternatively, the workload expands to the point that it breaks the competent and they leave.
One thing that still plagues me is dealing with compliance to state, national, and international regulations covering environmental, safety, energy efficiency, laser and radio emissions, and some performance requirements. The federal and international regulations can be troublesome, but are mostly boilerplate. State regulations, on the other hand, can be daunting and in the case of California’s Proposition 65, takes up more of my time than the US and international regulations combined.
No business likes having to spend any more time dealing with regulations than they absolutely have to. Yet more regulations – many nothing more than make work administrative law – are being created to help justify bureaucrats' jobs.
Then there’s this:
The politicization of the work environment. Let's begin by distinguishing between policies enforcing equal opportunity, pay, standards and accountability, policies required to fulfill the legal promises embedded in the nation's social contract, and politicization, which demands allegiance and declarations of loyalty to political ideologies that have nothing to do with the work being done or the standards of accountability necessary to the operation of the complex institution or enterprise.We’ve seen so many businesses become politicized and lose focus on their real reason to exist, and because of this they would lose customers, lose staff, and in some cases go out of business. If employees have to pass a political ‘test’ in order to remain employed, then those working there who disagree with the politics being shoved down their throats are likely to ‘pull the plug’ and leave. Who wants to stay at a job where no one likes them, and in fact, castigates and minimizes them? In some cases, those leaving took needed knowledge and experience that wasn’t easily replaced with them. Their departure further damaged the business and in some cases the businesses failed.
The correct verbiage and ideological enthusiasm become the basis of advancement rather than accountability to standards of competence. The competent are thus replaced with the politically savvy. Since competence is no longer being selected for, it's replaced by what is being selected for, political compliance.
Some businesses realized they would fail if they didn’t depoliticize themselves. Elon Musk knew this when he purchased Twitter and one of the first things he did was purge the woke political employees because they really served no function other than looking down upon and judge fellow employees who weren’t as woke, censor tweets they disagreed with, and collect a salary while doing so.
This brings up the next point.
The competent must cover for the incompetent. As the competent tire of the artifice and make-work and quit, the remaining competent must work harder to keep everything glued together. Their commitment to high standards and accountability are their undoing, as the slack-masters and incompetent either don't care ("I'm just here to qualify for my pension") or they've mastered the processes of masking their incompetence, often by blaming the competent or the innocent for their own failings.Hmm. This sounds familiar. Where have I seen something like this before?
Oh, wait...I know! Atlas Shrugged!
Rand knew it was but one element of the downfall of her fictional America, where the slackers and politically reliable were running things and more and more people decided to Go Galt. Eventually everything collapsed, the lights went out, and those who went on strike thrived in Galt’s Gulch, and the Powers That Be in Rand’s dystopian land lost all power, politically and literally.
There are a number of other points brought in the Zero Hedge post, so I suggest you Read The Whole Thing.