Category Archives: Staff/Employees

A person in the service of another under any contract of hire, express or implied, oral or written, where the employer has the power or right to control and direct the employee in the material details of how the work is to be performed.” Black’s Law Dictionary page 471 (5th ed. 1979). In a commercial setting, the employer conceives of a productive activity, generally with the intention of generating a profit, and the employee contributes labour to the enterprise, usually in return for payment of wages.

Are you a Supply Chain Leader that companies are looking for?

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Today the “Supply Chain” is in a quandary. On the one hand it can be argued that it is ‘coming-of-age’, and seen as a profession, with MBAs and PHDs in Supply Chain being offered by universities and even a chair in the C-Suite. But… on the other hand, we are being inundated with articles, blogs and white papers on trends pointing to the growing scarcity of Supply Chain Leaders.

In this issue I take a close look at the decline in Supply Chain Leader numbers and identifies the growing list of what a Supply Chain Leader must have, and must deliver according to global trends.

Click here to open the September issue of “Thought Supply”

 

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Collaborative Onsite Outsourcing

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In response to the article in LinkedIn: 5 Smart Reasons Employers Should Stop Hiring for Full-time Jobs written by J.T. O’Donnell,  I wrote that companies must utilise all forms of employment including full-time, part-time, outsourced and contracted. Only this will allow companies to get the best ROI from the available and seemingly diminishing pool of Supply Chain talent (I have included my original response below).

Today I find a paper published  by C.H. Robinson stating a similar fact. Their paper “Collaborative Outsourcing: How to gain value from a strategic onsite logistics resource” is focused on Logistics and how outsourced suppliers may need to place some of their own resources on site with their customer.

Not only is this good reading but is a good guide to what and how companies can optimise their requirements.

My original response to JT’s article: There many facets to the concept of “employment”, the problem as I read it, the author seems to be extreme one way and many of the comments extreme the other way. In reality there should be more project driven roles (contract) but this does not detract from the fact that there also needs to be a large part of the organisation that remains permanent. Companies should be utilising the best people for the particular task/function in the most appropriate manner. Some tasks/projects are always better to be managed by either outsourcing or having a person contracted for that project, remembering this can be a short term or long term/extended contract, other roles should nearly always be done on a permanent basis in-house (full-time or part-time). Aside from the perceptions of individuals many companies do not analyse their requirements correctly, too many focus on an immediate requirement or need and hire to an outdated expectation for example: “THIS should be a permanent role and we will have to hire a temp for THAT one”. Also: Project driven roles should not be considered “Temps” – there is too much negative stigma attached to this title, call them Project Contractors, for that is what they are. There are far too many people not being allowed to be the best they can, or to give the best they can to the company they work for, in any capacity, due to so much inaccurate and inconsistent thinking about what a “job” is.