By Kevin Flemming, CSP Kevin Flemming is president of Integrity Personnel, Inc., a Lehigh Valley-based staffing and recruiting firm. He writes about staffing issues for small and medium-sized employers. His column, "Talent Search," appears in the Eastern Pennsylvania Business Journal every third week of the month.

Editor’s Note: This is the first of two articles

We all experience poor customer service. The next time that you’re waiting on hold – after navigating through 15 automated selections only to be told (by the computer) that your call will be answered in the order in which it was received - reflect on this compelling question: What does suburban sprawl have to do with lousy customer service?

A hot topic throughout the Northeast these past two years has been the issue of suburban sprawl. This term is used to describe the results of large-scale development in areas that were formerly farmland, woodland or otherwise rural communities. By reading the plethora of articles written about this issue, I’ve noted that there are generally three major complaints associated with new development.

Pressure to grow fast leads to asphalt jungles

The first has to do with ecology and the impact that asphalt, concrete and drainage pipes have on nature. Next is the issue of aesthetics. With so many independent development projects all producing similar (if not identical) uses, we mostly end up with too many nondescript, flat-roofed buildings and ugly parking lots. A quick drive along any of the major highways in the region provides evidence of this short-sighted approach to architecture and site development.

The third argument against sprawl has to do with the future. How will today’s rapid and relatively uncoordinated real estate development affect the future of our towns and communities? Looking out ten to fifteen years, will our newest high-end housing developments become islands floating in a sea of intersections and gas stations, dissuading any new buyers to move there? Will the combination of a convenience store, chain restaurant, and bank branch all wrapped up in a rectangular strip mall become the new town center? When everything looks the same, the only way we’ll know if we’re in New Jersey, Pennsylvania or New York is by seeing which state’s license plate is most prevalent.

Warning signs in the labor market

No one entity or group is responsible for having created this situation because the varied economic and social forces that drive this type of development evolved over time. But if we would have started this conversation thirty years ago, would our neighborhoods and commercial centers look different today?

There are forces at work in today’s business environment that could have a similar impact on the state of the workforce. We are noticing some powerful influences that are beginning to change the way employers are developing their human resources. As the demand for new workers grows, some businesses are in danger of creating a culture of mediocrity that will have a future negative effect on their organizations.

The remainder of this article is focused on two significant forces of change on the workforce. The second part of this series will highlight some of the results of those changes, like the inane methods large companies use to avoid dealing with complaints & questions from their customers.

…so the programmer turns to the stockbroker and says…

Internet technology created a profound change in both the way people work and the way that they find work. This force will have the longest-term impact on the labor market because it touches every aspect of the employment process. The most obvious result has been the popularity of on-line job boards, which have effectively replaced newspaper classified advertising. They allow small employers to compete with Fortune 500 companies for talent by providing a means to cross geographical barriers and reach targeted pools of job candidates at minimal cost.

But the boards have also opened our eyes to the concept of the passive candidate. We recognize that every employee has the capability of conducting an ongoing job search without effort. This has forced employers to spend more time and money on retention, yet those efforts have yielded surprisingly few new ideas for managing human resources.

Another force for change in the labor market comes from the combination of the 401K and the employee-contributed health plan. When these products replaced traditional pension plans and full medical coverage, we saw a major shift in employee loyalty. The days of lifetime employment at one company came to an end and all of us discovered that to some extent, we are independent contractors. There is a “chicken & egg” argument associated with this issue: did the cultural change lead to the emergence of the 401K & similar products, or did the financial instruments cause the culture to shift?

By responding to the urgent, employers fail to build strong teams

That aside, the new environment changed the criteria upon which people base their job searches. Short-term income potential has trumped long-term benefits and opportunities for promotion. Many job seekers look for positions that offer the highest wage and don’t expect to stay at one company for more than 3 years. These factors pressure employers to precisely target their recruiting efforts for the needs of the moment, rather than the long-term health of their organization.

These changes are leading to a type of sprawl in the workforce. While recent scholarly studies have encouraged the development of innovation and creative thinking in business – the hiring choices that companies are making suggest an absence of these traits. Instead of creating a vision for the future, hiring managers are merely filling open space in their organizations. Similar to the flat buildings and one-dimensional landscaping of modern development, this type of recruiting produces a non-cohesive group of people that is incapable of forming distinctive business structures.

Sprawl (in either the community or the company) is not inevitable. It can be avoided if the stakeholders within a growing organization recognize the signs and pursue more thoughtful planning.