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The best resource you never heard of
By JOHN PETRIMOULX Companies trying to understand the young people they're hiring might do well to listen to Jay Jamrog. "Thirty-five percent of teens and college-age kids find their best friend online," he said. "We also discovered they often go online and chat to finish conversations they start in person." So employers shouldn't push them to conform to a one-size-fits-all approach to communicating in the workplace.
From a warren of cramped offices in an aging building on Central Avenue in St. Petersburg, Jamrog directs a think tank that is unknown to most Tampa Bay area businesses. Nevertheless, it has become a leading purveyor of research on corporate employee issues, spotting trends and providing analysis aimed at giving a competitive edge to a who's who of global clients. After ending a long tenure at Eckerd College and briefly setting up shop independently, Jamrog hopes a new affiliation formed a year ago with the University of Tampa will provide a boost for HRI's plans to expand marketing, connect with local business and conduct new kinds of research. Founded in 1965 by William Pyle, its current chairman, HRI has an itinerant history. It left its birthplace at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research for the University of Massachusetts in 1980, then for Eckerd College in 1986. Executive director Jamrog, 16 staffers and assorted HRI associates track and report on 150 issues of concern to companies. Examples of topics tackled include the behavior of young hires, ways companies can recruit racial minorities, why employees leave and how to manage the four generations that are part of today's workforce. Each year HRI provides fifteen research reports to its 100 member companies. The 200-page reports include summaries of findings, implications, strategies for managing and prospects for the future modeled after a scenario-planning method developed by Shell Oil. In addition, HRI e-mails a weekly trendwatching newsletter and twice-monthly research updates to 5,000 executives of member companies. "We do secondary research with books and articles," he said. "We look for holes in that research and then do primary research with surveys, interviews and focus groups." During the tech boom, for example, HRI formed a consortium of members experiencing labor shortages to look at confidential attrition data and identify causes. The institute also tackled minority hiring. Minorities join companies where they feel comfortable, HRI research shows. "They tell us they want to know, "Are there people like me?' " Jamrog said. "They also want to know how much progress the company is making in moving minorities up the ladder." The research is important, Jamrog said, because demographic changes and global business will continue to bring more minorities into the workforce. And with 43 percent of the civilian labor force eligible for retirement by 2015, he said, the competition for workers will be fierce. Membership in HRI runs $12,000 a year. In addition, companies that want in-depth research of their own can pay up to $200,000. Jamrog says HRI does three or four such in-depth studies each year, as well as polling to respond to company requests for research on current practices. It organizes member consortiums, such as one this year on ways to put human resources functions online, or e-HR, sponsored by 3M, and a yearly conference on human resource issues. The 31st annual HRI Issue Management Conference, to be held Feb. 5-7 at the Don Cesar Beach Resort on St. Pete Beach, is open to members, local human resources professionals and invited guests. When HRI left Eckerd, it gave up its nonprofit status, but Jamrog says the institute will regain it when it moves its operation to offices on the University of Tampa campus next year. UT will provide 3,000 square feet of office space for HRI but no operating funds. Jamrog says member fees cover all of its $1.5-million annual budget, which he hopes to double in the next two or three years. Despite its familiarity to a global clientele, HRI operates under the radar of most bay area business leaders. Not that Jamrog wouldn't like to change that. "We'd like to open up the institute to Tampa Bay," he said. "We do a ton of research and would like to do a local slant." Efforts to organize a quarterly consortium of local businesses have failed. A frustrated Jamrog blames a shortsighted approach to human resources by many area businesses. "We can bring in 3M and Home Depot and share cutting-edge practices," he said, "but it takes money and an investment in time and enthusiasm." Jamrog hasn't abandoned the goal to create a local consortium, but he said he's busy with new HRI plans. "We will continue to get trends and their implications to busy executives so they don't have to search 30,000 Google hits," he said. "We plan to begin marketing our trend-watching research to medium-sized businesses." In addition, Jamrog said, HRI will add UT professors and students to its team of researchers. "We want to do more in-depth conversations with clients," he said. "And we want to research more of their internal trends." Those include how companies manage "tacit" knowledge, the knowledge of a company's culture or customers that employees pick up over time and take with them when they leave. Companies hope to capture this knowledge, particularly for new hires so they can hit the ground running. As an example, Jamrog said, researchers look at how a client's decisions get made. They want to learn who people go to when they really want something done. "The important players are not always on the organization chart," he said. For its part, UT has used its association with HRI for added credibility in forging consulting arrangements with corporate clients. "We are now competing with northeastern schools to do work with Fortune 500 companies," said Joe McCann, dean of UT's Sykes College of Business. He credits HRI's research prowess as a factor in winning two major consulting contracts this year. "Their Web site database is probably the largest and most complete repository of human resources research in the world," McCann said. HRI's own employees fit some of the trends they report about. Research teams include retired professors and what Jamrog calls exiles from management. Both are valuable, he believes, because they can share their experience with new employees. "There's not a lot of money, but a lot of freedom," Jamrog said. "How and where to do the research is up to them. They can work on the beach if they want. Quality and quantity is what's important. "We even have a Ph.D. playwright," he said. "He works here because he's a great writer. He just can't get his plays produced."
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