The Sophomore Surge
by Michael McCullough
In the music business, it’s known as the sophomore slump: a rising artist or band puts out a second album that fails to live up to the lofty expectations engendered by the first, creating a downward career trajectory that’s hard to overcome. The same phenomenon haunts novelists. There’s even a saying to explain it: your first effort is 20 years in the making; your second, just six months.
Fortunately for us, there was no such letdown with the second annual Alberta’s Best Workplaces program – indeed, quite the opposite. Following our first survey of model employers last year, we tripled – yes, tripled – the number of qualified applicants this year to 75, meaning the competition was that much stiffer and the achievement of the finalists that much more distinguished. Keep in mind that, with two or three exceptions, virtually all the applicants could claim to be above average in one respect or another. The 10 winners of the various categories, therefore, represent a rarefied group and truly deserve to be called Alberta’s Best Workplaces.
If the response to the survey revealed one thing, it’s that human resources still matters. Even as sales and profits come under pressure and organizations move to trim their payrolls, companies are rightly mindful of how they appear to prospective hires and whether their employees are truly engaged in their work. As Human Resources Institute of Alberta director Phillip Wong, one of four Best Workplaces judges this year, notes in “Finders (&) Keepers,” the employee grapevine has been hugely expanded by networking and wireless technology and you don’t want to become known as a substandard employer. A reputation like that can stick.
True enough, many organizations have more urgent imperatives on their hands right now. Just check out associate editor Lindsey Norris’s story “Retread”, about how the founding family of Canada’s largest tire retailer is attempting to rebuild the remnants of Tirecraft into a new chain, Integra. The nuts and bolts of Tirecraft’s unravelling (under different management) and the attempt by Edmonton’s Cosco brothers to leverage whatever goodwill was left in the marketplace provides a highly readable case study for other companies feeling the recession’s pinch.
For those readers we have also introduced a new department, Action Plan, where every month we intend to explore a different strategy for maintaining growth and profitability against today’s daunting economic headwinds. This month we examine bringing formerly outsourced business activities back in-house. Recently our circulation department began hearing from readers who say, due to economic uncertainty, they can’t afford to subscribe to Alberta Venture. Our aim is to be something you can’t afford not to.
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