One of the biggest topics of discussion that I am having with clients is that they cannot find good people or that no one wants to work. Many of my clients’ state that they cannot fill the positions needed at their facilities and if it forcing current employees to work additional hours and burn out is increasing.
During this discussion, one of the biggest questions that I ask and gets the biggest reaction is “would you want to work for you”. I always get a strange look and a strange response, but once the client sits back and thinks about it and we explore the situation a little further they sometimes start to question their thought process and other.
The first thing that we look at is turnover. Has there been a recent increase. Is it in specific departments or the entire company? We want to look for a trends or patterns. What has changed during that specific time frame. Are the employees overworked and there are a lot of call-offs and short falls daily? Was a new manager hired for a specific department or is there something else going on within the company that needs to be addressed.
The second thing that we look at and review is the onboarding process. How hard and difficult is the process that potential employees don’t want to go through the process or participate. Who is conducting the interviews and how is the demeanor and attitude towards the company. Human resources are your front-line salespeople and if they cannot sell the position and the company you are never going to hire another person. What is HR doing to sell the right person on the company, the potential employee’s personal goals and how they will add and build value for the company. A lot of successful companies have become stagnant in their recruiting process, thus leading to less qualified candidates applying for jobs.
The job posting should not only describe the position, but it should be outlining the type of person that would excel in the position and the type of person that would work well with the company culture. Character traits should also be listed in the job description. Does the screening process match the traits and characteristics of the potential employee’s match. Just because it worked well in the past does not mean that today it is searching and filtering out the same information that you want it to. Where are you placing the job positing? Are you using the same websites and attracting the same types of people? Maybe where the position is placed is a key indicator of the type of people you will have applying for the position. Third, we are going to review the company culture. Are employees truly happy or do they have one foot out the door. Employees are great resources for recommending the company as a great place to work. If the current team is not happy, you cannot expect to bring in new talent and have them want to stay very long. You want to hire and retain good people, not good employees.
As an employer you don’t want to sacrifice your company values just to fill the position and hope it works out. How much does your company spend to hire a new employee. I will assume it is between $5,000 and $15,000 for just the basic and more than likely more depending on the circumstances and the position.
We can’t always blame the job market or that no one wants to work. We need to start looking inward before we look outside the company walls. As I asked earlier in the article, would you want to work for your company and why?
