![\"struggle](\"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/pexels-alex-green-5699475.jpg\")
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If you\u2019re finding it’s a struggle to hire employees, you\u2019re not alone. Bloomberg reports<\/a> that many small businesses are having difficulty finding people who currently want to work \u2013 in fact, 42 percent say they have jobs they can\u2019t fill. The number of people quitting jobs right now is also higher than average.<\/p>\n One culprit is likely COVID-19. For reasons related to the pandemic, a number of people are choosing not to work right now. They don\u2019t want to risk getting sick, they have children at home, or they may be able to get by for now on unemployment insurance.<\/p>\n Some small businesses with positions to fill have turned to gimmicks<\/a> like signing bonuses and free food, but these recruiting tactics are unlikely to be effective long term. They don\u2019t address the risks, challenges, and needs people have right now.<\/p>\n Fortunately for employers looking to hire, the problem of people choosing not to work isn\u2019t fundamentally different than the problem of people choosing to work somewhere else. In both cases, the would-be employer has to convince prospective hires that working for them is better than the alternatives, and then they have to live up to those promises.<\/p>\n To be sure, those who choose not to work are missing out on many benefits. A job provides not only a paycheck, but also opportunities for employees to do meaningful work, contribute to their community, make friends, develop skills, receive training, advance their career, and fund their retirement. If someone isn\u2019t working, they\u2019re missing out on these and other opportunities. Employers may be able to leverage these benefits to appeal to those who have removed themselves from the workforce and convince them that work is worth it.<\/p>\n Before employers can use benefits like friendship and skill-building to lure applicants, they must first address safety, flexibility, and pay; in a hierarchy of employment needs, these are foundational.<\/p>\n While vaccinations are proceeding at an encouraging rate and all adults are now eligible, COVID-19 remains a serious threat. It will be some time before people getting their shots now develop immunity to the virus, and they may worry about infecting friends and family who are unable or unwilling to get the vaccine. Because of these fears, some people aren\u2019t going to work, period, and there\u2019s nothing employers can do to persuade them. Others, however, may be open to working if they feel confident enough that the job won\u2019t put them or those they care about in danger.<\/p>\n Flexibility is another key component for many potential applicants, much more so now that in-person school and childcare have become scarce. Since younger children cannot be left to fend for themselves while their parents are at work, something has to give. Employers that provide flexibility\u2014either through the initial scheduling of shifts or the ability to rearrange working hours on the fly\u2014will likely receive more applicants and have a lower rate of turnover.<\/p>\n Other potential employees may be willing to work if they feel the pay is worth the risk and sufficient to cover the costs of working (transportation, childcare, insurance premiums, etc.).<\/p>\n Of course, most businesses don\u2019t relish the idea of paying employees higher-than-usual wages, but there\u2019s good reason to believe that increased pay is a good investment, especially for people in traditionally lower-paying jobs. When people are preoccupied with bills, debts, and other forms of scarcity, they tend to be less productive and make more mistakes<\/a>. But, when scarcity isn\u2019t taxing their mental bandwidth, they\u2019re able to be more productive, make fewer mistakes, and increase business profitability. Increases in pay can pay for themselves.<\/p>\n It may be that the positions an employer needs to fill don\u2019t come with an exciting career path or teach the kind of skills that employees are likely to put on future resumes. But that\u2019s not set in stone. Both the employer and the employee choose what skills are learned and used in every position.<\/p>\n Imagine, for a moment, a local deli that needs to hire a person to take orders at the register. The job market might consider this job \u201clow skill,\u201d but the owner of this deli doesn\u2019t think of the job that way or advertise it that way.<\/p>\n Now, the owner doesn\u2019t use the gimmick of giving the job a fancier title than what it entails; instead, they set the job up to provide skills training for more advanced positions in customer service or sales. In the first few days, the new hire will learn the menu and the layout of the register, but then, in the lulls between rushes, they\u2019ll learn techniques for talking to customers, de-escalating tense situations, upselling, and the like\u2014training that people in customer service and sales would expect to receive. Later, the new hire might even learn some of the ins and outs of starting and running a small business.<\/p>\n This owner knows that high employee turnover is simply the nature of the business and that employees will, sooner or later, take their training and skills to other jobs. And that\u2019s the point. The aim here is to cultivate a reputation in the community as an excellent place for customers to grab a meal and an excellent place for employees to start learning marketable skills they\u2019ll use throughout their careers, increasing the size of both the applicant pool and the deli\u2019s profits.<\/p>\n Poorly written job postings can prove a serious obstacle to getting applicants.\u00a0It\u2019s important, as Katrina Kibben reminds us<\/a>, that recruiters and hiring managers understand what they\u2019re looking for in a new hire and write job postings that are simple and effective.<\/p>\n If an employer offers some or all of the benefits discussed above, they should showcase them in their postings with concrete examples and as part of an engaging story. For instance, instead of the deli owner writing, \u201cWe teach valuable skills,\u201d they can explain that downtime will be filled with instruction on sales and de-escalation techniques. And instead of saying, \u201cWe offer flexibility,\u201d an employer can advertise that employees have a range of shifts to choose from on a weekly basis or will be able to complete their work at any time of day, so long as weekly deadlines are met.<\/p>\n But no amount of training opportunities will mean a thing if a business\u2019s hiring process is a chore for applicants to get through. The more minutes it takes to complete an application, the more applicants will decide it isn\u2019t worth it. The longer a candidate has to wait for an offer, the more likely they\u2019ll turn down that job offer\u2014sometimes, as Adam Karpiak illustrates<\/a>, even when they don\u2019t have another job lined up.<\/p>\n If you’re looking for help with your hiring process, new software might be the answer. A hiring system that integrates with your payroll and HR platform streamlines everything, improving the experience not just for your and your team, but for the applicant. Download our Hiring Software Buyer’s Guide<\/a> to ensure you’re getting the right solution for your business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many businesses are having to struggle to hire employees right now, but there are things you can do to help attract and hire new workers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[25,19,159],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-9861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consulting-services","tag-hiring","tag-human-resources","tag-recruitment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9861"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9865,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9861\/revisions\/9865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9861"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=9861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Safety, Flexibility, and Pay<\/h2>\n
Career Development Opportunities<\/h2>\n
Attractive Job Postings and Hiring Processes<\/h2>\n