Attracting those elusive employees

Employers big and small know that the COVID pandemic made it even harder to attract and retain good employees. While recent college grads are beginning to enter a transformed job market, their numbers won’t make up for the workers who for various reasons are still sitting out the crisis.

But savvy employers can adjust their recruitment and retention strategies to fill the gap. Here are some ideas you may not have thought about.

• Be flexible and offer flex time. Allow working from home; think about filling 40-hour position with several flex-time employees.
• Tap into retirees. They have the experience, solid work ethic and often time on their hands.
• Allow job sharing. The pandemic has taught workers that self-determination is as important as a regular paycheck. Let employees decide the best way to get the job done.
• Offer creative benefits. While traditional “bennies” are important, training and skill-building opportunities are also attractive.
• When you sell your company’s work culture, do it early. Focus some of your recruitment efforts on freshmen and sophomores in high school as well as those graduating seniors and college students.
• Tap into the best of your current employees to help recruit the next generation. Nothing is so authentic for potential employees as the voices of current ones who find professional fulfillment with your company.
• Follow up on referrals from sources you trust.
• Think about recruiting from populations that may be new to you: participants in prison work release programs, and workers in intellectual/developmental disability programs can open new opportunities for both you and them. Programs like this come with built-in support, so you’re not going it on your own.
• Use social media to get your message out.

Case study: on the ground in northwest Ohio

Far-seeing area employers and business owners have been fine-tuning these strategies, with good results. Small business consultant Bill Wersell summarized the issue: “Even before COVID-19, there was not enough skilled labor to supply area manufacturing.

“Social media is a great place to sell potential employees on the advantages of working for such companies. Wages and benefits are attractive, sure, but there’s also the fact that manufacturing, especially in small companies, has transitioned from repetitive work to a more flexible skill set.” He points out the example of former assembly-line workers who find greater fulfillment working for small manufacturers — “where they learn to maintain equipment rather than just feeding parts through it.”

A local program organized more than three years ago by Jennifer Fought of Renhill Staffing Services and Mike Deye, president of Hale Performance Coatings, focuses its manufacturing recruitment efforts on high school students.

“We began with students from Scott and Start High Schools,” says Deye. “Jennifer created an internship program where two or three students every year work at Hale. We offer flexible schedules to work around their lives.”

Student enthusiasm has run high, he says. “As interns they’re learning life skills as well as technical skills. That’s something they keep whether they stay or not — but many stay with the program because they understand the opportunities.” He credits teachers such as Dave Dowling at Scott and Carl Borko at Start for promoting the program from within. Using Facebook and Instagram have also been part of the communication strategy.  

Current employees help ensure the program’s success, too. As Wersell says, “Mike has made a company culture of acceptance for the students. That’s a big part of the program’s success.”

Fought notes that the program is also designed to educate the many local businesses that are unaware of the skilled trades programs offered by high schools. “Programs are embedded in nearly all local schools, but the community often has no idea they exist,” she says. “High school students are an undeveloped resource in areas such as machining and tool-and-die work — places where the demand for workers is high.

“Our tag line for the program has been ‘creating your own talent’ — high school interns offer a way for companies to do exactly that.”

The bottom line, all three professionals agree, is that just as nimbleness and flexibility are increasingly important for workers, companies must learn the same skills. “Manufacturers and other companies need to change old ways of thinking about hiring,” Fought says. “The market changes all the time — companies need to adapt to those changes.”