NZ economist Tony Alexander surveyed 22,000 of his Tony’s View subscribers in July 2021, asking what issues they were facing around staffing. He collated 170 responses, some of which he described as excellent.
The questions he asked were:
“NZ businesses are having record difficulties sourcing staff. What have you found to be effective in either recruiting people or retaining your people? Alternatively, how have you changed staff management and interaction to better handle shortages?”
His summary of the thoughts offered are:
- Offer more flexible hours of work, not just the opportunity to work from home, which is not possible in many businesses.
- Create a strong team environment with spontaneous awards to reflect employee or employee family achievements and milestones.
- Offer part-time work to retain people who are retiring.
- Outsource offshore where possible.
- Don’t low-ball initial pay offers as people facing choice will feel disrespected and you’ve lost a hiring opportunity even if you lift the offer.
- Automate processes and boost efficiency to reduce reliance on staff.
- Promote from within and make promotion path opportunities clear to new and existing staff.
- Train people for higher-ranking positions.
- Hire for potential, not immediate productivity.
- Provide finders fees to staff who successfully introduce a new employee.
The suggestions
Tony assembled a huge range of suggestions from his respondents, here are some to consider:
Let others go after expensive trained staff while you give opportunities to lift up the bottom staff who have an awesome attitude but are open to more upskilling and training. That way you get them cheaper.
Make people feel part of the team and management.
Build close relationships like remembering their birthdays and those of their kids and give the kids 10/20 dollars.
Give the employee $50 macs voucher every now and again it will be repaid 10-fold build loyalty to one business.
People leave to pursue other opportunities and grow. We have found that if you map out a career path for them in your team when you hire them, it focuses them on their growth while staying put. It can be as simple as adding a 'Senior' to the front of their role following agreed outcomes. KPIs are great too, if you make them annual bonuses people will often stay until the end of each year to hit the target.
Advertise differently. Try a completely different style of advertising, for example, move from a list of technical requirements to qualities and personal attributes. Name some of the varied backgrounds that someone might have.
Improve efficiency - focus on work that really matters; automate what can be automated - help staff be more efficient.
Push work out further - plan further ahead.
Employee flexibility, working from home and business's culture remain high on the list of retention factors.
Try to restrict your forward workload to match your resources. The days of "secure that project and worry about resourcing it once you have it" are gone and is what is the real problem here.
We must train new recruits as quickly as possible and retain the excellent staff we already have. We have set up a team teaching and training system in our business that we never had before. The new recruits train as a team, its faster and they are more motivated. Feedback from industry trainers tells us this group approach is working very well and we feel the same way. The young people are getting the attention and acknowledgement they need be successful
We realised a few years back that expecting people to work for a wage alone just wasn't working well enough in our business.
We needed to take a more holistic view of the employer - employee relationship and make some changes. We did lots of reading and embraced some uncomfortable new ideas.
We now provide a catered hot meal for all staff once a week and keep the staffroom fridge stocked with cereals, bread, fruit and snacks that you can eat any time of the day. We celebrate everything with a morning tea shout - birthdays, cold days, hot days, engagements, weddings, graduations, you name it. We sponsor your child’s sports events and give generously to fundraising by our staff.
We have a hero of the week that chooses the beverage for Fridays. Young people are encouraged to speak up and give us their feedback. We will be listening. As a result of these initiatives, the culture in our business has been transformed to be one of greater inclusion, cooperation, support and fun. Performance levels have increased like never before. Yes, there is a cost involved in implementing these changes, however we have found the benefits both financial and by all other measures, are far greater than the material cost and we plan to continue on this path.
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more here and if you’d like to discuss how you staffing issues affect your business,
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