Chemistry’s Annual Breakfast Event!
For many years now, Chemistry Consulting has hosted an annual breakfast event that brings together the local business community for a morning of networking, learning, and of course – food! This year, we were pleased to have a guest speaker join us from Fasken Martineau law firm in Vancouver. Matthew Larsen is an Associate with the firm and a specialist in Employment Law. He provided attendees with some interesting insight into the most common problems that he sees employers run into when managing staff. Amongst other topics, he stressed the importance of having an enforceable employment agreement, explained the difference between “just cause” and “no cause” dismissal as well as the impacts of statutory notice vs. common law notice. Matthew’s full presentation can be downloaded here.
Chemistry Partner, Christine Willow, also spoke that morning on the topic of the current trends and challenges we are seeing in the local labour market. The following paragraphs provide a summary of her presentation, while the slides are available for download here.
The Labour Market on Vancouver Island
Victoria has one hot labour market! It’s never been more challenging to find good employees than it is in today’s booming economy. In BC, we are enjoying a 5.1 percent unemployment rate, which drops to 4.6 percent in the capital city of Victoria making it, by definition, a full employment labour market.
On September 13, the job site Indeed was advertising 2,788 jobs on Vancouver Island, while Craigslist showed 1,344 in Victoria and 894 in Nanaimo. The most advertised jobs in BC were retail sales, banking, insurance and other financial clerks, cashiers, grocery clerk and carpenters. Shortages are seen in construction, cooks and kitchen staff, education, shipbuilding, health care and high tech.
Labour shortages are evident across the board, so employers are competing with all industries to hire staff. We’ve heard stories of cooks taking off their aprons, putting on steel toe boots and going to work in construction for higher wages. So how can employers find and retain great staff?
Online Recruiting is Key!
To begin with, how you recruit is more important than ever. Most job seekers are going online with their job searches, using both job search sites and social media. Employers have a great opportunity to show who they are on their websites and their branding is vital to their recruiting success.
Consider this:
- 69 % of candidates are likely to apply if an employer manages their brand (Glassdoor survey)
- 76% want details on what makes the company a great place to work (Glassdoor survey)
- 69% would not take a job with a company with bad reputation (Corporate Responsibility Magazine, Allegis Group Services)
- 84% would consider leaving to go to another company with an excellent reputation.
Tell your story
As an employer, tell your story: who you are and what you stand for, matters. Evoke some emotion. Share your vision, what makes your company unique, and your values and culture. Talk about career opportunites and successes within your team. Help job seekers picture themselves on your team.
That’s what Marriott Hotels did when they launched the #PictureYourselfHere campaign. They took job seekers behind the scenes into one of their kitchens. Do Marriott chefs spend their time tossing peppers about? Likely not, but the message is that they love playing with food and creating great experiences for their guests and their staff.
How many of us wanted to be a police officer or a firefighter when we grew up? The City of Surrey, UK was banking on those memories with its “What do you want to be when you grow up?” ads. The Lego® figure is a great touch to bring back that sense of childhood imagination. These ads evoke emotion, appealing to our sense of fun, joy and hopefully fulfilled dreams!
A recruitment study by Bersin Deloitte found that company websites drive more hires than any other source, followed by job boards and internal candidates. With increasing numbers of Millennials (who are now outnumbering Boomers in the workplace) in the workforce, online recruitment will continue to grow.
The Millennial Workforce
Millennials will dominate the workforce by 2025. Millennials want to know details about positions, work environment, people they will be working with and if there’s an opportunity to learn. They communicate by social media, so be in their space to get their attention.
- 70 % of Millennials (ages 18-34) hear about companies through friends and online job boards
- 73% of Millennials are hired through social media
- 83% of job seekers are on Facebook, 36% on LinkedIn
- LinkedIn has 119 million users in North America
- 79% of job seekers use social media in their job search (SHRM).
Mobile Recruiting
With almost 50 percent of job seekers using mobile devices for job search, employers must ensure their websites are optimized for mobile use. While you’re reviewing your online presence, we also recommend checking out your Glassdoor rating if you haven’t already done so. This site provides current and past-employees the opportunity to write reviews of your company. Recent surveys show that over half of job-seekers read company reviews to make decisions on where they might want to work. You may be in for some surprises, but least you will know your weaknesses from your employees perspectives!
Retention
The main reasons that employees leave a job are:
- for a better work/life balance
- to work at better locations
- have a shorter commute
- the job isn’t what they expected.
Of course, potential for advancement and compensation levels also play into employee turnover.
Some of the things that cause employees to leave can be easy to fix, especially if you look at the price of doing nothing. The cost of turnover, recruitment, onboarding and training, loss of knowledge, business interruption and lost efficiency are very high. Some estimates are as high as $65,000 per employee over the cost of the year it takes for the new person to be completely productive. Suddenly, a few extra days of vacation and other compensation adjustments sound much more affordable.
Today’s workforce also looks at benefits in a different way then what has been the traditional benefit plan. We are moving towards providing more flexible, customized benefits, whereby an employee can select items from a “benefit menu” that most appeal to them, up to a certain dollar value. And when it comes to annual reviews, employees are looking for more immediate feedback, and to be assessed on how they contribute to the team and others’ successes.
Being an employer of choice is the only way to win at hiring in this tight labour market. Forget the normal – experiment, have fun, be creative!
What are some ways you attract and keep employees? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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