Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, major changes have occurred in the staffing business. Thus, your organization has had to adapt to such changes fast to avoid losing positions in the market. In this sense, you must know the top staffing issues your organization can face today.
In this article, you will learn about the top staffing issues organizations are facing today. Here, you will know what staffing is, how organizations perform it, and what issues related to it can you face. We will allow you to do all this by digging into the following topics:
- What is staffing?
- How do organizations perform staffing nowadays?
- What staffing issues organizations are facing today?
- Where can you find more information about how to deal with staffing issues?
1. What is staffing?
When you find a honeycomb, you may think about how bees organized themselves to build it. Indeed, they perform all from finding a place to ensure their queen is well feed and protected. Hence, you could say they are a diverse workforce with a defined mission.
Your organization can resemble this example perfectly because it will also need a diverse workforce to achieve its goals. However, bees naturally evolved to be an organized work team, while humans need some assistance in it. In other words, you need to manage your workforce properly.
Therefore, you must perform staffing in your organization. In essence, staffing involves all aspects related to the sourcing, selection, recruitment, and hiring of potential candidates for your available positions. It also involves other tasks such as onboarding and retaining new employees in your company.
Moreover, staffing also deals with ways your team can improve its potential, such as training and promotions policies. Hence, it can help your company get the right candidates for your available roles. On the other hand, you may think that all the processes listed as staffing are the same. But in reality, sourcing, selection, and recruitment are processes with several differences.
2. How do organizations perform staffing nowadays?
Like any other business, staffing is a dynamic entity, where several variables influence its performance and results. Some of such variables are your company’s location, its line of business, and other essential requirements. Thus, every company can perform it differently.
However, most organizations worldwide perform staffing nowadays in two different ways, depending on who performs it. First, you can perform it through your internal HR department. This way can be beneficial because your team knows what your company needs in a new employee.
Nevertheless, it can also be risky. After all, your HR department knows what to search for, but maybe not how or where to search it. This lack of knowledge can lead you to choose the wrong employees.
Because of this, many companies today use the second option to perform this process: a staffing agency. Indeed, it will allow your company to avoid such a risk and build a qualified workforce. It can also help you by saving money and increasing the number of available candidates.
Most importantly, a staffing agency can help you manage every type of employee you have in your company. Hence, you can use it to hire both full-time employees and contract workers.
3. What staffing issues organizations are facing today?
You just take a glance at how your organization can perform staffing. Nevertheless, you need to know every aspect of it before defining the way staffing will be done in your company. Above all, staffing can bring several advantages to your business, such as saving time and a flexible workforce.
Unfortunately, it can also lead you to face some issues, regardless of your company’s status. These issues are more related to other aspects, such as technological advances, current trends, and changes in employment demands. Because of such aspects, the list of issues every company can face is incredibly long and varied. But, we managed to find seven staffing issues almost every organization is facing today. Each one can affect your business differently, so, you must be prepared to deal with all of them.
In this sense, you can find several businesses where staffing issues have become a major problem. One clear example of this is the nursing homes that are currently terribly understaffed because of such issues.
Let us now dig deeper into the seven top staffing issues organizations are facing today:
3.1 Shifts in remote work
Despite employees gradually returning to their workplace, there is a trend of keeping several job positions remote. Indeed, it is estimated that around two of every five employees are still working this way today.
Therefore, staffing firms equipped to source and recruit potential candidates for remote positions are likely to be more successful. In this matter, they can use pre-employment testing and remote interviews to identify the best candidates for remote work.
In this way, you can know more about the candidate’s chances of success in a remote work environment. It will increase the possibility that such a candidate will remain at your company for a long time.
Furthermore, such shifts in remote work are even changing the way staffing firms are managed today. Hence, it will be helpful for you to know how staffing agencies can be managed remotely.
3.2 A more digital recruitment
To every staffing firm, the most important aspect of their work relies on relationships. In essence, a recruiter’s job is to build relationships with clients and candidates to find the best possible match-ups. However, building a relationship with a candidate or a customer can be challenging in an online environment.
For instance, staffing firms often use LinkedIn and social media platforms to establish connections with job seekers and potential clients. Nonetheless, when you use them, it takes more preparation and planning to build an online relationship.
One method staffing firms can use to overcome this issue is through one-way interviews. They allow receiving answers from a candidate without any external influence. In this way, they can perform the sourcing and recruitment processes more efficiently by just seeking soft skills through the interviews.
Above all, more digital recruitment has changed the method used by staffing agencies to search for potential candidates. Here, you should know how the best of them do this search nowadays.
3.3 Significant competition
Competitiveness has always been an essential characteristic of the staffing business. After all, when an attractive job position is available, several candidates will compete for it, sometimes fiercely. However, this is a part of staffing since its birth, so, why is it an issue today?
Well, in today’s business world, employees tend to seek new and different experiences in their careers. This has two important consequences: it increases worker changes between companies and, with more changes, it raises competitiveness.
Staffing agencies are now searching for ways their clients will not be affected by this issue. One way they can do it is by advising their clients on raising a position’s compensation if it is necessary.
However, they can also instruct their clients into establishing policies related to promoting internal moves in their structure. That is to say, you must find ways to make the price of the competition bigger. Moreover, you must also prevent your employees from entering the competition at all.
On the other hand, employees can get into such new experiences faster by working for a temporary staffing firm. Certainly, it is a practice with several advantages and disadvantages.
3.4 Fewer candidates for customer-facing positions
The COVID-19 pandemic had the unwanted consequence of sending almost every customer-facing employee home. Because of this, they often were dismissed from their jobs to save expenses during the Pandemic. The problem here lies in that those employees do not want to return to customer-facing positions today.
Above all, it is a problem affecting several businesses where customer-facing positions are essential, such as restaurants and healthcare facilities. Hence, you must find ideas to deal with this short supply of workers for these positions.
In this matter, staffing agencies are now recommending their customers design and implement health safety policies and protocols. This way, potential job seekers will find your customer-facing positions more attractive and secure. They can even offer them additional compensation for their work.
Furthermore, health safety protocols are now a requirement for several industries where remote work is not an option. One clear example of this is the construction industry. After all, health safety is one of the 3 staffing tips you should know for its recovery.
3.5 Ghosting
Ghosting is a term you most probably heard of in reference to dating apps and sentimental relationships. It is defined as the act of stopping your online interactions with another person without any warning and explanation.
Now, you must be wondering: this is about staffing, what is ghosting here? Well, you will be surprised to discover that ghosting is a phenomenon seen in staffing too. In this case, it occurs when a candidate starts an assignment and then just leaves after a few days.
Certainly, ghosting can severely hurt relationships between staffing agencies and their clients. All of this while losing time and resources invested in the sourcing, recruiting, and training of the candidate that left. In other words, it is a major problem.
Unfortunately, we cannot offer you an effective solution to this problem. The most close we can get to one of such kind is by recommending you match your candidate’s expectations. That is to say, you need to make them feel motivated to work in your company.
However, motivation is not always an easy topic to address. Here, knowing how to increase motivation among your remote employees and temporary staff may come in handy.
3.6 Diversity, equity, and inclusion
A diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategy is something many companies should have today. Indeed, many employees will find diversity and inclusion as important factors in the company where they want to work. It is especially essential for employees that suffered discrimination attacks in the past.
Hence, your company must design and implement plans related to the diversity of your workforce. Here, your staffing firm can help you to implement DEI programs and policies. In this way, your business will be more attractive to job seekers.
3.7 Financial uncertainty
You can never know what the future may bring for your business at any level. When it comes to its finances, The COVID-19 pandemic and other global crises left a world with an economically uncertain future. Logically, such uncertainty has an effect on the employees’ decisions about where to work.
The best thing you can do about this issue is to ensure your organization is prepared for any financial setback. After all, a good financial record is also an attractive feature many potential candidates are searching for in their job options today.
4. Where can you find more information about how to deal with staffing issues?
The success of an organization can be achieved in many ways. However, they all are related to knowing how such an organization can deal with several issues along the way. Hence, when it comes to staffing, you must be informed about the top staffing issues your organization can face today.
Dealing with these issues requires the help of people with experience and expertise in the staffing business. In other words, you need the services of a staffing agency. On Connect Staff, we believe in doing meaningful work for you, by providing the staffing services you require today.
Do you have inquiries related to staffing services? Feel free to contact us to obtain more information about how we can help you, by calling us at +971 43 316 688. You can email us at contact@connectstaff.ae, and you will talk to one of our representatives who will answer all your inquiries.
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