When we talk about labor shortages, we should be honest: there aren’t shortages in all areas. It can be challenging to find jobs in a lot of fields. But the one thing that is consistent just about anywhere is that employers are desperate for entry-level employees for service jobs. Restaurants, retail, and other jobs that don’t pay well are hard to fill.
Florida employment attorney David Miklas gave some intelligent tips on filling those jobs on LinkedIn.
You can read this and say, “duh,” but so many businesses ignore this.
You can’t pay bottom-of-the-barrel wages because you could in 2019. Not posting the salary doesn’t make people assume the salary is too high–they guess it’s too low.
I know this advice is painful because business owners struggle with inflation. And restaurants and other small businesses suffered greatly during the shutdowns, many failed, and some are still struggling to recover. Telling employers to up salaries feels like pouring salt into their wounds.
But keep these things in mind:
- If you can’t run your business without staff, you either pay market rates or shut down.
- If you can hire below market rates, these employees will likely quit, or you’ll need to fire them. Think about all that money you spend on training them. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to hire someone you can keep rather than having to hire, train, fire, hire, train, quit, hire, train, quit for ever and ever?
- People talk these days. Gone are the days when you could cow your employees into not talking bout their wages. It’s all out in the open.
- You’re wasting your time interviewing people who wouldn’t take the job if you don’t post your salary ranges.
- Your wages should be honest. Don’t say you’re hiring at $15 an hour and then offer $12.
Take Miklas’ advice, and your business will be better off. For sure.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Any company that hires below the minimum wage of the geographic area is just asking to be closed down. The company should be perfectly clear about what the job duties are and what pay they are offering.
It’s one thing to find entry level employees. It’s a wholly different challenge to retain them. Previously, employers have — wrongfully, in my opinion — treated entry level employees as totally expendable. The workplace climate has now completely changed. There are now 2 jobs for every applicant, not the other way around. I agree that employers need to pay a fair wage, be transparent, and treat their entry level employees with dignity and respect. If people are paid and treated fairly, they tend to stick around. Otherwise, it’s a continuous, expensive — in terms of time, energy and money — revolving door.
We are struggling with this very thing. Our problem is that we are a non-profit trying to help people step out of poverty and our grantors are often very specific about what percentage of the grants can go to employee pay and benefits. That percentage makes us hire people at way less than the market rates, so we are floundering. Only people that feel the calling to help people will accept such wages and even then, it’s tough.