Staff shortages and high workload: Recruitment and… Efficiency

It will come as no surprise to you, but the labour market is in complete chaos. Every profession is currently struggling with staff shortages and doing everything possible to recruit new people. As a result, many companies are placing enormous workload pressure on their current staff, and revenue fails to grow further.

Starting with a careers website

Many companies start by building a careers website or page. These are currently popping up everywhere. They get filled with (company) videos, trendy copy, decent visuals and a form. So far that doesn't sound wrong, because the website has everything a careers website should have… Or does it?

Fishing in the same pond

Aren't we all currently fishing in the same pond? As mentioned, every profession is dealing with staff shortages, which makes switching to a different profession an easy step. The important point here is that we're all focused on attracting new staff, while forgetting the staff we already have. Because of the shortage of people, the pressure on companies is often high, which in turn leads to higher absenteeism and lower productivity. Research shows that 20% of working people in the Netherlands experience workload pressure.

Compensating for workload

As the research also indicates, a sense of connection with colleagues is a factor that can help compensate for a high workload. But how long can you keep that up? A high workload is the number one reason people give for leaving. But let's not forget the other reasons, such as: too few opportunities for growth, salary and how the work is organised. In short, this puts your own staff at risk too. How can you fill your 50 vacancies if your company keeps losing people?

The approach to keep growing

It should be clear that the focus shouldn't only be on recruiting new staff, but just as much on your current staff. What's the point of hiring new people if your current staff are leaving through the back door? They are, after all, the current driving force behind your success.

Inbound marketing is widely used to generate leads in the B2B sector, so why isn't it used to attract new staff? Personal, two-way engagement is a hugely important factor here. 45.6% of job seekers are latent job seekers. These are people who are open to a new job but aren't actively looking. So when visitors land on your careers website, you need to convince them with the right content. Think of a downloadable salary scale, a chatbot where they can ask all their questions, or simply getting a feel for the atmosphere through a good company video. In short, the right content should be available for every approach, to prompt the desired action.

Right now, it's more important than ever to look after your staff. If we look at the process of attracting and retaining leads and customers, it's no different from recruiting and hiring applicants and current staff. As mentioned, you can bring in as many leads or applicants as you like at the front, but if the back door is wide open, your current staff can easily walk out. So it's important to keep that back door firmly shut. If you have a clear picture of which (commercial) processes exist within your company, you can apply automation and optimisation. A well automated process reduces the burden of repetitive tasks and frees up more time for your current staff to focus on other things. This can lead to increased revenue, without hiring anyone at all. Sometimes small improvements or automations can lead to major successes.

We can't say it often enough: think of your current staff first. The idea is simple: without good people, no good strategy. Without a good strategy, no good execution. And without good execution, no cash. And yes, finally: without cash, no good people. It's a reinforcing flywheel. As an employer, you want to make sure your employees don't just walk out the door. One way to do that is by giving them attention. We've obviously taken some hard knocks from Covid-19, but no organisation has ever been worse off for paying attention to its employees. In an overstretched labour market, making little effort to retain your employees is not exactly a smart strategy. That's why talent management should be central to the organisation. Your employees have different talents, some clearly visible, some less so. A talent management programme gives you, as an employer, insight into the talents within your organisation. That way, you can deploy employees in areas that energise them. An added benefit is that this limits energy loss within your organisation as much as possible. Talent-driven working contributes to employees' happiness at work.

Don't rush into recruiting without a strategy

It's actually strange that we all go fishing in the pond before checking how many fish are left in it. In theory, it's extremely important to look at internal processes and current employee satisfaction, but in reality, many companies now spend a lot of money on expensive careers websites and high recruitment costs. This is often accompanied by little to no direct result. The workload then increases again… Anyway, you get our point.

Wouldn't it be great if all of the above points were properly resolved? Interested? Book a no-obligation meeting.