How are businesses coping with labor shortages?
You’ve seen the signs: “Help Wanted!” or “Hiring Now!”
The labor market’s in a twist right now: a record number of job openings, but employers complain — not nearly enough job-seekers who want them.
As a result, employers are pulling out all the stops to draw workers in. Hiring incentives include boosting starting pay, giving current workers raises to keep them and offering bonuses and more flexibility.
Still, Anne Petrik at executive-coaching firm Vistage says in a recent survey, 2/3 of small and mid-sized businesses complained that “hiring challenges are affecting the ability of their organization to operate at full capacity, and that’s actually a five-point increase since June.”
She said a lot of those businesses are investing in technology since they can’t find the workers they need.
“There’s chat-bots that can replace customer service, there’s so many different applications,” she said.
And, businesses are changing their operations, said economist Robert Frick at Navy Federal Credit Union, to get the work done — with fewer people.
“A lot of employers are saying, ‘To heck with this. We’re going to offshore jobs, automate, we’re going to go more online,” he said, adding that this transition will be good for skilled workers, whose wages go up, and not so good for workers who lose their jobs to the machines.
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