FEBRUARY 2022
Secrets to Overcoming Labor & Hiring Pitfalls
An HR roundtable explored a variety of labor challenges, including attendance, retention and termination best practices. The session featured Lina Montes, Cindy Shean, Carly Taylor, and Beatrice Vasquez. It was moderated by Ralph Rupert. Here are some of the key takeaways from that event:
Companies are paying higher wages
With labor shortages, employees have more job opportunities than ever before, so they can be more selective. One observer noted that given the wild lumber and pallet price increases over the last year, it has been much easier than in the past to pass along labor cost increases to customers.
Quote: “It is a challenge and you need to pay your people more. You need to offer more. That’s the only way you can retain them.”
Companies are looking for ways to boost attendance
Participants offered several ideas about how to aid retention beyond wage increases. Some companies use point systems, while others offer higher wages to employees with good attendance numbers. Some companies are finding neither incentives nor disciplinary action to be effective for improving attendance. Some companies are including a number of personal discretionary days into their absenteeism programs to help employees deal with family emergencies and similar situations without tarnishing their attendance records.
One idea shared is to have a company store where attendance is tied to receiving rewards from a company store.
Quote: “About a year ago we implemented an attendance store, which has great products like jackets and sweats and just really nice stuff. But the only way you can get it is through attendance. And so that's been really big for everybody. They get excited, they know what so and so's wearing that or we have some company barbecues and we'll lay all the stuff and the wives are kicking the husbands out of bed in the morning because they want the new sweatshirt that just came out. So that's been fairly successful for us. So there's kind of a game between them to see who can have the most you can get to the new jacket quickest and it's been kind of a fun way to encourage attendance."