In the aftermath of COVID-19, workforce numbers haven’t rebounded as vigorously as many had hoped. In fact, there are 1.7 million fewer Americans working today than there were in February 2020.1 Contributing factors for this shortage of workers include early retirements, long COVID, and shifting priorities around work-life balance. It’s clear that innovative solutions are needed to attract and retain new workers to fill today’s nearly 10 million job vacancies.2
Industries hit hardest by the labor and worker shortage include food service and hospitality, retail, manufacturing, transportation, and health care—in large part because they employ more hourly, frontline workers who have consistently higher than average quit rates.3 As a result, organizations whose businesses depend on large hourly workforces are experiencing a critical lack of employees but continue to have problems finding them, because many of these workers are instead moving to gig-type jobs or exiting the workforce altogether.
What can businesses do to navigate this situation? Addressing the issues across industries and worker types associated with today’s labor crunch might seem complicated at first glance. But there are some effective creative strategies that organizations can implement to help smooth the path forward.
Reskill or upskill existing employees
In times of economic uncertainty, organizations must do all they can to stay competitive and boost their bottom lines. A logical first step is to optimize existing talent to develop the skills the business needs now and will need to be successful in the future—and that means implementing reskilling and upskilling programs. The good news is that it isn't necessary to have an enterprise-size budget in order to make this happen.
First, leaders should Identify skill gaps in a company’s new business model to determine exactly how many and which employees will need reskilling or upskilling. Next, they’ll need to assess and update the organization’s existing training and development programs to ensure that those programs can deliver the right types of learning for the business’s evolving needs.
Building learning into the work culture creates an environment in which people are encouraged to learn. This not only makes them more effective in their roles but also improves their personal and professional development. With their capabilities for workforce assessment, learning and collaboration, and performance measurement, human capital management (HCM) technology solutions often already include the tools needed to implement successful reskilling and upskilling efforts,
Implement flexible scheduling
The pandemic forever changed the concept of the traditional 9-to-5 job, which has now given way to flexible scheduling. Giving employees more control over their work schedules with options such as remote work, hybrid work, and nontraditional shift schedules has been shown to make them happier and more productive and engaged at work and less prone to burnout and stress. Offering flexible scheduling can help organizations address today’s shortage of workers by giving them an edge when it comes to attracting new talent—and making it part of the company culture can give current employees a strong incentive to stay.
Providing employees with more control over their schedules also helps them better balance both their personal and professional lives, ensuring the highest levels of productivity. Modern scheduling technology enables organizations to take employees’ needs and output into account more effectively and create a more agile workforce to better meet customer demand.
Create an employer-educator partnership
One reason why many jobs remain unfilled today is because employers can’t find workers with the necessary levels of education and training. Middle-skills workers—“those with less than a four-year college education but more than a high school diploma”—currently make up nearly two-thirds of the US workforce over age 25.4 Due to the rapid growth of technology, community colleges often struggle to keep their curriculums up to speed with continually evolving workplace needs. Consequently, those graduates are finding themselves unprepared for the realities of employer requirements, while employers complain that they can’t find the quantity, quality, and diversity of talent they need.
Closing this gap lies in partnerships between business and community college leaders to offer training and education that better meets current industry needs. This can take many forms, but top solutions include working together to create curricula, dedicating staff time to building employer-college relationships, and collecting and sharing data to monitor and improve the supply and demand of local talent. These solutions aren’t difficult or expensive to implement but require an investment of time and effort in building mutually beneficial partnerships.
Create a culture in which employees want to work—and stay
Improving workplace culture is one of the best ways for a business to find and keep good employees. After all, who doesn’t want to work at an organization where they feel supported and valued every day? By making changes in the following areas, companies can start building that culture now:
- Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEI&B). DEI&B initiatives aren’t just good for ensuring that employees can be their true selves at work—they have clear business benefits as well: recent research found that organizations that embrace DEI&B significantly outperform organizations that don’t.5 Regardless of its size or budget, a company can start by setting goals and creating a plan for building initiatives and programs to support its DEI&B goals based on the core value of belonging.
- Autonomy. Promoting employee autonomy is another good way to provide the kind of environment that empowers employees to work how they want and in ways that can benefit both them and the company. This kind of self-governing approach improves engagement and job satisfaction and decreases absenteeism—and can be achieved with basic changes to culture and policies.
- Purpose. Building connections to employees’ purpose at work is essential to helping them align with the organization’s mission and their roles in fulfilling it. This alignment boosts engagement and job satisfaction, which in turn increases business success. Leaders can help their employees find their purpose by clearly and consistently communicating company goals, recognizing how their work contributes to everyone’s success, and providing learning opportunities for continual growth.
Actively solicit and implement employee feedback
Lastly—and perhaps most simply—organizations are more likely to attract talented employees and keep them simply by listening to them. Candidate and employee feedback is invaluable to employers because it sheds light on what is (and isn’t) working in recruitment and work experiences. Gathering feedback via such channels as experience and engagement surveys and one-on-one meetings—and then acting on it—is a relatively easy way to ensure higher morale and retention.
1 Stephanie Ferguson and Isabella Lucy. 2023. “America Works Data Center.” U.S. Chamber of Commerce website, November 14, www.uschamber.com/workforce/america-works-data-center.
2 Ibid.
3 Stephanie Ferguson and Makinizi Hoover. 2023. “Understanding America’s Labor Shortage: The Most Impacted Industries.” U.S. Chamber of Commerce website, November 14, www.uschamber.com/workforce/understanding-americas-labor-shortage-the-most-impacted-industries.
4 Joseph Fuller and Manjari Raman. 2023. “The Employer-Educator Partnership That Can Fill U.S. Jobs.” Harvard Business Review website, October 3, hbr.org/2023/10/the-employer-educator-partnership-that-can-fill-u-s-jobs.
5 Sundiatu Dixon-Fyle et al. 2020. “Diversity Wins: How Inclusion Matters.” McKinsey website, May 19, www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters.