Besides worrying about OSHA knocking on your door, which we discussed in the last blog, what else keeps employers up at night?

1. Not being able to attract and hire good employees. Studies have shown that, out of 100 employees, 92 will come to work every day, do their best, follow the rules, and play well with others. The other 8 have attendance issues, work harder to get out of work than to do it, always have a beef with one employee or another, and cause management 90% of their headaches. If your percentage is comparable (8 out of every 10 employees are “good kids”), then you are an average employer and should be able to attract good employees. If your percentage is higher, the 92%ers may not have much interest in coming to work for you. Good employees don’t want to work with the 8%ers. Figure out your ratio to determine how easy or hard it will be to replace those 8%ers.
2. Applicants not having the critical skills necessary. Employers are not only looking for employees who can read, write, add, and subtract at an acceptable level, they also want employees who will work cooperatively for and with others. In a retail environment, employees who are on their Smart phones when customers are on the other side of the counter or who are involved in verbal altercations with their co-workers in front of the customers are not providing any level of customer service. Core service values need to be taught if an employer wants his customers to experience superb customer service each time they walk in the door.
3. Workforce planning. It is always a struggle to balance the hours of work needed to produce the desired result, whether it is a product or a service. In the manufacturing world, we used to compare the cost and amount of overtime needed to meet production demands with the cost of bringing on and training up additional employees. If you have employees and more than one position in your organization, do you post all open positions, letting employees have the opportunity to advance through the ranks? Are you providing the training (both internal and external) that your employees need to succeed in their current positions, as well as positions that are another step up on your food chain? Do you offer cross-training opportunities? Do you have succession planning in place for your key positions? Do you have your 3-5 year plan defined with your workforce requirements? If you don’t have a system to “home grow” the industry-specific skills that you need, you are not utilizing your most important resource, your employees.

 

If these issues are keeping you up at night, let HR Compliance 101, LLC help you get better sleep by helping you find solutions.