The “Battle” For Hourly Workers — Part One

Finding, hiring and keeping hourly workers can be a challenge.

A few facts:

• Just under 60% of the U.S. workforce are hourly workers.

• Hourly workers in many areas change jobs frequently.

• The cost of this frequent job change can be considerable to the employer.

• More and more companies, like Uber and Lyft, are coming into the hourly worker market and creating more competition.

• At this time — August 2019 — there are more job openings than there are people applying for jobs. This creates even more competition.

What to do?

In this tip, Part One, we’ll discuss finding hourly workers. You may be doing some or even all of the following, but let’s take a fresh look at what you can do to find hourly workers:

• Get your company out there on the job boards. Here’s a good web site that lists the most used job boards.

You don’t have to be on all of them, but if you can keep a steady message going on a few of these, that will help.

• Ask your current employees to refer people they know. You could even offer an incentive for this. For example, for every referral that we hire that stays for X number of weeks (or months) the employee gets a $25 or $50 Amazon gift card. Or $100 to spend at a fancy restaurant which will likely be remembered for some time. An incentive that is affordable and IS an actual incentive could work well for you.

• Of course, place an ad or two (or more) in local newspapers and magazines.

• Put up job posters in your neighborhood. A variety of local stores support this kind of thing. Every so often go and visit these store owners and spend a little time  — each time — getting to know them. They will likely to keep your job offers up there longer than others.

• Check-in with your local community colleges. Are any of them having job fairs? If so, see what’s involved in having your company represented there?

• Are there career counselors at these community colleges or even local high schools that you could meet? Let them know you have jobs available. Put together a nice job info sheet that you can get printed off and that you could leave for them. If that’s too much for them, then leave at least your business card(s).

The basic idea here is to get your company’s name and its job needs out there where people may be looking for this and, while you’re at it, throw in a little creativeness and promote yourself where people may not be looking for a job offer.

The more points of communication that exist in your area promoting your company, the more likely you’ll have people reaching back to you, applying for that job you need filled.