To Retain Employee Start with Recruiting.

Dion Trieb, SVP, Industrial Staffing, Eastridge

Oftentimes what we've seen in the best and best in class types of organizations is there's real unity between the front line managers and the executive teams. For example, in these organizations where each position there's alignment as far as what the metrics are, what those people do on a day to day basis, so that there's very few disconnects and misunderstandings as far as are people performing well or not performing well. Additionally, I think it is also really critical to understand what is it that your top performers are doing consistently on a day in and day out basis, and how do you replicate that? 

The aftermath of COVID, for example, working from home and hybrid work schedules in a manufacturing environment on a warehouse floor and assembly work. That work can't be done at home. We appreciate the workforce that is willing to go to work every day and have a manufacturing floor and a facility, and we recognize and thank them for that. Whereas historically, that was just a given. And we have to be willing to recognize that it's a different business climate today. And thinking those people, it is almost the simplest way to make your business more effective in that space. There are some things that you can do as it relates to this work from home issue that we're seeing a lot of best in class do as well, which is they're offering some flex schedules there. They're bringing in part time opportunities. They've added additional shifts that allow for someone to work maybe on a less alternatives or a more alternative schedule than what they historically may have done. 

What we've seen best in class do in this space is really go back and do a comprehensive dive on wage wedge analysis, benefits analysis. Career growth tracks progressive opportunities within their organizations schedules. As I mentioned earlier, things like that have really become most critical for world class organizations to retain their workforce and to recruit that workforce that they want to retain because you've just got to be competitive in the market. You've got to be more deliberate and focused. The workforce has evolved and has become more sophisticated as higher expectations. 

We've developed Gate, which is the gateway for attaining technical expertise. And in that program, what we've been able to do is really learn how can we partner with our customers to really assess candidates for are they a good fit? Do they have the manual dexterity to do the job? Do they have the interpersonal relations skills? We spent a comprehensive amount of time with candidates before we place them. It's really run them through this type of an a program to understand are they a good fit for a company, A company B or maybe A company C or sometimes not at all. Yeah, a lot of our customers, what we've we've also adopted has been skill assessments that are specific for them. While they may not go through an exhaustive program like GATE, for example. What they do have is we have some customers where we do some quick one page skill assessments where we're able to assess the candidate to see how do they fit and meet the characteristics that that company is looking for. 

You've got to be visible with your team and you've got to have a. A feedback loop that's positive, that allows people to share your employees and associates to share with you what's going on, to really help understand what are some of the challenges that they're up against, whether it's a piece of technology that's not working appropriately, whether it's somebody that maybe they're struggling with, that's their supervisor, really just opening up the lines of communication, being visible, those leaders that walk the floor, ask questions in a thoughtful way and spend time with the workforce. It goes a long, long way. The more visible we are as leaders, the more thoughtful we are as leaders, we can really offset a lot of problems and challenges that we that are we're faced with on a day to day basis.