Imagine for a moment that you are the CEO of a large firm that just won a multi million dollar contract and you now have enough work to keep thousands of people busy for at least two years. Unfortunately, you are severely understaffed to meet this challenge and will need to go on a hiring binge. You have numerous positions to fill but your business model requires that you hire subcontractors for much of the work. The other challenge you are facing is that there is already a job or shortage in your industry and you can only pay a wage that is slightly lower than the going market rate. With lower wages not being a real selling point what are some ways you can fill the ranks without abandoning your labor cost structure? Even if this is not your current situation this is a great exercise for business owners and managers because we all need to acknowledge that if we only have higher wages keeping our people with us then it will be easy for someone else to come along and entice them away. The way to keep workers is to think of your company as Velcro and the more reasons or benefits there are to working with you the more difficult it will be for another employer to tear them away. (Keep in mind that there are times when you really need to be paying higher wages to the workforce.) In 1914 Henry Ford of Ford Motor Company raised the wages of his workforce to about double the industry standard and he did it to keep people from quitting. (His yearly employee turn over at the time was almost 40,000 new hires to keep 13,000 workers on the job.) Henry had enough money to provide one big hook to keep employees from quitting and that one hook was a big bump in wages, and it worked. But most companies don’t have the kind of profits Ford did and must provide many more reasons for workers to stay with them. Let’s face it, the down time, retraining and catch up time of replacing a worker is costly to any business. One other benefit that large corporations had in the nineteen hundreds, that most of today’s businesses don’t have, was long term employment and retirement. Fortunately, most workers of today know that it is unrealistic to expect a permanent job, but they are looking for something else of equal or greater value. That something of greater value is the opportunity for personal and professional development that will make them more and more employable when it is time to move on. This is a big hook in the velcro that can help keep workers engaged and loyal in todays work environment. Often times what attracts workers to a company from the outside is totally different than what will keep them attracted once they are on the inside working for the company. Just knowing that the company cares, can be trusted and is committed to the success of the team are great hooks in the velcro that will keep people engaged and satisfied with their jobs above and beyond just a higher wage. What makes your work environment attractive to workers outside of a job and wages?
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