Finding it difficult to attract workers to your service industry: we should not be surprised.
1. Service industry employee are disadvantaged in the drive to flexible working.
2. A large pool of workers has left these industries promoted in part to the Covid19 stand down of their employers.
3. Many are overworked and burnt out due to the lack of support staff and team members.
We should not be surprised.
Moving forward it will be difficult to rebuild the workforces in competition with industries that can provide flexible and hybrid work environments.
1. Offering more money could be expensive and may not be the no 1 issue
2. Employees may be wanting more work life balance and flexibility
3. The creation of keeping and rebuilding your team may depend on other matters.

“” ”Great Resignation,” but the authors argue that a better term is the “Great Exploration,” because. If you embrace the exploration with empathy and support, you can position your company and its most valuable resource — your people — for personal and professional renaissances. Their conversations with chief human resource officers whose companies are facilitating this exploration revealed four key themes: They prioritize employee purpose, support flexibility, bring variety and passion to the workday, and create brand ambassadors” Keith Ferrazzi and Mike Clementi HBR contributors to the Harvard Business Review
Rebuilding the employee pool will need a rethink of past practices.

1. Wages on their own may not fix the problem if this chart is correct for Australia as in USA


It could be more about the employee perception of the value of the role.

2. Working as and when the employee likes or from home may not be possible

The service industries need to find its own workable model that will address the need to compete with businesses that can provide a better life balance and working from home opportunities. Look at the USA lagging Health Industry employee rebound lag post pandemic highlighting service industry problems with staff numbers. This phenonium may be consistent across most service industries.

Assuming the business trading times are driven by the customer we need to find a way to provide the service in a model that works for both the employer and employee.

3. Other employee attractions may be key to finding and retaining staff.
a. Being valued
b. Skill and Career advancement opportunities
c. Work atmosphere
d. Team dynamics
e. Interesting job activities
f. Empowerment
Many of these can be cost effective to implement.

To compete we are seeing:
1. Focusing on recruiting from nearby or easy access to transport residents.
2. Exploiting pensioners to their allowable $7,800pa that will not affect their pension.
a. Lobby the government to also allow approved Govt pensioners to work even more.
2. Creating rosters that are providing 3 contagious days off per week for the same total hrs.
a. This will improve life balance of the employees.
b. It may require longer hr 4-day weeks.
3. Job sharing to reduce the number of hours and days employee work.
4. Rostering well in advance to enable employee to plan their social activities.
a. You may need to emphasize that the roster times may need to change
5. Roster split shift to allow child pick up from school.
6. Allow some of the work to be undertaken at home.

Have in place the right technology for employee engagement
1. Easy Roster development and employee notification tools

2. Integrated Rostering and Timekeeping automated Award Interpretation & Payroll.
3. Employee management processes in one.

That’s Inzenius