It can be very difficult to find good employees who really want to succeed on the plant floor for an hourly wage and contribute to an awesome working environment. Many employers spend so much time trying to find the “right” type of employee. But what if the type of employee they are searching for isn’t actually the “right” one? It ends up being a waste of time and money.
The biggest mistake employers make when recruiting is searching for employees in too narrow of demographics. Many employers target their recruiting efforts towards young people when, in reality, they could be much more successful if they extended their efforts toward older workers as well. You can be very successful in finding good workers of all ages who prefer part-time work because they wouldn’t feel like they are being overworked. Workforce Institute published a report in which they say 39 percent of hourly employees are under 25 years old, 33 percent are 25-44 years old and a full 28 percent are 45 or older. This goes to show that there is still a large chunk of the workforce that is over most employers’ target recruiting age.
Now that we have broadened our employee search, we need to know how we can recruit them to work for you. Many employers spend too much time and money on the wrong channels for recruiting - such as posting job offers on their own website or going to career fairs. People aren’t always going to find a company’s job offers by going directly to their website and often, they may not come across their booth at a job fair. So how should you go about reaching out to those looking for hourly or part-time jobs?
You need to improve your job description to get more views when people search for jobs on the internet, to make sure you find qualified employees and so that they know every aspect of the job. Think of it like a shopping list for someone on the workforce. Make sure to list the information most important to someone looking for a job. A good way to categorize the best requirements on your job description is CAPS:
These categories will help you to optimize your employee search and filter out those that aren’t worth going through the hiring process.
Another way of finding good employees is to go to high schools and offer apprenticeships. Giving students who are interested in trades the opportunity to learn some new things while making some money is a great way to set up future quality employees. Ideally, they will stay after graduating and hopefully for a long time after starting full-time.
Finally, one of the best ways to find good employees is through current or past employee referrals (55% of industry employees). This can also stem into keeping your current employees by incentivizing this behavior.
Quality employees will improve your work environment in many ways. Good employees who are enthusiastic about their job will have less downtime and will work more efficiently. There will also be a lower cost per hire when these employees decide to stay. This reduces employee turnover and increases profitability.
After finding the right employees for your laundry, we want to know how to keep them around for as long as possible. One of the biggest problems for employers in this industry is that they have a hard time keeping employees around. This increases their employee turnover and costs of hiring/training. Keeping employees happy and around for the long run will greatly reduce both of these. Here are some tips provided by TRSA on retaining employees in your laundry:
These are only few of the many ways you can improve on retaining your employees. Overall, employee retention begins with management. They will not stay around long with poor management. We will learn more about what you can do to find and train good managers in the next lesson.
