If you’re struggling to find the best talent for your business this could make you a more attractive workplace.
The skills shortage in the hospitality industry has become a major issue across Australia. A Deloitte 2016 industry report found that more than 38,000 chefs positions need to be filled; an already high number that’s predicted to increase to 123,000 by 2020.
Given this shortfall, venues must strive to become employers-of-choice if they are going to attract the best talent.
Employers-of-choice are businesses considered to be great places to work. To become one a business must improve how it is perceived as an employer (its "employer brand"). This can be gauged by employer benefits such as career development opportunities, industry-recognised training, staff discounts and workplace culture.
But strengthening your employer brand isn’t about adding or improving as many employee benefits as a business can. It requires time, strategic nous and a lot of self-promotion. Here is a four-step guide to help you out.
Assess your business. This will help you identify the employee benefits you should focus on.
Evaluation
Re-visit your business goals and objectives and look at how effective your team is at achieving these. This includes reviewing staff performances, retention rates, absenteeism and related inter-staff issues.
Feedback
Ask your staff members for feedback. They’re the ones best placed to talk about what it’s like to work at your venue. Ask them what they enjoy about work and how it could be improved. And look at feedback from any past exit interviews.
Research
Look externally for guidance, especially if you are new to the industry. Speak to industry contacts, read up on relevant industry research and analyse your competitors, especially those considered industry leaders.
Once you have identified some focus areas start planning changes.
Segmentation
What one person thinks about an employee benefit doesn’t necessarily reflect the feelings of the entire staff. For example: young employees may not think flexitime is as important as staff members with children do. Therefore it's important to segment preferences and plan around them accordingly.
Prioritise
You’ll struggle to do everything for everyone all at once, so you need to prioritise your efforts. Tackle this by relating back to you business objectives and consider any particular problem areas that you believe are significantly affecting your employer brand.
Competitive advantage
What can you offer your employees that no one else is doing? Look at adopting what is considered industry best practice and then add a little icing on the cake to make your workplace stand out.
Get started with your new initiatives, taking note of the following:
Leadership
No matter what your approach, striving to be a better leader is crucial to becoming an employer-of-choice; no other person has as direct an influence as you. Here’s an article on how to be go about it, by The Plato Project’s Omar de Silva.
Engagement
To get the best outcome, encourage your employees, either directly or indirectly, to engage with your strategic initiatives. For example: if you introduce a workplace yoga program, run it during working hours. Or if you’re looking to improve morale, host your monthly meetings at a nearby bar.
Assessment
It’s important to regularly assess how effective your initiatives are. Are retention levels improving? Is productivity increasing? Is absenteeism dropping? Give your strategies time, but you may need to tweak some of your plans if they aren’t having a positive effect. And ask your employees for feedback.
Once you have created a desirable workplace you need to make sure jobseekers know about it. Some of this will happen naturally through word of mouth but you should also promote it. This is “employer branding”.
Marketing channels
Use channels such as your website, videos, blogs and social media to show potential employees what it’s like to work at your business. The channel you use and the content you promote will depend on the initiatives and roles you have to offer.
Continuation
Venues should engage in employer branding as a long-term thing; forming and changing perceptions is something that takes time and reinforcement.
Review
Evaluate your employer branding. The best measure to use is the quality and quantity of job applications you receive. And when you interview candidates ask them why they want to work at your venue.
