Over the past couple of years, there’s been a marked shift toward remote and flexible work that’s now become an expectation for many workers. Job seekers who left their roles as part of the Great Resignation found substantially more opportunities, also helped by a decrease in unemployment. For hiring teams, that increased competition means it’s more important than ever to stand out from the pack. It’s not just enough to share responsibilities and requirements; recruiters need to successfully convey their team's mission, source creatively, transparently share benefits, personalize outreach, and be extra responsive.
So much has happened in the last two years. Employees' expectations have gone through multiple iterations and continue to evolve. As a business owner, it is a challenge to keep a finger on the pulse of how to best support employees and provide the ideal working environment to keep them happy and healthy. Despite the challenges, everyone will benefit in the long run from the shake-up in workplace expectations because, ultimately, we will find the best way to support a productive and happy workforce for years to come.
As candidates seek flexible, high-paying job opportunities, they may take other opportunities. If you wait too long to follow up with an interview or offer, they might not accept. After the interview, be clear where you stand with a candidate and when they can expect to hear from you. If you’re interested in a particular candidate, let them know about your intentions to hire them as soon as you can.
One of the biggest hiring challenges caused by the Great Resignation has been navigating which online channels are best for displaying job postings. Marketing and advertising has become a major part of hiring and recruiting. Gone are the days of simply using a "Careers" page on your business website. Businesses need to be investing in marketing and advertising for job postings in order to build a diverse pool of candidates. This means consistently posting about job openings on social media, and using networking platforms like LinkedIn to your advantage. The Great Resignation was spawned out of workers wanting more autonomy from their careers, so businesses are going to have to work a little harder to procure quality candidates.
Finding qualified talent willing to show up in a workplace setting. More and more qualified hires are less willing to commute to work, even for the higher pay grade if they can take a lesser amount and work remotely. Depending on the industry, you may or may not be able to afford the luxury of remote work for your employees. Therefore, incentivizing hires with perks, bonuses and an engaging atmosphere is vital to hiring, retaining, and advancing talent in today's market. Alternatively, you can even offer to help out with a gas stipend or bus/train fare costs which will surely be appreciated.
Data Scientist, Digital Marketing & Leadership Consultant for Startups at Consorte Marketing
Answered 4 years ago
Prior to the Great Resignation, many people were content with going to work every day in order to pay their bills. During the COVID lockdowns and other changes to the way we live, many of us accepted our mortality. Time is far more valuable than money, and as workers realized this, many of them quit their jobs. If you want to hire people today, you have to show them that they will be part of something greater than themselves.
With the Great Resignation, companies need to adopt better work-life balance policies, offering employees flextime, hybrid work plans, home office, and remote development and learning opportunities. Hiring managers and recruiters must design job positions around these once called 'benefits', which are now considered a must by many workers. The shift to a hybrid workplace must be carefully thought out in order to ensure employee engagement and communication.
The Great Resignation has partly been due to a number of employees switching careers in order to find more fulfilling work–and that’s led to a difficult puzzle for many hiring managers. It’s sometimes hard to project how applicants who have a great deal of success in experience in one field will translate over to another. At the same time, it’s hard to evaluate how they compare to another applicant who has had less overall success but has more relevant experience. It's a certainly a challenge, and in the end, it requires a strong understanding of the job you’re hiring for and all its prerequisite needs.
Businesses are struggling to run new employees through standard onboarding and provide thorough training for their new position. Given the worker shortage, many businesses need employees to start working immediately, taking away time that normally would have been allotted for proper training. Due to experienced workers leaving companies on short notice, many businesses don't have employees available to assist with training and onboarding, leaving new employees to fend for themselves in their new workplace. This reduces employee retention rates and increases the likelihood of losing a new hire, costing money and time as hiring managers search for another replacement.
The great resignation was indeed bad news for the country. One major hiring challenge brought by it is that companies are losing the most talented workforce to foreign countries. There is a major decline in the country’s human resources. Whereas, the demand for human capital is still on the rise. Those who are left are not always the right fit, leading to further problems in a company’s operations. However, this is only one challenge among many that the country is facing because of the great resignation.
Not hiring the right candidate is one of the biggest hiring challenges brought on by The Great Resignation. Employers are finding it difficult to fill positions as they are having a hard time finding candidates who are skilled and have the necessary experience. This is a problem that is likely to get worse as the economy improves and more employees start quitting their jobs. Finding the right candidate for the job is not always easy, especially because there are many other companies that are competing for the same candidates. Employers have to work hard to convince the best available candidates to work for them.
The Great Resignation has created a second labor force that is ready to take up the first job that comes its way. This has forced companies to be selective about who they hire. In fact, a majority of the companies are not willing to hire anyone without prior experience. If a company hires a candidate without prior experience, it makes sense to pay them a salary that is in accordance with that candidate’s existing skill level. This is why most companies are looking to hire candidates that are already experts in their field or have 5+ years of experience.
There's an increased demand for skilled professionals. This is also a challenge due to the increasing demand for technology-based jobs. As a result, companies are struggling to find talented employees who have the necessary skills and knowledge. The shortage of qualified candidates also poses a major challenge, as there are not enough people who meet the required criteria. This can be especially problematic in fields such as engineering and sciences, where companies are trying to fill multiple positions.
One of the most significant challenges to come out of the Great Resignation is good-faith negotiations between managers and new hires or team members. One of the most illuminating parts of the Great Resignation is just how many bad employers are out there. Manipulative managers and rigid employers have given many employees and job seekers a fair amount of suspicion when it comes to engaging with potential employees. This makes it hard to negotiate with new hires or current employees, because they're not always forthcoming with information regarding their needs. There needs to be an honest conversation between employers and employees when negotiations happen, but a history of bad behavior by a number of business leaders have made these negotiations difficult. However, I don't think this is a permanent challenge, and as bargaining power increases among workers, these negotiations will improve over time, eventually becoming more productive in the end.
Communication and high expectations are the main causes of burnout in any career or industry. As "The Great Resignation" carries on, workers are feeling more emotionally drained than previously due to their homes turning into remote office environments, and they're unable to separate work and their homelife. Employees are working until late hours of the night due to tight deadlines and pressure from upper management. Signs of burnout are constant mistakes in their workload, slow response times, and employees who are the first and last to leave in the office. Supervisors need to keep communication and encouragement levels high, and set clear expectations for workers in the hiring process. Let them know that they can slow down, and you need them to sacrifice their mental health for their position. Offer support and guidance especially in the beginning stages.
The Great Resignation caused several insider attacks and amplified organizational risk, the biggest hiring challenge. Employers can’t make pricey mistakes on hiring those that can threaten the company. Approximately 59% of the companies experienced one more insider attack over the past 12 months. There’s also the considerable fact that some insider threats are much more inattentive than malicious ones. For example, employees use numerous applications, which can boost password fatigue. Instead, they use hackable passwords that are preserved in unsecured locations. After they resign, these threats could leave the company vulnerable to attack.
After seeing that a work-from-home setup is possible during the pandemic, this has now become a high deciding factor during the hiring process. Workers who find this setup more convenient are opting for companies that can leverage this advantage versus those who can’t accommodate this preference. This creates a big hiring challenge for a company where WFH is not ideal because they have difficulty attracting employees, which forces their hand to compensate with other benefits.
As the job market is slowly becoming more and more candidate-centric, finding the right person for the job is becoming increasingly difficult for recruiters. Many of the job portals that recruiters previously saw great results with are now failing to yield the same results. The main reason behind this is that candidates are gravitating toward their personal network and niche forums over traditional job portals in hopes of finding an opportunity that not only meets their skillset but their personal preferences too. To keep up with this shift, organizations will have to leverage their own business connections and build a strong employer brand to attract and retain talent.
One of the things people are wanting now is more flexibility in work hours and the ability to work from home. Because of the pandemic, people have realized the benefits of working from home and are leaving jobs that are requiring them to return to the office in order to find a new job where they can work from home. If you want to overcome this challenge, consider if your company can allow employees to work from home or come into the office only as needed.
Absolutely, hands down, the biggest challenge brought on by the Great Resignation would have to be finding employees who are willing to report into an office every day. It is increasingly difficult to find those willing to make that commitment. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, companies were forced to leave their offices and displace their workforces. What was realized is that in most cases productivity did not drop. In many cases it actually increased. Employees (and employers if they're being honest) realized that forcing people into an office for 8+ hours a day may no longer be the most productive model. Appealing to the modern worker has to include at a minimum, an hybrid option, where an employee reports into an office for 2-3 days a week, and can work from home 2-3 days a week. Without that you'll be competing for the lower end talent in a career field.