\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to learn to attract and recruit people in new ways. A lot of that has to do with flexibility because the gig economy offers that,\u201d says Clayton Krueger, Director of Marketing and Communication for Farelli\u2019s Pizza in Washington state.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/theadapters.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Adapters-\u2013-Tips-Takes-300x300.png\")
<\/h2>\n
Instead of \u201cfun staff events,\u201d and promotional opportunities by \u201cshadowing a manager\u201d how about:<\/p>\n
- \n
- More flex time and flexible schedules, job sharing<\/li>\n
- Bonus structures and profit sharing \u2013 tips are not the answer!<\/li>\n
- Expanding your delivery and Take-out business, rather than chucking them now that the doors are open<\/li>\n
- Basic affordable health benefits<\/li>\n
- Child care supplements<\/li>\n
- Assistance with transportation \u2013 bus pass supplement, maybe even \u201chere\u2019s a company owned scooter!\u201d if you work within a certain distance from the facility<\/li>\n
- More emphasis on social\/community consciousness<\/li>\n
- Assistance with upskilling<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Hotels have been forced to accept some degree of \u201camenity creep\u201d to keep their guests happy and loyal \u2013 maybe we need to consider our employees and their \u201cwants\u201d in the same light.
Workers are getting creative about their working situations. Are you getting equally creative about how you attract and retain your staff?<\/p>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pre-pandemic, \u201cJena\u201d worked fulltime as a server in a mid-sized restaurant in the suburbs of Houston, Texas. Tips didn\u2019t always cover the bills, so she supplemented her income by tutoring …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":1316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"Pre-pandemic, \u201cJena\u201d worked fulltime as a server in a mid-sized restaurant in the suburbs of Houston, Texas. Tips didn\u2019t always cover the bills, so she supplemented her income by tutoring grade school students in math in her free time.\r\n\r\nThen came COVID-19 and the lockdowns. The restaurant closed, then re-opened, then closed, again. Things are up and running again now in Texas. Jena could go back to work in the restaurant, but the pandemic-created employment uncertainty led her to re-think her situation. By the time the restaurant had really re-opened, Jena had created a new work life for herself.\r\n\r\nThere were some unemployment benefits, so Jena didn\u2019t face some of the hardships that others, especially in the lower-paying, or \u201ccan\u2019t do my job from home\u201d sectors had to deal with. The stimulus payments also made a big difference. Jena used a portion of hers to buy a new computer, upgrade her broadband package, and invest in resources to upskill her abilities as a tutor \u2013 something she could do remotely, that paid more per hour and with more predictability than her server position, and had the added attraction of providing a real sense of purpose, of doing \u201csomething good.\u201d It also gave her the flexibility to finally take that Pilates class, and take care of some around-the-house projects that never seemed to get done.\r\n\r\nBut her new-found entrepreneurial endeavour was still missing something \u2013 personal interaction. So Jena pivoted again, and took a part-time position in the local grocery store, just a 5-minute bike-ride from her home. Due to burnout, concern over close-contact work and other factors, grocery stores have lost thousands of workers \u2013 about 49,000! In April, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Jena offered her customer service skills and her ability to work in a fast-paced environment to her new employer.\r\n\r\n\u201cStill pays better than tips, lots of customer interaction, pretty flexible shifts, and I work just enough hours to be eligible for basic health benefits \u2013 something I did not have as an employee of the restaurant.\u201d\r\n\r\nNot long after she started working at the grocery store, Jena recruited a former co-worker. \u201cIsmael\u201d had been a busboy at the restaurant. Not confident in his English communication skills, Ismael was struggling to find a new job during the lockdowns. With Jena\u2019s recommendation, he was hired as a stocker and warehouse worker \u2013 where he, too, earned more and was eligible for benefits.\r\n\r\nJena\u2019s and Ismael\u2019s stories are echoed around the world, as employees whose main job functions couldn\u2019t be carried out from home gave thought to what\u2019s next for them in the working world. If employers, especially in Travel, Tourism and Hospitality, think that their furloughed or laid-off staff have just been waiting for their doors to re-open, those employers could be in a world of hurt as global COVID restrictions ease.\r\nThe U.S. April Jobs Report came as something of a shock. Dow Jones estimates had been for one million new jobs. The Administration, many economists, and many employers expected that American workers would flood back to their previous positions. The numbers show that did not happen, with nonfarm payroll only adding 266,000 jobs, and the numbers from March revised downward by 146,000.\r\n\r\n Staff shortages in all sectors of Hospitality are suddenly the \u201ctopic du jour\u201d and a worry for businesses trying to recover from months of little or no revenue. Some employers \u2013 at least in the U.S. - are blaming the extension of unemployment benefits, but workers like Jena, Ismael, and others aren\u2019t the exception, according to numerous industry surveys and studies.\r\n\r\nAs reporter Heather Long wrote in the Washington Post on May 7, \u201cthere is a great reassessment going on in the U.S. economy\u2026at the most basic level, people are still hesitant to return to work until they are fully vaccinated, children are back in school and day care full time. For example, all the job gains in April went to men. The number of women employed or looking for work fell by 64,000 \u2013 a reminder that child-care issues are still in play.\u201d [Going to talk about Women-and-Work some more, soon, so stay in touch with The Adapters.net]\r\n\r\nWhile employers were struggling to stay afloat and scrambling to invent Work-From-Home policies, procedures and logistics, many employees, like Jena, had the time to re-evaluate what they do, what they want to do and how they want to do it. Lockdowns also gave folks time to reconnect with family, and many are unwilling to go back to a situation of missed family occasions or exhausting schedules, juggling work and family. A Pew Research Center survey supported this theory. \r\n\r\nThe Pew Research Center FactTank publication from February found that 66 percent of the unemployed had \u201cseriously considered\u201d changing their field of work, a far greater percentage than during the Great Recession. TT&H workers like Jena and Ismael were finding higher-paying jobs elsewhere \u2013 often offering more stability and less vulnerable to this pandemic or the next one that may be on the horizon. \r\n\r\nFactors keeping employees from your jobs:\r\n\r\nFear factor \u2013 safety for themselves or vulnerable family members\r\nLack of child care\r\nVulnerability in the industry to future layoffs and pandemic effects\r\nBetter pay\/benefits\/hours and working conditions\r\n\u201cIf I can\u2019t work from home, I would rather work closer to home and family support\u201d\r\nExposure to \u201cgig\u201d work - opening of new opportunities and flexibility\r\nIn countries like the U.S. without public, or affordable healthcare systems, access to affordable health benefits is a major concern\r\nExtension of Unemployment Benefits \u2013 chance for employees to consider options [interesting side note = less jobs were lost in the European Union countries than in the U.S. as the EU focused more on a number of varied job retention schemes, while the U.S. relied on stimulus money and unemployment benefits.]\r\n\r\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to have to learn to attract and recruit people in new ways. A lot of that has to do with flexibility because the gig economy offers that,\u201d says Clayton Krueger, Director of Marketing and Communication for Farelli\u2019s Pizza in Washington state.\r\nTips and Takes\r\nInstead of \u201cfun staff events,\u201d and promotional opportunities by \u201cshadowing a manager\u201d how about:\r\n\u2022\tMore flex time and flexible schedules, job sharing\r\n\u2022\tBonus structures and profit sharing \u2013 tips are not the answer!\r\n\u2022\tExpanding your delivery and Take-out business, rather than chucking them now that the doors are open\r\n\u2022\tBasic affordable health benefits\r\n\u2022\tChild care supplements\r\n\u2022\tAssistance with transportation \u2013 bus pass supplement, maybe even \u201chere\u2019s a company owned scooter!\u201d if you work within a certain distance from the facility\r\n\u2022\tMore emphasis on social\/community consciousness\r\n\u2022\tAssistance with upskilling \r\nHotels have been forced to accept some degree of \u201camenity creep\u201d to keep their guests happy and loyal \u2013 maybe we need to consider our employees and their \u201cwants\u201d in the same light.\r\nWorkers are getting creative about their working situations. Are you getting equally creative about how you attract and retain your staff?","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadapters.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadapters.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadapters.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadapters.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadapters.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/theadapters.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1327,"href":"https:\/\/theadapters.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315\/revisions\/1327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadapters.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadapters.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadapters.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadapters.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}