Talent acquisition is the strategic effort to hire talented people with the goal of connecting their skill sets with your company’s needs and objectives. Unlike the standard recruitment process, talent acquisition is a continuous process of finding, assessing, and matching candidates that best suit a specific profile needed for a vacant position.
Since talent acquisition focuses on achieving long-term success, the hiring decision tends to be more effective and impactful. This type of acquisition procedure helps in getting the ideal candidates who resonate with your business goals. Those in shift work industries such as retail and F&B employees, often struggle to attract talent because of the sector’s nature when it comes to working schedules and intensity of manual labour involved.
Ever since the global meltdown, it’s become even harder to bring back shift workers to the scene because of the increased risks, uncertainty, and disorganized workflow. It has become important for businesses, especially those in the shift work sector, to implement talent acquisition strategies when recruiting workers.
Top Talent Acquisition Strategies That Work
The right talent acquisition efforts will help people distinguish your business from the crowd of recruiters who are also chasing qualified candidates. Companies that anticipate and actively seek prospective candidates who possess the best talent have more competitive advantages than those that are unprepared for the needs and challenges of the market. A good strategy must have an ongoing and constantly-changing process in order to meet the entirety of the market demand and improve talent management. Talent acquisition strategies have many facets irrespective of business size and extent.
Here are four key strategies that apply to the shift work industry:
1. Understand the nature of the industry
The shift work ecosystem completely differs from that of regular fixed work. Understanding the nature of the industry will help you gain insights into the problems that you will need to solve. For instance, the gap between office staff and hourly workers is extremely wide which is why it’s more difficult to entice and motivate shift workers to engage and stay in a shift work position. When you understand the reason why people usually deviate from these types of jobs, you’ll be able to see what it is you need to do in order to attract a pool of talented applicants. For F&Bs, you may opt to separate FOH (public-facing jobs, usually in dining and bar areas) from BOH (back-end operations, usually in the kitchen, admin offices, etc.) positions so you can identify which skill sets from your pool of candidates best suit each type of work.
Aside from the monetary compensation, there are other ground factors that determine the likelihood of talents staying long-term. Shift work poses many obstacles that affect efficiency and communication. Unlike regular working hours, it is much harder for shift workers to collaborate with each other because of the varying schedule—thus leading to inefficiency and lack of productivity—a problem that greatly affects the business itself. To resolve this, utilizing a tool that reduces inefficiencies and thereby potential unhappiness will greatly improve team communication and the company’s overall workflow. With happy employees, retention is likely to last.
2. Tap on your current employees
Listening to what your current employees are saying will help you understand their pain points so you can address them properly. No matter how extensive your recruiting efforts are, if you’re not tapping your employees, existing problems will only worsen with a larger team. Moreover, greater disconnection might arise between you and your team.
Acquisition strategies are most needed and best used in sectors with skill gaps. In order for you to target the right candidates, make sure that your offerings are also aligned with their needs. Shift work is usually associated with odd and long hours so prioritizing your employees’ wellbeing is important. Ensure that beyond their schedules, they would still have ample time for their loved ones and themselves. By directly involving them and gathering their needs and wants, it is also much easier to create retention programs that employees will actually feel happy to participate in.
The food and beverage sector is another industry that has a huge demand for manpower which is why a lot of F&B companies implement a reward system in order to attract workers; some offer monetary incentives, some give perks, and others provide benefits that will aid the needs of the workforce. For instance, Japan Food Holdings offers appealing benefits to their employees such as a welcome benefit, a Keep Fit incentive, staff referral benefit, attendance allowance, birthday vouchers, staff meals, and discounts.
3. Build your brand image
Branding is also a contributing factor in the talent acquisition process. For you to be able to effectively communicate your message to the public, your company should have a brand image that is clear, concise, and appealing. The best candidates are tougher to find because they also look at other factors such as company culture and employer branding. When putting up an offer, make sure that the inclusions are complete and understandable. See to it that your brand image reflects the things you can offer such as career opportunities, room for growth, a good working environment, employee welfare, and other valuable elements that your business embodies.
Beyond the skills, experiences, and knowledge, it is also very important to consider one’s attitude and perspective when making a hiring decision. By carrying out this strategy, you can strike more application leads and hire better talents just like Shake Shack. This well-known company carries out a distinct strategy of its own—they call their employees “51%ers”. This means that they prefer people who are 51% emotional (warm, friendly, and sociable) and 49% technical (skilled and experienced), to join their team.
4. Refine your acquisition channels
Conducting a workforce plan with your hiring managers and other HR professionals is another surefire way of implementing an effective recruitment process. Workforce planning helps in developing a proactive approach to hiring talent. Employers should work with HR to create the right workforce plan that will help address attrition, as well as increase the need for more competent shift workers. A major part of this is refining your acquisition channels. Knowing which platforms are effective further simplifies the acquisition steps. Depending on who your target market is, the right channels you will need may vary.
Talent acquisition is a continuous process that requires patience, effort, and creativity. If something is not working, don’t hesitate to explore and experiment with the other applicable options for your business. Employers in the retail and F&B industry commonly hire part-timers to fill the open positions. Since this is already a common practice, why not try other methods? If you’re looking to hire workers from younger age groups, you can play with online platforms such as Tiktok to get their utmost attention. You can also implement a referral program so they can ask their network of friends to apply with them.
Conclusion
Indeed, developing a targeted talent acquisition strategy can be challenging. Depending on the culture and industry of an organization, its geographic area, and the business’s needs, there is no one-size-fits-all answer.
So, how can you develop a successful talent acquisition strategy? The key is to involve yourself and your employees so that you can come up with a process that deeply resonates with everyone in the company. The shift work industry is a booming ecosystem. Although it requires employees to work on shifts, it also offers huge opportunities for people to have a stable and good-paying job. Through these strategies, in-demand industries such as retail and F&B can carry out an in-depth yet seamless hiring process.
Staffing is an integral part of a business, and acquisition strategies work well in providing long-term solutions to companies in the shift work industry. With these plans in place, both employers and employees can agree on a fair deal that will benefit both parties immensely. Once you have already recruited the top candidates in your team, you can already focus on managing your impressive pool of talents. But the challenge doesn’t stop there—retaining your employees and making sure that they are performing efficiently is an immutable responsibility.
Having smart tools such as the StaffAny software will support you in managing multiple tasks, allowing you to complete each one in just a few clicks.
With StaffAny’s roster planning software, you’ll never have to worry about common hurdles in shift work like shift scheduling errors, computation errors, and unsynchronized timesheets. To make it even more efficient, employees can have access to the roster app on their mobile smartphones. They also instantly get messages and notifications about changes in the roster on their devices anytime, anywhere. Your business can do so much more when you operate at your highest optimal productivity.
StaffAny is a rostering software that bridges operations and human resources together. By using a tool like this, more qualified people will be encouraged to apply because the monitoring and tracking of hours will be much simpler and accurate. As a business operating in the shift work industry, having resources and tools like StaffAny’s rostering system will help you get there much faster. To learn more about StaffAny, click here and start exploring the many features that we can offer.
