How Employers Must Adapt to Soften the Blow
It starts with listening...
I’ve worked non-stop since I was 10 years old delivering newspapers. At 14 I got a job at McDonalds, and at 21 years old I got my first real job working at the federal Department of Justice’s Toronto offices. Through the jobs I’ve had since then, I can say without hesitation that the best employers are those whom listen to their employees. Not just in meetings, or hearing ideas, but those who put those ideas to work.
While important, its more than just wages or inflation
Its true, inflation is raging at levels that we have not seen in generations. If employers are to retain talent, and not incur unncessary costs of endless recruiting retraining, they must offer a wage that is attractive.
However, many employers wrongly assume that “because I’m paying you more than I did in years past…” they now get to pile on more work. This “higher pay” assumption is a mistake in all forms. Many employees see their economic and self-actualization dreams slipping further and further out of reach. A job that has kept up with inflation is simply that, a job that has kept up with inflation. This will not be a source of motivation for your employees to go above and beyond.
Its about listening to what you’re being told by your employees and demonstrating to them that you’re finding solutions before its too late, and we are living an example of what happens when we wait until its too late.
Experience must be consulted
Experience must always be consulted, wherever it can be found. A good source of experience, is the critical shortage of healthcare workers in Canada. For decades, we took for granted the real needs of these workers, not just in terms of wages, but work safety, and work-life balance.
For decades, we had a major pool of talent to call up on, that being our immigrant population – many of whom are trained in healthcare and health sciences. Instead of offering proper training or bridging opportunities the way nursing unions and medical associations proposed, we ignored what was being told to us. Now, we are scrambling to provide a good wage, scrambling to provide workplace safety, and prorper training so that healthcare institutions can have a steady source of HR to call on for staff rotation (thus providing the worklife balance) we are scrambling to try and recruit more international professionals from healthcare systems facing their own shortages.
The conclusion
Productivity and motivation are going to be major, MAJOR issues in the coming years, especially for the millennial (tired of hearing that word? me too!) who are going to be the bread winners for the next 10-15 years.
Here are a few tips that employers can deploy:
- Take their ideas seriously, and reward ideas that lead to benefits
- Empower your employees in ways they aren’t currently for example: give employee run committees budgets they have (semi) autonomy over
- Find ways to provide opportunities for learning and development, not just courses but experiences
