Following last week's discussion of how to hire without creating hassles for your potential employees, here's a list of seven likely hiring trends for 2009, as suggested by Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder.com, and their implications for you. The statistics come from CareerBuilder's annual Job Forecast survey
Increased Pay
The reality is, no matter what kinds of benefits you offer or how you go about recruiting, you often end up paying more rather than paying less. In addition to providing attractive salaries to new recruits you need to keep your current employees satisfied. 66% of employers in the survey plan to increase salaries for their current employees while 1/3 estimate they will raise the starting salaries they offer to potential hires his year. While people will understand the reality of a bad economy, they also know it affects them personally as well as affecting the firm, so cutting salaries often isn't an option, nor is keeping salaries low while your competitors raise theirs.
Flexible Work
Some leaders are looking at flexible work arrangements that allow employees more freedom in the office and can reduce costs. these can be a great recruiting tool, and can also help your bottom line. The Job Forecast reports that 31% of employers plan to provide the following options for workers this year: alternate schedules (70%); telecommuting (48%); compressed workweeks (40%); summer hours (19%); job sharing (13%); and sabbaticals (7%). If you can cut your overhead -- such as utilities, office rent, transit subsidies -- or if you can reduce employee time and pay without reducing the size of the workforce (in other words, keep your employees on but with less time on the clock, in a manner you both agree with) then you can ride out the economic downturn and come out OK at the other end.
Green Policies
In tough economic times employers often have to turn to alternatives to salaries as recruiting tools. One such alternative is an emphasis on "green jobs" or "green policies" in the workplace. You might make an effort to take on projects that are designed to support environmentally-conscious efforts (ad campaigns, for instance, or providing strategic planning support to environmental non-profits). If that's not feasible in your particular field, consider developing environmentally-friendly policies for your workplace, perhaps involving energy usage in the office, carpooling and ridesharing, or other things that potential recruits will appreciate. Creatives often have an interest in environmental issues, so do yourself a favor (and, frankly, do the world a favor)and investigate these options.
Recruitment Innovation
Matt Ferguson notes in his article that recruitment budgets tend to shrink in hard times. But in order to compete in the marketplace you still need talent, so you need to find new ways to recruit effectively without raising spending more on recruitment. We're really talking about finding more efficient ways to recruit, and in the case of Creatives, efficiency and effectiveness really can co-exist. The hiring managers in the CareerBuilder survey, though, didn't seem very innovative; only 7% of those who reported a likely drop in recruiting budgets, for instance, said they planned to use social networking sites. These can be free (or, at least, pretty inexpensive) tools for reaching exactly the kind of people you want to reach. I know I've looked for a few employers on Facebook that I expected to find, only to see no presence there. How about YOUR firm? Traditional tools still work, but you might consider shifting the balance in favor of nontraditional, and low-cost, methods.
Retaining Older Employees
The CareerBuilder survey showed that 17% of employers will likely rehire retirees from other companies, while 12% expect to offer incentives for their baby boomers to stay with the company longer. There is something to be said for experience, and if you have older employees who are still innovative and have not fallen prey to the "we've always done it this way" attitudes, you should hold onto them. Be on the lookout as well for Creatives retiring from other firms who might be useful to you. The US military in the last few years has started acknowledging that forcing people to retire when they're highly experienced may fall within the definition of "a dumb idea," and you should consider if that's true for your firm, too.
Diversity
Increasing the pool of potential recruits will help you attract and hire top-quality Creatives without necessarily having to increase the salaries you offer (if this doesn't immediately make sense, go open any economics textbook to the page defining "supply and demand"). Your recruiting practices may not be overtly discriminatory, but you may be missing out on opportunities to attract talent if you don't make a specific effort to reach out to a variety of ethnic groups, age ranges, and other communities. Reach out to schools in economically disadvantaged areas...if some aspects of talent are natural rather than learned skills, then the problems associated with education in challenging neighborhoods may not be as great a factor as in other fields.
More Freelancers or Contract Workers
Free agents will play an increasingly important role in firms that are trying to reduce costs without cutting employees or otherwise reducing their capacity. According to CareerBuilder, 28% of hiring managers expect to use these workers in 2009. If you can work with employees only when you need them you can save a lot on health care, pension costs, office space, insurance, and other overhead. Free agency is a natural fit for many fields where Creatives are needed for specific jobs but might not need to be on the payroll all the time.
You may not be planning to increase your workforce right now, but if you can, you should. many of your competitors will hold off for now, so take advantage of their slowdown to try to speed up. Creatives aren't one-size-fits-all, so you should be looking now for people who are right for you, because they may not be available tomorrow. If you don't snap them up, someone else just might.
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