THREE-STEP APPROACH TO RECRUITMENT

by Steven Cesare, Ph.D., The Harvest Group

Ask any business owner to identify his/her primary human resources problem and you will instantaneously hear “recruitment,” “staffing,” “finding people,” etc. With a paradoxical national economy characterized by damaging inflation, slow growth, and a low unemployment rate, that problem will likely remain for a while. Case in point, a business owner from Ohio called me the other day to say: “Steve, staffing has changed quite a bit over the past couple of years. Years ago, I desperately needed to find a successful Salesperson to bring in more work. Nowadays, I would gladly trade that Salesperson for three Landscape Laborers to help me complete the work I already have in the pipeline.”

That common refrain is echoed coastto-coast from Middlesex to Malibu, with no likelihood of cessation. Lamentably, business owners have become increasingly inured by the lack of labor, almost now accepting that condition as the “new normal.” For the good of their companies, and the green industry, I sincerely hope that is not the case.

Business owners have not adapted creatively to this ongoing dearth of qualified applicants. Unlike their traditionally-earnest approach to sales, customer service, or gross margin metrics, landscapers have lacked the same degree of vigilance when it comes to employment staffing. For example, most landscape companies do not have formal staffing goals, lacking even basic empirical metrics, with no real followup at the monthly financial/operations review meetings. Do you think that same lack of precision, attention, and concern would happen for company revenue?

Also, many such companies cannot answer the fundamental question “Who owns staffing in the company?” Is it the Department Managers, Human Resources, Field Supervisors? Many companies don’t know the answer, since they haven’t considered even asking that fundamental question. Now, about all those leadership books you have read, leadership seminars you attended, and TedTalks on leadership you watched? Crickets.

By way of derivation, business owners constantly bemoan the increased cost of labor to acquire new employees, and to maintain existing staff levels, though they rarely have an integrated plan to increase revenue and gross margin dollars by increasing sales goals, improving production rates, improving gross margins across individual revenue streams, applying bonus programs to self-fund pay raises due to increased enhancements approvals, improved job estimates, achieving job retention goals, and attaining greater revenue per employee indices. It all has to fit together as a system, for it to work effectively.

Within those company-wide concerns, business owners must shift their resolution strategies away from the traditional singular recruitment focus to a more comprehensive and simultaneous approach incorporating internal, external and technological initiatives.

1. Internal. Internal recruitment methods remain the most effective tactic in securing new employees. While hiring a full-time recruiter is obviously preferred, despite their complaints about labor shortages, most companies have not yet chosen that option. In-house recruiters should receive base pay compensation, as well as placement pay for each new hire brought into the company, and a bonus for ensuring that monthly staffing goals are consistently maintained.

Most companies have an underperforming employee referral program. Typically, (1) these companies do not offer a lucrative incentive to motivate employees to recruit new candidates; (2) no specific company manager is accountable for this program; and (3) executives offer only rhetorical support in place of actual capitalistic value (e.g., increased employee pay, better training, improving the company culture) to lure applicants into the company.

In general, at the current time, successful employee referral programs offer employees an average bonus of $850 for each new Landscape Maintenance Foreman brought into the company. Realizing that employee retention, not recruitment, is the ultimate goal, astute companies divide the referral bonus payout across three timeframes: $100 at the date of hire, $200 after the employee has been on the job for 90 days, and the remaining $550 after six months of employment. Within the context of business acumen, if the employees are not providing a steady flow of applicants each week, the bonus amount is clearly insufficient, in much the same way a sales commission plan or enhancement bonus plan would similarly fail.

2. External. Building upon internal recruitment efforts, companies must also broaden their scope to incorporate vendors, agencies, and customers to attract candidates. Stimulated by consistent executive and managerial contact, external sources should be contacted regularly on a bi-weekly basis, provided with recruitment materials (e.g., job descriptions, job applications, career ladder, training program), and rewarded with gift cards, additional business, discounts, public recognition, and on-site partnership appreciation events. In much the same way that marketing efforts precede sales, external recruitment partners contribute to overall staffing success.

Companies must also consider the use of an external contract recruiter or an independent contractor (i.e., 1099) to accelerate recruitment efforts. These individuals are paid exclusively on a headcount-add basis, with a backloaded bonus for satisfying new-hire retention thresholds (e.g., 90 days, six months, a full landscape season).

3. Technological. Companies must supplement their internal and external recruitment efforts with constant technological impact. Whether it is a weekly refresh of the company web-site, a bi-lingual option home page, semi-weekly social media posts (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn), on-line recruitment videos which are quickly becoming the new normal, consistent analytical focus of SEO efforts, actual employee testimonials, and cell phone-friendly recruitment applications, technology must be used more often, with increasing quality, and be managed more rigorously than ever believed.

Unfortunately, many business owners take a detrimentally passive view to technological staffing efforts thinking it will achieve desired goals automatically. That’s not the way it works. Technology is a supplement, not a substitute for staffing accountability. Here again, someone in the company must be responsible for monitoring the social media recruitment campaigns, tracking incoming job applications, measuring the hits or views on certain job site postings, and making follow-up email or phone contact to all interested applicants. Same answer as before: Just like other business goals, someone has to own this function for it to be even minimally effective.

In closing, the costs of recruitment, in both direct and indirect terms, continue to have significant impact on landscape companies. Accordingly, business owners must stop doing what they have been doing, since those singular historical tactics are no longer effective. The strategy from 2018 no longer works; just look at your organizational chart and count the number of current vacancies.

Instead, to address that ongoing problem, it is suggested that business owners begin to view staffing in the same strategic and tactical light as they do with other business goals, and implement an integrated array of initiatives that leverage internal, external, and technological best practices to help them achieve their company staffing goals in a sustainable manner.

If you have any questions or comments about this topic or anything else related to human resources, simply call me at (760) 685-3800.

Steve Cesare has more than 30 years of human resources experience. Currently, Steve is a Principal Consultant with the Harvest Group, a nation-wide firm.

Steve earned his Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Old Dominion University. He has authored 68 professional journal articles and made over 60 presentations at professional conferences. Additionally, he has 17 years of collegiate teaching experience at Old Dominion University and the University of San Diego.

Steve’s areas of direct value include helping clients with their: human resources programs, legal compliance, performance management processes, compensation systems, training and development, safety and workers’ compensation, and wage and hour issues.