Copier Careers® Poll Results & Comments
Poll: Is Your Company Managing Their Hiring Supply Chain?
Most Employers Neglect Their Hiring Supply
Last month we discussed tips for better managing the human element of your hiring supply chain. So we were curious to hear whether your company was managing or neglecting their own hiring supply. We had a solid turnout of 19,256 votes this month!
Nearly half said their employers had hiring supply chain problems with, “we’re stretched thin with no end in sight” taking 44% of the vote. The other two quarters were split between “somewhat, we’re making some hires” and “we have staff but we’re in trouble if someone quits.” The remaining votes went to “there’s a bottleneck somewhere” (5%) and “we only hire on a fluke” (>1%) with “yes, we have staff and a back bench” only taking 1% of the vote. That’s 99% of voters saying their company doesn’t have any kind of backbench!
This lines up with what we’re seeing. Industry employers have been running lean for years. It’s been going on for so long that folks think it’s “normal.” This mindset is alarming.
If your company doesn’t have a backbench of skilled personnel, you should be concerned! Because that tells you they don’t have a plan for the human element of their workforce. People are not machines – they do not all work all the time. A commenter on a past poll put it best:
“My observation as a technician has been that employers almost always staff at a level which assumes everyone is available. But the fact is, you will always have one or more people out for training, vacation, illness etc. So the team is always running behind. I’m sure there are some companies that have a floater tech or two to cover those predictable gaps in coverage, but I’ve not worked for one.”
If this sounds like your company, you need to ask yourself what happens when someone is sick or leaves? How much harder would your job become? What opportunities would be missed? How much money would be left on the table? How long before someone else leaves? And another and another?
No one knows better than recruiters that employees can and will leave all the time. Companies can’t afford to keep pretending that it won’t happen to them.
Here are the full results:
Is your company managing their hiring supply chain?
- No, we’re stretched thin with no end in sight! (44%, 8,484 Votes)
- Somewhat, we’re making some hires (25%, 4,896 Votes)
- Yes, we have staff but we’re in trouble if someone quits (25%, 4,789 Votes)
- Somewhat but there’s a bottleneck somewhere (5%, 960 Votes)
- Yes, we have staff and a back bench! (1%, 115 Votes)
- Not really, we only hire on a fluke (0%, 12 Votes)
Loading …Some comments from y’all:
- “Most of the techs that we have interviewed are currently employed and are either under paid or over worked. If you offer a higher pay rate and counter their present employers counter (which happens almost every time) a tech will jump ship. After all, they were looking for a change in the 1st place.”
- “If the local convenience store is paying $21.50 to work graveyard weekends, good luck finding skilled labor to work for $18.50 an hour.”
- “Same old, same old. Companies need talented and qualified techs, but compensation / benefits simply aren’t competitive. Copier techs are skilled workers, yet I can find dozens of positions paying more for UNKSILLED work. Heck, the gig work I do on the side delivering groceries gets me within $5 of my current hourly salary! Many techs I know are instead taking phone support positions. There are too many other options in the Post-COVID workplace now to remain tethered to an underpaid job.”
- “We’re a growing company, mostly through acquisitions, and we rely on those people we pick up from acquisitions to fill open spots but we’re finding the employees at smaller dealerships just can’t change and keep up with a fast-paced environment. We spend a lot of energy trying to train people we had high hopes for that end up not working out.”
- “We have the people and means to source very viable candidates, but hiring freezes can stop that process real quick.”