The North Country Chamber has been holding virtual webinars aimed at addressing challenges the business community faces due to the pandemic. The latest seminar focused on recruiting and retaining employees.
The goal of the “Struggling to Find ANY Help These Days?” seminar offered by the North Country Chamber was to help employers develop strategies to find and keep employees. Moderator David Coryer, co-founder of Coryer Staffing, says the labor market is in unprecedented times due to a variety of factors.
“Even though the unemployment rate is higher than it was pre-COVID we are facing more challenges attracting individuals to our ranks and I think every single employer is experiencing that," Coryer said. "There’s no silver bullet to the problem.”
New York Association of Training and Employment Professionals Director of Strategic Partnerships Megan Farry says the pandemic did not create the labor force issues, but rather exacerbated problems that had been percolating for a long time.
“In 2019 in our State of the Workforce reportwe included that nine out of the ten fastest growing occupations in New York state paid less than $32,000 a year," Farry said. "That’s 1.7 million jobs. So lack of investment, federal investment and state investment in workforce training, the cost of childcare that was skyrocketing, the lack of investment in giving businesses the opportunity to upscale their current employees has now only been blown up by the pandemic. That being said it also provides a really unique opportunity for us to make change.”
Casella Waste Systems General Manager Bill Meyers says old strategies no longer work and they’re using various incentives and digital methods to attract new employees.
“We really tried hard instead of sitting back and waiting for folks to come to us to try to be creative and go to where we think our employees are or future employees can be," Meyers said. "The days of waiting for applications to come through the door and/or the black and white ad in the newspaper we’ve seen that really kind of die off in a lot of ways. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. I don’t think there’s a wrong place to go social media-wise to try to get your message out.”
Gray Digital Media Sales Manager Mimi Dame says social and digital media can be a cost effective and efficient method for employers seeking workers.
“You really want to stay agile and the great thing about social media is that it does allow you to stay agile," Dame said. " It’s a much more proactive approach in really honing in on the right people.”
Some employers have concerns that the pandemic unemployment benefits are keeping people from reentering the workforce. But Farry says employers should instead take an opportunity to reassess their hiring practices and wages.
“You think that people are just going to come to work because there’s a job," Farry said. "But if you’re not providing a wage that’s family sustaining, if you’re not providing benefits, if there’s no support system for folks to be successful or you know a career pathway that people can clearly see how they can move through the organization and be professionally developed into those roles isn’t this the time for the employer to really look at themselves and how they’re operating? What needs to happen internally to attract more employees and retain the ones that you have?”
