The unsaid unsustainable model
Is it just me, or is the current labor situation just a massive Dumpster fire? I keep looking at the open jobs, the lack of workers, our customers who are looking to find quality talent and struggling to do so. I see all the quits every month and all I can think about is that what we are doing right now is an unsustainable model.
If you look at generational breakdowns, it’s becoming clear that this problem isn’t going anywhere. Yes, 3 million people retired early during COVID. Yes, more than 9 million businesses were registered in 2020 and 2021. I might be imagining it, but it feels like the labor pool is shrinking.
And IF the labor pool is shrinking, why are we continuing to operate as if the talent we need to do the work that needs to be done to grow and sustain our companies are just out there waiting for our jobs to be posted.
If we are continually turning people over, burn people out, and treat them as disposable, if we are continue to favor “new” talent over growing our own, if we are doing to keep spraying and praying jobs out into the universe, it is honestly a zero sum game. We can’t continue to operate this way. We cannot continue to believe that we can just dump more names into the top of the hiring funnel.
Here’s the reality: It’s possible we are going to run out of new names!
When we burn candidates on the experience, we lose them. When we burn employees, we lost them. Who’s left?
It’s time we take all of our efforts and do two things:
First: Redesign our experiences to serve the people we need: Candidates and employees.
We need to honestly market to them. Not bait and switch, not over-promise and under-deliver. We need to tell them what they will do and impact, who they will work with and in what matter they will be compensated. And we need to do it early in the process.
Second: Trust your people.
We have so many layers of people within big organizations that there is an ongoing hubris that we know what’s best for our people. The truth: You don’t. You know a piece of that person, the piece they feel comfortable bringing to work. You don’t know them, what they are capable of and how much potential and passion they have inside. You need to trust them to drive their career forward, produce amazing results and get out of the way.
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