Overcoming Common Pitfalls in Hiring Hourly Workers

Hourly workers can be a great asset to any business. Many establishments rely on their hourly workers to manage day-to-day operations, helping ensure that everything runs smoothly. Hourly workers like the ones at Walmart are also often on the front line interacting with customers, making them the faces of the business. This is why it is critical to hire, and maintain,  a quality hourly workforce - but this is no easy feat.

The Hiring Challenge

Looking for quality hires in the hourly workforce has gotten tougher over the years. Despite having thousands of active job seekers in the market on a daily basis, businesses still struggle to identify the quality hires that would make the cut for the job they are advertising for.

Hiring managers may get overwhelmed by the amount of resumes and applications that pile on them all at once. They often face the challenge of sorting and organizing these to identify the right applicants, a task which can be very time-consuming.

The Foundation to Reduce Turnover

Hiring people that stay is key for any business. A Cornell study found that the average cost of losing one hourly employee is $5,864. This high cost of turnover accounts for the loss of productivity, cost of rehiring, and training these new employees. This may also include additional costs such as overtime pay for other employees who are covering the extra shifts of the employee that left.

To reduce turnover rates, businesses should focus on the first step of hiring - getting the right people. 

Go Digital and Mobile

Job postings in newspapers are a thing of the past. It was found that 60% of job seekers today look for work through online job boards and 50% of them by word of mouth. Being where your prospective candidates are is the first step to increasing your company’s visibility. 

Evaluate your target demographic and make sure that you are posting the jobs on online boards where these people are spending time. For example, LinkedIn works best for hiring managerial level employees. Hourly workers, on the other hand, are mostly on social media channels and job boards like Facebook, Instagram, Indeed, and Craigslist. 

Today, over half of the people looking for a new job are searching on a mobile device. This simply means that your online job postings should be mobile-optimized for easy viewership. 

Improve Job Descriptions

Full transparency about the job and benefits will help in filtering out candidates who may not be a good fit for the role. Writing a good job description can help you differentiate yourself from your competitors greatly. 

Read the full guide to writing an effective job description to attract quality hires.

Go Beyond Qualifications

The first criteria in the hiring process is typically the candidate's qualifications and experience. Go beyond this and look for those who display passion in the things they do and even for your business as well. People who love what they do tend to stay in a job longer than those who are there just to pass the time or merely for the sake of earning a few bucks.

Data

Data plays a huge part in hiring too. One of the most useful strategies in hiring is seeing where  the majority of your applicants are coming from so that you can focus on reaching out to quality hires through these channels. Businesses can consider running sponsored posts on targeted platforms rather than going through a trial and error format and wasting resources on sponsoring job ads in the wrong channels.

At Workstream, we understand the challenges that you face when hiring hourly workers. We provide tools that can make your process faster and more cost efficient. Chat with us to see how we can benefit your business.