Building Your Best Team: What’s the Plan?

Finding and retaining talented, committed employees, particularly for production and sales positions, has been an enduring challenge. According to a recent survey by The Conference Board, this difficulty now extends to office workers.

According to the survey results, 84% of organizations are struggling to find talent, up from 60% just one year ago. And the number of companies citing difficulty finding office workers has more than doubled; from 28% to 64%. Those challenged with finding production workers increased from 49% to 73% in the past year.

Not surprisingly, many organizations have fundamentally changed their work rules and requirements, particularly policies allowing for remote work. Fully half of the survey respondents indicate they now offer fully remote work opportunities up from just 8% pre-pandemic. Indeed, only 4% of companies are now requiring full-time, on-site work, with 90% offering a hybrid arrangement and 60% making remote work an option for employees who want this.

While companies report an overall increase in worker productivity with these new arrangements, employee “burnout” as reported by HR executives surveyed, reached 77%, up from 42% less than two years earlier.

What to make of these findings? Two things. First, recruiting talent at all levels of the organization has become a full-time endeavor. Many companies report adding a full-time hiring manager either on the payroll or on retainer. But that’s just the start. A comprehensive recruitment plan needs to be developed, implemented, and monitored as a standing item on the senior leadership team’s agenda. This effort isn’t a stop-gap measure, but part of an ongoing commitment to building the most competitive, committed team possible.

The second item relates to organizational structure, alignment, and leadership; in a word, culture.  Businesses getting high marks here place an increased emphasis on fully trained, compassionate managers, improved internal communications, leadership committed to innovation, and a clearly stated and fully operationalized mission and purpose (vision and values).

They make sure their benefits are in line with what employees are looking for by involving them in the process. While you may not be able to offer everything team members want, you’ll gain important acceptance and support simply by asking for their input. Expect this to be an evolving, ongoing process as workplace expectations continue to change for both the employer and the employee.

Many successful organizations have a well-defined value proposition, an essential element in the business development process. The time has come to turn that approach inward, to utilize and articulate the uniqueness of your enterprise to the advantage of current and future team members.

For more information on ways to build a stronger workplace culture, contact me at joe@ajstrategy.com