Guide aims to help employers recruit and retain workers

Workforce WindsorEssex has released a guide for local small businesses to help them recruit and retain the right people.

Between July and September the agency, which is the local employment planning council, consulted with 61 businesses — identified as having 100 or fewer employees — and compiled what amounts to a list of best practices for finding and keeping employees.

“On the recruitment side of things, I think the most important thing is that employers are writing their job postings in a clear and succinct way so they are attracting the talent that they’re actually looking for so they can really narrow down the talent pool,” said Katie Renaud, a researcher and quantitative Labour Market Information specialist who authored the guide.

Of the businesses consulted, 82 per cent said they were experiencing difficulty finding the right people for the positions they had open.

The most common method of recruiting employees was online job boards such as Indeed, Monster and Workopolis, with 75 per cent of businesses saying they go that route.

The next most common method of hiring was networking/word of mouth/referrals, with 66 per cent of companies responding identifying that method as the most effective at attracting desired employees.

For small business owner Rob Myers, who operates Little Foot Foods on Tecumseh Road East, finding employees is relatively easy because people who like the store and products come to him expressing an interest in working there.

“I think the most important thing is finding people who are excited about what you do,” said Myers, who manned a booth at Wednesday’s Small Biz Expo held at the Caboto Club.

Once a small business has found the right employee, the trick is to keep them. Among the businesses consulted, 40 per cent said they had difficulty retaining employees.

“We definitely talked about wages in the guide, but a lot of employers aren’t able to offer the best compensation compared to other employers,” said Renaud.

“We looked at hearing and recognizing employees. So, are you verbally recognizing employees? Are you providing them with small tokens of appreciation like two, three, four-dollar gift cards?” Renaud said.

“Are you investing in your employees? Are you providing benefits? Are you providing continuous learning opportunities, and small perks like flexible working arrangements where people can work from home, or they can come in from 10 to six instead of nine to five? So we found if an employer is not able to offer the most competitive wage, that there are smaller things they can do to retain their workforce.”

The guides are available at Workforce WindsorEssex’s office at 880 North Service Road Unit 201 or online in English at workforcewindsoressex.com.