A ‘skills mismatch’ behind staffing woes
Why many businesses struggle to retain staff
Across the Greater Memphis area and the Midsouth, employers are struggling to hire workers. A difficult situation prior to the pandemic, managers say hiring has become exponentially more difficult for companies in recent months.
Small businesses, such as Wall’s restaurant Almeta’s Sammich Shaq, have been forced to cut the number of hours they are open because they have been unable to find enough employees. For other businesses, such as the Peabody Hotel, a less than full staff has forced existing employees to work longer hours.
“It puts a tremendous burden on the people who are coming to work,” said Doug Browne, president and general manager of the Peabody Hotel. “When you’re short staffed, that means they have to pick up a lot more work. If it’s a housekeeper, we’re asking them to pick up a few more rooms, if you’re a bellman, you’re doing double. So, eventually, people reach burnout stage because they’re being overworked and they’re working a lot harder.”
Browne said the Peabody works to ensure that employees sustain a worklife balance. The combination of workplace burnout and pandemic fatigue is something employers across Memphis are concerned about. Southwest Tennessee Community College has worked to provide time for employees, who have been overworked due to understaffing issues, to relax and destress.
“Later on this month we’re gonna have our award ceremony we’re going to still be virtual because we still have some employees who struggle in coming into big groups. So we’re calling it a save the date,” said Ilana Ricelli, the associate vice president for human resources at Southwest Tennessee. “We’re asking people to stop everything they’re doing that day at the college and just kick back and let every
one watch the award ceremony for a little while. Something to help our workforce destress to an extent, so that we can get back to the business of growing our enrollment and, and teaching our students.”
For George Smith, COVID-19 didn’t change much when it came to hiring employees to work for Mahaffey USA and Mahaffey Event & Tent. It has been difficult for him to find workers for the past five years.
“Even before COVID, it was a struggle,” said Smith, president of Mahaffey USA. “It got worse during COVID, but we’ve struggled for, I would say, the last five years.”
Both the Peabody and Mahaffey have tried signing bonuses to entice workers, but neither have seen enough success to warrant continuing the practice. Southwest Tennessee Community College is unable to offer such bonuses because it is a state agency.
“It doesn’t [help],” Smith said about signing bonuses. “Anecdotally, I don’t think it’s driving people in the door.”
Nationally, the U.S. Labor Department announced Friday that the unemployment rate fell from 3.8% to 3.6% in March, putting it just above the 50-year low of 3.5% right before the pandemic hit the United States in March of 2020.
In March of this year, Laura Wronski, senior manager of research science at Surveymonkey, which conducts the survey for CNBC, told CNBC that part of the disconnect between the low unemployment rate and the high amount of businesses looking to hire is due to inflation. Because of inflation, wages have to be high to attract potential workers.
Even places like Mahaffey USA and Mahaffey Event & Tent, where Smith takes pride in the salaries starting at $20 an hour and $18 dollars an hour, respectively, with an option for benefits, are struggling with hiring employees.
Smith thinks the reason for the difficulty comes down to how labor intensive the jobs are, how much travel Mahaffey USA requires, and the requirement that many employees work holidays. While that could be a part of the difficulty, Beth Yobak, a staffing recruiter for Protech Services Group, said the reason might be more general than something that just effects Mahaffey.
“I think there’s a huge skills mismatch in Memphis. Candidates tell me all the time, ‘I can do anything.’ Okay, well, that’s wonderful. But that doesn’t help me. Do you want to do accounting? Do you want to do sales? I need to know what your skill set is. What’s your background?,” Yobak said. “So I think, unfortunately, Memphis has probably a huge degree of not as skilled labor, because that’s what I’m seeing. I’m seeing a huge skill mismatch.”
Though Mahaffey offers training to all their employees, Yobak said that many workers who would have traditionally worked more blue-collared jobs are now looking to segue into working in an office.
“For example, somebody that might be a forklift driver and they may not want to be a forklift driver, they want to be something else. So if they’re looking on Indeed, they’re not looking at forklift driver jobs, because they want a better job. They don’t have the skill sets yet, and they’re probably not seeing anything that they’re qualified for,” Yobak said. “If you’re looking for warehouse jobs, there are a million in Memphis. If you’re looking for a VP of finance job, yeah, that’s going to be a little different. But then when you get into marketing jobs or you know, other types of jobs, there may not be as much – but there’s still a lot out there. But it’s a skills mismatch.”
The Memphis-shelby County School’s College, Career & Technical Education programs have emphasized preparing students to get jobs in six industries they predict will have high demand of jobs in the future in an effort to close this skills gap. The six industries are advance manufacturing, architecture and construction, health sciences, information technology, STEM and transportation and logistics.
“Those six main areas are where the state has identified where the careers are going,” Dotson said. “Starting with middle school, with career exploration, we use programs, like our partnership pop in initiative, to introduce kids to companies through that method. They have 35-45 minutes to get introduced to that company.”
When looking at which careers students are most interested in pursuing, Dotson said the IT, STEM and Health Sciences classes are the most frequently registered for courses.
“What we do in those areas, where we see students selecting classes and where there’s more action going on by the number of students we have in those courses, we have an advisory board of about 100 companies that we partner with,” Dotson said. “We send out invitations to those companies to come into the classrooms through our partnership pop ins to really break down what it is that they do, where they’re located, how much someone could make, what’s the career track, how they can advance, how it’s not just a job, but a career.” As for the employers and employees currently in the work force, the job market is expected to shift in the coming month, due to issues with supply chains and a smaller economy.
“I really see the job market changing in the next three to six months. I’m already starting to see companies put jobs on hold,” Yobak said. “I’m already seeing some layoffs due to the supply chain, just due to the overall economy right now, and with everything that’s going on. I think we’re gonna see a big slowdown because prices cannot continually rise like they are and not see fallout. It’s a candidate market right now, but I do think that’s going to shift a bit. I think employers are going to see that shift and shrink up a little bit.
“In the last 2-3 weeks, it seems to be getting better,” Browne said. “The applicants are quality applicants and we are improving in the hiring process. It’s not fantastic yet, but it is getting better.”
Gina Butkovich covers Desoto County, storytelling and general news. She can be reached at 901-232-6714 or on Twitter @gigibutko.
“I think there’s a huge skills mismatch in Memphis. Candidates tell me all the time, ‘I can do anything.’ Okay, well, that’s wonderful. But that doesn’t help me. Do you want to do accounting? Do you want to do sales? I need to know what your skill set is. What’s your background?”
Beth Yobak
Staffing recruiter, Protech Services Group