WHITEPAPER: How to Beat the Talent Crunch: 3 strategies for leaders of deskless workplaces
It’s never been tougher to find and recruit good talent. The pandemic and its aftermath shifted the candidate-employer power dynamic and for most of 2022 it’s been a candidate-driven market.

That’s particularly the case with frontline, shift-driven (or ‘deskless’) workforces which bore the brunt of the pandemic and subsequent ‘Great Reset’, which saw many workers question the role of work in their lives. They seek greater pay, support and flexibility.

Companies have had to get creative with how they are sourcing, attracting and retaining talent, and we share 3 core strategies on how to combat this.

Strategy #1: Broaden the talent pool
Recognise the need to change things up. Consider dropping or easing up on their requirements for employees to hold certain job qualifications, and to have a set number of years of previous experience.

Be willing to look for talent in non-traditional places, such as outside the hiring industry.

Start looking beyond the sometimes-narrow confines of who makes up the stereotypical “ideal” candidate. A person’s background (gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, etc.) has little baring on one’s ability or willingness to undertake a job, and that very diversity can significantly benefit the organisation. McKinsey analysis shows that most organisations with gender, ethnic and cultural diversity in leadership roles outperform less diverse peers on profitability. To cite one example, their 2019 study found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25% more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile.

In addition, 76% of jobseekers and employees report that a diverse workforce is an important factor when evaluating companies and job offers; 32% would not apply for a job at a company where there is a lack of diversity among its workforce.

Commit to DEIB will be reflected in every roster or shift schedule created. All schedules should aim to provide workers with a good balance of times of day and night that they work across, rather than having the least desirable shifts in the middle of the night falling to only a small handful of individuals time and time again.

Looking beyond recruitment, don’t forget that representation of diverse talent is still an essential driver of inclusion. Companies should focus on advancing diverse talent into executive, management, technical, and board roles. They should also consider which forms of multivariate diversity to prioritise (for example, going beyond gender and ethnicity) and set data-driven targets for the representation of diverse talent.

Strategy #2: Create a talent marketplace
In the scramble to find talent externally, don’t forget about the talent right in front of you – or at least within your wider network or ecosystem.

For example, faced with reduced numbers of external applicants, some retailers are offering career pathways from the storefront to the head office. They are identifying high performers and putting them through custom training to upskill them for a career in the head office. However, this practice is still quite rare in retail, and internal movement of talent does not occur regularly in other sectors.

Now, more than ever, employers need efficient ways to move the right people into the right role in a timely manner. For that to occur, rich data and smart tech tools are required. Enter talent marketplaces.

The purpose of a talent marketplace is to match talent to opportunities based on skills, interests, and preferences. Employees and contractors upload details of their education, skills and work history to the system while managers add information about available projects and jobs. Artificial intelligence (AI) will analyse the data, collect further information from internal and external sources, auto-populate skills maps, and will then match the right person to each project or role.

Many of the core benefits of talent marketplaces cannot be achieved without technology. Deskless  workers do not have easy access to computers or laptops, nor do they have time to maintain a profile in the system or browse through opportunities during their workday. Mobile platforms are the answer. Using a talent marketplace app, deskless workers travelling between different locations could potentially be notified of opportunities at the site they are visiting, be they short mentorships, gigs, or projects relevant to them.

Strategy #3: Offer a total rewards package that includes continuous learning opportunities
According to PwC, 24% of surveyed employers are willing to recruit workers with lower qualifications and less experience to address skills and talent shortages. If that’s the case, it will fall to those same employers to upskill those people. 2022 has seen a trend of focusing not just on new employees to upskill, but also linking internal mobility to professional development, so that existing employees have the skills required to move into new internal roles.

Creating upskilling opportunities for existing and new employees can be a smaller investment than hiring someone who has the perfect skills fit and needs little to no additional training. And it pays off. Over a third (36%) of surveyed deskless workers said they would feel more loyalty to companies that offered them additional information on-the-job that helped them grow and develop. In addition, 82% said the provision of regular skills training would improve their day-to-day performance.

76% of deskless workers are not being offered digital skills training and 46% said they are not offered training of any kind. Of those that are offered training, 30% rate their current training as ‘average’.

For deskless workers, flexibility, autonomy and accessibility are the keys to any learning or training initiative. Microlearning initiatives, whereby the content is broken into smaller, bite-sized chunks that can be integrated into the workday and consumed as and when needed via mobile devices, can help with deskless worker engagement. Consider if your initiatives can offer:

• Flexible training schedules
• Self-paced learning
• Multiple learning modes

In the post-pandemic era, every organisation has an opportunity to refresh its vision, values and culture. The entire employee experience is up for renewal. However, what works for one organisation may not work for another – and nor should business leaders want it to. In this hyper-competitive talent environment, there are few rewards for being a mere follower of trends – blaze your own path and reap the benefits.

Download our whitepaper to learn more about:

• Where the talent crunch is hurting the most and why deskless workers are switching employers
• What should be offered as a ‘base level’ employee value proposition – and why it’s not all about money
• 3 ways to become a talent magnet:
• Diversifying the talent pool
• Creating a talent marketplace
• Offering a total rewards package that includes continuous learning opportunities