Q&A with Roberta Rowland

As a result of the pandemic, the workforce in the United States has been in flux. As the talent shortage continues, we spoke with the Director of Business Services at Workforce Partnership, Roberta Rowland to give insight as to what are best practices for businesses to keep a healthy group of workers.

Director of Business Services, Roberta Rowland. Photo provided by Workforce Partnership

Q: In what ways are employers looking to retain their staff?

A: Many employers are now realizing that they play a key role in Workforce Development. They are embarking on new ways to develop talent. Many employers are changing outdated policies to create a better work-life balance for their employees by offering better pay, additional benefits, and increased flexibility in the workplace. COVID has taught many employers that business goals can still be reached if they make efforts to meet their employee’s work-life balance needs.

Q: Are you seeing trends of “labor hoarding” in your or other communities? Is this a good plan for businesses’ workforce woes?

A: Labor Hoarding is keeping employees by any means necessary, and it’s not a practice any employer should consider. However, feeling the pressures of losing quality talent due to better opportunities elsewhere should have every employer considering creative ways to keep talent engaged.  In return, it creates a company culture that values its employees which fosters retention and employee loyalty. It never makes good business sense to keep a bad egg, no matter how tight the labor market gets, but it’s good for businesses to retain productive talent.

Q: Employers feeling the pressure of the talent shortage need to break out of the trends popularized in the pandemic, how are they doing so?

A: The talent shortage has also brought back the need for employer training programs.  Employers are more invested to reduce the cost and time to hire by developing internal talent instead of pigeonholing talent in a position/pay range that forces their employees to look for a new job to continually develop their employability skill set and gain valuable work experience. If there is no room for growth, talent will find new employment. Focusing on retention and helping employees grow in their career path has always been beneficial to the company and the employee.

Q: Employees, in times of inflation and high unemployment rates, can rightfully be worried about their job security. In a talent shortage, are layoffs the best practice right now?

A: The pandemic taught employers that while they can lay off talent for a quick cost of labor savings, in the long run, it cost the company skilled trained talent that’s extremely difficult to replace in today’s labor shortage. In many cases, their highly skilled talent retired and has not returned to the workforce. It’s not labor hoarding if the employer has developed an internal culture of growth that upskills their workforce, which in turn provides economic stability for the community.