Clayton Pyne, Humanforce's CEO shares his expertise on tackling the current skilled labour shortages we are seeing across many sectors
This article was produced in partnership with Humanforce
In a time of unprecedented skills shortages, employers are focusing on the needs of employees like never before. Clayton Pyne, Humanforce’s CEO, has had a front row view of the unique challenges facing many HR and management teams as they attempt to attract, engage and retain talent.
Pyne says Humanforce’s customers – primarily employers reliant on shift-based or ‘deskless’ workers in retail, hospitality and aged care, have traditionally focused on priorities including compliance, costs associated with labour, and team productivity. Although these remain critical today, employers can’t afford to ignore one other essential ingredient for business success: the employee experience.
In a post-pandemic labour market when the war for talent is fierce, businesses have an opportunity to (re)focus on the employee experience; doing so may give them a competitive edge.
“In our experience, those organisations who prioritise the employee experience can successfully drive higher levels of employee engagement, which is crucial in attracting and retaining employees in today’s competitive jobs market,” Pyne says.
“Employee engagement also has a positive impact on all those wider business performance benchmarks, such as increased worker participation and productivity, which can in turn save money and improve customer service.”
The link between engaged employees and a positive customer experience is undeniable. Positive human interactions can lead to increased customer loyalty, so businesses need to be doing everything they can to ensure they have a motivated and engaged workforce today.
When it comes to gauging what your staff actually want, Pyne says this can be gathered through surveys and polls, or simply by having regular one-on-one catch-ups with employees.
“Through Humanforce’s platform, you can gather further insight into each stage of the employee lifecycle, from when you're recruiting and onboarding an employee, right through to how they're showing up on day one or looking into the shifts they're bidding on or what shifts they’re swapping.”
He says these are all opportunities for managers to be listening, taking feedback onboard, and ultimately taking action on this feedback and what matters most for all staff.
“This may manifest as a learning and development program in the business that goes beyond just the raw qualifications, or employee well-being programs including mental health resilience or possibly their financial well-being.”
Aside from ensuring management is listening, learning and acting on their needs, Pyne says a common piece of feedback raised by staff is the fact that workplace technology has to date largely overlooked the deskless worker.
“What we've all taken for granted in the white-collar workforce – such as opportunities for learning and software tools that help with career plans and progression – have been absent for deskless, frontline workers.”
As well as introducing these opportunities, Pyne says technology can be utilised in three keys ways to better manage deskless workers.
Firstly, businesses should consider how effective their talent acquisition and onboarding processes are. Perhaps they can tap into third-party labour pools through marketplaces or agencies, broaden their perspective on the skillsets needed for roles, or look at whether their onboarding process is turning new talent away from the business through a negative initial impression.
“By providing an automated mobile onboarding option for deskless workers, new employees can access HR training at their own pace through a mobile app and assure competence through online assessment tools,” Pyne adds.
Secondly, businesses should balance operational efficiency with the ability to allow people to work in a way that suits their needs. Technology can help to give deskless workers the autonomy to make decisions and take control of their own work life.
“We know businesses need to be able to schedule staff in a costed, compliant fashion and be predictive around profit and loss. But at the same, a lot of workers are using our app to manage their own work schedule – to bid for shifts, swap shifts, view their time sheets, set their availability, and apply for leave,” Pyne says.
And thirdly, businesses also need to understand that workforce flexibility should be offered in conjunction with financial stability, which encompasses more than just a fair wage.
“We have solutions such as earned wage access, which gives employees the ability to draw down earned wages ahead of pay day. We know it's been earned because they've clocked on and off, and we've seen the manager authorise and approve that timesheet.
“We also understand from the payroll side what their net pay looks like, so we can be confident in providing them with an offer to draw down a component of their wage that's already been earned. This can help employees meet their obligations,” Pyne says.
Pyne says the key to creating a remarkable employee experience, as well as improving employee retention, is data and analytics. Workforce data gathered throughout the employee lifecycle can be used to produce detailed reports, which can in turn help identify trends and highlight issues that need to be fixed sooner rather than later.
“We see so many patterns in the data around onboarding, time to first shift, clocking shift tardiness. There's a range of things we can look at through the time and attendance data that also gives you a really unique lens on being able to predict churn or predict worker unhappiness. This gives management an opportunity to address the issues with the aim of retaining valuable staff.”
