Have you ever heard the story of the truck stuck under a low bridge? And as the police and firemen and truckdriver battled over getting the cargo off and calling for a tow truck, a child watching the mayhem suggested letting some air out of the tires?
Sometimes the simplest solutions are right in front of us, yet we have trouble seeing them. We look at problems through the lens of the existing paradigms, the status quo.
The COVID crisis has caused many of us to change the way we do business. Our market has changed. Our customers are buying differently – different product mixes, in different quantities, through different channels – causing us all to re-think every aspect of our own business from how we procure, how we market, what we sell, how and to whom; even how we structure the business to deliver what’s required now, more efficiently.
And our people need to have changed too. Curbside pick-up and online orders are exploding. The healthcare sector is overwhelmed, and the hospitality industry has the highest unemployment rate in several decades. How can we change our perspective on how to manage the workforce gaps?
How Do We Get the Truck Unstuck?
Perhaps there are tasks, not jobs, in healthcare that non-healthcare workers can do. Perhaps there are functions at the assisted living homes that family of residents and others in the community can do instead of internal staff. We know of an organization who did just that – they split off job tasks that were not interacting with residents and enlisted those from outside the industry to take them on. And it worked! Not only did it put people back to work who needed a job, it took some of the pressure off the exhausted personal care providers.
“The pandemic caused us to think outside the box for recruitment of support staff in our assisted living facilities. We needed to grow our workforce yet our regular candidate pool had been maxed out. We realized that there were parallel roles in the tourism and hospitality industries where not only did the workers know what to do in laundry, kitchen, custodial, etc. roles but they would also have the right behavioural traits for interacting with our residents. We adapted our recruitment parameters using TalentSorter recruitment software to identify these candidates, and we were able to fill our vacancies quickly.“
-Steven Doiron, Administrator, Inverary Manor
So let’s change the lens, and work out new paradigms to get us re-aligned for future success. Let’s look beyond the truck and the bridge – let’s look at the tires.
Still trying to figure what defines ideal people for positions in your company? Contact us – we’ve got some great tools to help you place the right people in the right roles.