Employers Are Struggling to Hire Workers. Here Are 4 Things They Can Do about It.

Offer higher wages—and not just signing bonuses. To attract workers, including hourly employees, some employers have resorted to signing bonuses. Restaurants, for example, are offering bonuses when people are hired or after a period of a few months.

Although a signing bonus puts money in someone’s pocket immediately, far more impactful is for employers to pay more than minimum wage as recognition of employees’ value to the organization. Amazon, for example, is offering an average of $17 per hour, above the minimum wage of $15 per hour.

Giving no-layoff guarantees to employees, perhaps after a probation period, would increase engagement and reduce mistrust.

After making massive layoffs in the early days of the pandemic, many employers announced in 2020 that they would cease making cuts in their payrolls as a way to stem anxiety among workers. It’s time for employers to make these pledges again as they bring back furloughed workers or hire new people.

The pandemic has hit working women particularly hard, with one in four considering leaving the workforce or scaling back their careers compared with one in five men.

Among the hardest hit have been working mothers, especially those with children under the age of 10, due to childcare needs and at-home learning. Employers can provide child-care benefits and flexible working hours.

Understand employees’ discomfort with in-person work. While many organizations are preparing to resume some degree of in-person work, a recent survey reported that 31 percent of workers said they were not comfortable with returning physically to the workplace.

Understanding how employees feel can help business leaders gauge the importance of offering flexible solutions, possibly including a hybrid of in-person and remote work.