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Recipes against skills shortage

The old ones retire and nothing comes after that. How business can win the fight for good personnel in times of fight.

The baby boomer generation will retire soon and in various businesses a gap will be created. However, there are small to medium sized businesses who nearly all fill their open positions in a timely manner. What are they doing differently compared to the competition?

Favoured employers place emphasis on communication. Many small to medium sized businesses do not want to be in the press and are surprised afterwards to have a small number of applicants’ despite of attractive job offers. “No matter how trivial it sounds, in order to have an applicant have interest into a business, he needs to know about it. Only one, who works actively on their image and on their publicity as a company as well as working as an attractive employer, will get sufficient applicants for open positions”, advises your personnel consultant Hans Ulrich Gruber.

Meeting applicants face-to-face

“Are we taking trade fairs for apprenticeships as serious as industry trade fairs? – Businesses should ask themselves this question, if they are missing secondary growth. The experience is that businesses who regularly take part in trade fairs for apprenticeships have no problem with secondary growth. As long as the company as a whole carries weight”, tells the personnel consultant. Positive examples from Upper Frankonia are Metalution GmbH or Federnfabrik Dietz GmbH. Both businesses recruit a large number of future staff at working and apprenticeship fairs.

The Critical success factor: working atmosphere

For current applications the working atmosphere is the most important factor. This statement can be supported by a recent study of the university of Bamberg Otto-Friedrich (see Bewerbungspraxis 2015, Centre of Human Resources Information Systems (CHRIS), Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg). Even before “flexible working hours” and a reasonable remuneration is the working atmosphere placed as the first criteria for the attractiveness of an employer. “To work on this is not only wise to overcome the lack of skilled workers. Pleased employees are key to more innovation, growth and customer satisfaction”, so Gruber.

„Simplified one can bring the topic down to the following formula: working atmosphere plus communication plus apprenticeship trade fairs are fields of work for sufficient secondary growth!”
Hans Ulrich Gruber, ihrPersonalberater

For the empirical study,  Bewerbungspraxis 2015, the university Bamberg questioned 7,000 job seekers on the internet.

Bild: © MK-Photo – fotolia