As we round the bend to the end of the year, hiring is most likely still front and center in your span of awareness.
In this month’s newsletter, older workers are coming back to the workforce even as other are leaving, and why you should stop offering referral bonuses if you want to increase your DEI efforts.
Older Workers Coming Back in Droves
A year ago we were seeing older workers flee from the workforce. Today, it’s the opposite. Inflation and a struggling stock market have driven some retirees back to the workforce, and it’s a good time for companies to revisit their practices and policies around things like:
Age discrimination, which 78% claim to have experienced, according to the AARP
Flexible work, which older workers increasingly prefer
Company culture in general — does yours support a multi-generational workforce?
Of course, every employee is different, every workplace is different, and every company culture is different. But as a recruiter for 12+ years, it’s clearly a great time to reassess the way you attract and cater to workers across generations.
But Other Employees Are Leaving
Why are employees leaving their jobs right now? BambooHR cites the following stats:
80% have their sights set on career growth
34% want a remote job
72% have rethought their careers as a direct result of the pandemic
What would get them to stay? Flexible/remote work schedules and more growth opportunity within the company.
None of this is really news anymore, but one fun fact I took away from Bamboo’s recent survey is that 57% of workers have considered leaving their jobs because of a coworker they did not care for. That’s the majority! What do they not like about their coworkers? Well, they’re lazy, gossipy, and loud.
As a Executive Recruiter, rarely does a job seeker come to me complaining that their last workplace was full of loud gossip-mongers, but people are sometimes willing to tell an anonymous survey something they wouldn’t tell a hiring manager, boss, or even a recruiter.
Recommended Reading
Stop Offering Referral Bonuses
Creating more diversity within ranks is a major focus of a lot of companies today. Unfortunately, one of the most-often promoted ways of finding talent is also one of the worst ways to increase diversity, and that’s with referral bonuses.
This is partly an intuitive truth. If you ask your current roster of employees to recommend people from their network, it’s likely you’ll get more people just like your current employees. There are exceptions to this, of course, but still.
Payscale’s recent survey of over 50K workers backs up this theory with hard data. Their finding was that referral programs benefit white men more than any other demographic, and benefit women of color the least.
Turn away from referral bonuses and turn toward other recruiting efforts — like hiring a recruiter with a more diverse candidate base than you can muster on your own. This is something I can help you with today.
James Johnson
Johnson Recruiting Group