Article

Hourly workers: The new endangered species?

The hourly labor market is getting tighter all the time for restaurateurs. A new national study reveals what these workers want and sheds light on how restaurateurs might attract and keep the best and brightest.

August 5, 2016 by S.A. Whitehead — Food Editor, Net World Media Group

The shortage of hourly workers is quickly becoming one of the biggest issues facing restaurateurs in the U.S, and as we head into fall, restaurant industry leaders will be forced to pay close attention to this aspect of their businesses. Not only does the nation face some pretty massive labor law changes at the end of this year, but the demand for hourly workers is growing, while unemployment and labor participate rates are both shrinking.

To keep their restaurants operating, leaders must understand how to attract and keep the best of these workers.

"I will tell you that it's extremely tight right now," Fazoli's CEO Carl Howard, said in a phone interview with QSRWeb. "I had a meeting just yesterday with all our general mangers around here in Dayton and what we're finding is that right now certain pockets of the area seem to be having more difficulty than others. … But in my opinion overall, the labor market is tightening and becoming more challenging and that's only going to increase in 30 to 45 days as kids go back to school."

Fazoli's experience is representative of the hourly labor market as a whole. That fact — along with the approach of what will surely soon be changes in hourly worker pay, as well as new overtime regulations that kick in this December — guarantees that restaurateurs are in for a bumpy ride when it comes to keeping and maintaining quality, satisfied restaurant staff.

This environment, along with the coming regulatory changes, prompted hourly worker mega-recruiter, Snagajob, to join with Peoplelytics and Loyalogy to conduct a massive online survey of hourly workers to gain a better understanding of what this labor pool is about, how workers look at their hourly jobs and how employers might best attract the best among them.

Recently, QSRweb.com interviewed Snagajob CEO Peter Harrison about some of the key findings of the research and how restaurateurs and other hourly employers and employees, might best use the study's results to connect people and jobs.

Q: Why does Snagajob leadership assert that the overtime regulations that become effective in December will prompt more employers to hire greater number of hourly workers for fewer hours each, as a way to work around the new regulations?
A: With the new OT law, employers are faced with an increased cost without an increase in production, all while continuing to struggle with the increased cost of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). We expect that employers will look for ways to maintain existing levels of production without additional costs, similar to what we saw in 2010 when ACA launched.

Q: If hourly workers are — as your survey findings indicate — more mobile these days and more likely to patch together a network of jobs to earn a living, how does that affect work quality and employer commitment?
A: Hourly job diversification does not necessarily equate to poor job performance or a non-commitment to employers. It simply shows a desire for more work. … Performance quality and a commitment to employers correlate to a worker's ability to maintain a sustainable quality of life, regardless of the kind of work or number of jobs they have.

However, with that said, millennials — who will make up almost 75 percent of the workforce by 2025 — are driving workforce trends and forcing us to modify traditional views of company engagement, loyalty and even retirement.

(For instance) 91 percent of them expect to have 15 to 20 jobs over the course of their lives.These social and digital natives push employers to re-think how they engage and connect with employees.

Goodbye (to) full benefits, siloed competition, and predictability. Welcome (in) passion, relationships, variety, co-working and frequent change. Employers can help retain millennial workers by offering workplace benefits like flexibility, something we see of particular interest to this demographic.

Q: What are the most important issues for hourly workers, according to your research?
A:The desire for more hours and the willingness to work more jobs to get those hours seem to be the most important issues for hourly workers now. When you couple this with hot legislative topics on the national stage now (like) Fight for $15 (campaign to raise the minimum wage and) Ban the Box (campaign to change criminal history disclosures on job applications), it is clear that their desire for more hours and more pay is indicative of a shrinking candidate pool and more competitive landscape.

Q: If you were an hourly employer or a restaurateur, how would you — given your survey results — attract and retain the best hourly workers in the current job market?
A: It is important to understand what workers want and implement recruitment and (retention) strategies that play to those wants. With a low national unemployment rate and steadily declining labor participation rate, it is a job seeker's market and employers can’t afford to ignore these desires.

That means going mobile, optimizing job postings and applications, making onboarding processes seamless and easy, and creating communication efficiencies, all through mobile devices. Then employers must retain these workers by offering workplace benefits like flexibility and growth opportunities.

About S.A. Whitehead

Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb editor Shelly Whitehead is a former newspaper and TV reporter with an affinity for telling stories about the people and innovative thinking behind great brands.