The Great Resignation, that’s what they’ve been calling it. Amid pandemic burnout, supply chain breakdown and inflation panic, Americans all over have decided that life is too short to work in a job that is not fully satisfying to them. And without hesitation, they’ve been walking off into the sunset to find something new. To put this into perspective, 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs in November alone. While Southern California and Orange County seem to be less impacted than other states, the area is by no means immune to this phenomenon.
In the beginning this movement was driven by many who had grown accustomed to working from home throughout the 2020 lockdown, and the thought of returning to a traditional office setting was not agreeable to them. But as those departures began to influence business results, companies clamored to entice new candidates to replace them. Some of these organizations changed their models to allow for more flexibility – less hours, more vacation, hybrid arraignments. Others took an older approach and lobbed large wages and compensation packages to attract new talent. When this latter strategy began, it sparked a bidding war where everyone began to seek higher and higher paychecks to compensate for their time and the employers offered higher and higher salaries in response to entice prospective candidates. This, in turn, caused the rotation of the machine to spin out of control even further. Younger generations, who were already 15% more likely to change jobs than their older counterparts, jumped ship at the sight of any significant finical increase only exacerbating the driving mechanism. Thus began a job-hoping strategy where an employee may only stay in a position for a matter of months before moving on to the next opportunity. For perspective, historically a worker could be expected to spend an average of six or seven years on a job before moving on to another venture. The most recent survey by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that has dropped to 4.2 years and everything from the most recent 12 month period indicates that number continues to trend down.
As if this merry-go-round were not spinning fast enough, a recent Harris Poll survey reported in USA Today revealed that as many as one in five workers who quit their job now regret the decision, wishing that they had remained in their old jobs rather than chase supposedly greener pastures. So, this means there is one more reason for these employees to continue their leapfrog strategy; higher wages, more flexibility and now the same contentment they had from their original job.
What does all this mean for you, a hiring director or human resources leader? It means the headache that is HR onboarding in Southern California is not going away any time soon. You’re going to continue to see turn over in your roster at a breakneck pace. And when you post an opening to fill, you will have an avalanche of applicants trying to fill that space. It could be worse, obviously. Too many applicants are always a better problem than not enough, but how are you going to be able to manage all of this?
First and foremost, make sure you have some sort of workflow in place. You probably think this is not an issue as you’re not new to hiring, but is your current workflow manageable if you double the new hires and quadruple your candidate list? Is it as efficient as it could be? Where are your bottlenecks and delays coming from? How can they be rerouted or removed all together? Second, does your process fit for your current environment? Are your new hires remote or in office? What about your HR team and department heads? Are you mailing or faxing documents requiring signatures and then waiting for them to be sent back to you for the next step? Are your forms and files cloud enabled to allow for sharing or reviewing as needed?
A Document Management Workflow is a perfect solution for improving an HR Departments' onboarding process for today’s age and circumstances. By digitizing the forms and cloud enabling them, you and your team can not only easily access them from wherever you are working, but you can work on the same document in real time. E-signature integration can allow you to collect all proper authorizations from department heads to candidates with legal authentication certification, allowing you to finalize documents and hiring’s without needing to be in the same building or even time zone. Finally, remove all that paper and free up your space. No more need for a bank of filing cabinets filling up the halls. Now a digital filing cabinet can hold all of your files and be easily searched by computer, laptop or tablet. Not only will your new paperwork be completely digitized and easily searchable, but your previous files can also be added into the platform for future access and reviews.
Curious to hear how Document Management Workflow has helped a real organization in onboarding? Check out this case study from a Minnesota school district with 31 campuses that recently took advantage of this tool specifically to make hiring more efficient.
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