To think employers will have to get used to treating staff better?

[Monopolyiscrap]

In my field like many, there is a shortage of experienced staff. Suddenly the shit employers are all complaining about how they can not get any staff. In a Facebook group for people who do my work, you often get employers posting asking people to advise why they are getting no responses to their job advert. When you look, it is usually because they are being unrealistic in what they are expecting for the money. But they generally do not like being told that.

Good employers are still attracting staff. I got my current job as a friend who was working at the company and told me they were a great employer, and the salary is competitive. Managers treat people well and go out of their way to praise people and offer training and support. Meanwhile, the shit employer I worked for five years ago can't find anyone.

Employers are going to have to get used to treating staff better. AIBU?

@BoodleBug51

It's not nasty or goady to say if you can't recruit then you need to look at your business and why it's not attracting people rather than blaming people for being lazy or not wanting to work. If you haven't got a problem with recruiting then this post isn't about you, if you have, well then take a hard look at your business model - it might just not be viable.

Nothing annoys me more than a sad-face photo from a local cafe that's having to shut down because they can't find any staff. I think if they were paying the going rate and treated staff well they would be fine. Otherwise the business isn't sustainable.

This with bells on. The hospitality industry is rife with calling workers lazy and complaining of a staffing crisis but so many businesses pay minimum wage, don't even provide you with a staff meal, expect you to come in at the drop of a hat, and give you no flexibility over hours. Of course people don't want to work there!

My favourite pub keeps most of its staff for years. It is independent and seems to treat staff really well. Weatherspoons though is struggling.

No, they don't have to get used to treating staff better, they will just recruit from abroad, like the insurance company near me who now imports workers from South Asia.

[quote Monopolyiscrap]@MaryMcCarthy we have been told during the past years that the economy has done well, while in real terms lots of wages have been falling. And it is not just about wages, but about employers treating you decently.
I care about my job, what am I paid and how am I treated. I don't really care if productivity is down or up. Too many times when the economy is booming, it simply means rich people make lots of money.[/quote]
You might not care if productivity is improving, but it's the thing that determines the size and scope of the economy for years to come. Missed opportunities now mean fewer high quality, well paying jobs in the future. It means less innovation, less value being created. It means being left behind by international competitors and in such an economy there's less motivation for employers to treat employees well. It's a race to the bottom.

You're right that a booming economy means rich people making lots of money, but the truth is that in the opposite of a booming economy, we all suffer in one way or another. Of course it's normal to care about your job and your situation, but it's the overall picture that ultimately determines the jobs available to us.

@MaryMcCarthy I find in a booming economy the well off do better, but it does not trickle down. That is a lie. So no I don't care about a booming economy. I care about people on not so great wages finally doing a bit better.

@EvenMoreFuriousVexation

Companies might need to offer higher salary, but if the money isn't in the budget then it will have to come out of other areas. So expect to see companies dropping to statutory minimum sick pay, annual leave, parental leave, travel/subsistence allowance frozen, bonus schemes removed, subsidised canteens removed, free parking withdrawn, no budget for staff events, the cheapest fixtures and fittings possible...

That's it.

There's been recruitment issues in the NHS for years, but without putting up tax or reducing the services offered, wages cannot increase.

Same with care providers - huge amounts of their income cones from local authority contracts, local authorities cannot pay more without increasing council tax and cutting other services.

My last employer loved to boast how much revenue had gone up during covid and then announced they’d be halving shift allowance and anyone who wanted to come off shift had to take a pay cut. I wasn’t getting up at 4:30am for shits and giggles . When I finally left HR hounded me about reimbursing the bonus I had been given a year ago

Yes, we need an increase in tax.
My DP who is not well-paid finally left the NHS a few years ago. His pay increased, but more importantly, his job became more manageable. He always swore that he would never leave the NHS as he was so committed to it. But the job just became unbearable.

If employers are not producing a skilled workforce then isn't that a failure of business?

Yes it is a failure of business. But businesses like to blame employees for everything.
It has long been noted that British employers are very poor at training up and investing in their workforce and this is one recognised reason for low productivity.

Attitudes of management really don't help - DH is looking for his next fixed term contract and companies are expecting a process of up to 4 interviews, drawn out over a few months, because the leaders aren't making time in their diaries and then expecting external candidates to wait around for them.

The job where I felt the most engaged of my career was in a small business, where I could see the difference my efforts made on the bottom line on a daily basis. Wages were too low but there wasn't a huge gap between top and bottom - the owner was a modest man who drove a ford mondeo, not a top of the range tesla, and often spent his own money taking us out for dinner as a thank you for a job well done. He sat in the same office as us, got his hands dirty and helped out when there were difficult clients, instead of just shouting about targets and throwing verbal p45s around.

In contrast, I'm in the most senior role of my career now, but my director chooses not to contact me directly, conducts everything through their PA, and I'm lucky to get 5 minutes with them for projects I'm doing on their behalf. They turn up occasionally to show their face but barely remember anyone's name, because deep down they just don't care.

@Monopolyiscrap

Yes it is a failure of business. But businesses like to blame employees for everything. It has long been noted that British employers are very poor at training up and investing in their workforce and this is one recognised reason for low productivity.

Another reason for low productivity is that employers did not have to automate because they had access to cheap unlimited EU labour for the last 20 years.

Another reason for low productivity is that employers did not have to automate because they had access to cheap unlimited EU labour for the last 20 years.

British productivity has been low for more than just the past 2 decades. It's endemic. Probably because we've developed a culture that would rather someone else spent millions on the costs of treating and supporting road traffic accident victims (for example) because it saves a few quid in streetlighting because "it's someone else's budget".

Even on this thread you've heard tales of firms that would rather pay £500 a day on a contractor than invest in permanent staff.

All of which feeds into the oft-cited trope of "why should I pay for your children's education ?". Which is still a thing.

"Why should I pay for ?"

I used to work in retail part time to bolster my self employed income, did it for many years until recently when my 4 hour contract suddenly became only viable if I could commit to being fully flexible. I had 3 days I couldn’t do and yet my manager kept putting me on shift for those days so I had to keep swapping and in the end had to quit because I was sick and tired of it.

Retail expects to put all its staff on low 4/8 hour contracts, expect you to do twice as much and expect you to be fully committed to the job all week but don’t want to return that flexibility. It makes it so hard for single parents or people like myself to be able to take the vacant positions.

What are the industries with many vacancies can I ask? I work for the civil service for the security and benefits, but now my skills are wasting and I can’t go on. Many years since I worked in the public sector but I have transferrable skills. Just don’t know where to start looking …

My old job (community support, no personal care though), involved a lot of travelling, writing reports, liaising with other services (social workers, housing authorities, medical staff, etc), and 12 hour shifts. It was hard work and mentally draining for which I was paid the princely sum of £8.91. The team were very short staffed but management had absolutely no clue why people weren't applying. During my exit interview I was asked what they could do to make me stay. When I replied "pay more" the answer I got was " sorry we're won't be doing that". 6 months later the vacancies are still unfilled and they are still paying MW.

I'm now working in a factory for £11 ph and a 7.5 hour day. I won't go back to what I was doing before as the money is far less than my earnings now.

During my exit interview I was asked what they could do to make me stay. When I replied "pay more" the answer I got was " sorry we're won't be doing that".

That's a question that deserves a question : What can you offer ?

@Phlewf depends how much salary you are looking for? If about 29/30k DM me and I will tell you where to apply.

Those mentioning the NHS, all NHS jobs (and organisations) aren't created equal, though; I've worked for some truly awful NHS organisations/teams, and I've worked for a couple of really good ones, for the same pay. (When I say good, I mean the workloads are manageable and the management relatively approachable and sensible.) And the absolute worst places I ever worked were a) a tiny company where the management were all beyond insane in every way possible and b) HIgher Education (where the management were all beyond insane...you get the theme). Since I was always fairly honest, if tactful, in telling the management at both of those places why things were always going wrong, you can imagine how popular I was. (And yes, I did usually suggest a solution, not just complain.)

There's a huge recruitment and retention problem in my line of work (not frontline, think more education support) as well, but we've been telling the senior senior senior managers this was going to be a problem for at least 15 years and it's only now that the penny is slowly starting to drop. And I mean slowly. Give it another 2 years or so, and they might get the idea that working from home for those who can 1 or 2 days a week (or even, gasp, full time) is not a bad idea.

Sadly, it's not just the NHS where the Titanic has to sink or the building burn down before anything actually gets done about it.

There's also a lack of people wanting to go into management roles, strangely enough. They've either done what I did and already managed in previous roles and decided it's not worth the hassle and the tiny bit of extra money, or they're just not interested in the first place.

It's only now that the generation above me (sometimes called the Baby Boomers, but that oversimplifies things drastically) have felt able to retire, whether due to finances or other reasons - there's a whole cohort finally going, all together. My generation, mostly, just isn't interested any more, thanks; we're quite keen on work-life balance, in general.

This lack of interest in senior roles does mean, though, that occasionally much, much younger people, often without much experience at all, are now being put into really quite senior roles. And that can bring its own difficulties, both for the managers themselves, and for the people/departments being managed.

It's all so geography related as well - unemployment rates in the north east of England, where I grew up, are still really high; where I've lived in between then and now, mainly in the south of England (though different parts), there are "Help Wanted" signs pretty much everywhere I look at the minute...

@DGRossetti

During my exit interview I was asked what they could do to make me stay. When I replied "pay more" the answer I got was " sorry we're won't be doing that".

That's a question that deserves a question : What can you offer ?

Their offer was to reduce my working day to 10 hours but keep the pay at the same rate. They seemed a bit bewildered when I refused that.

I was thinking this last night.
I work in hospitality over the last few months half the team left so we are slogging ourselves every 12 to 13 hr day.weekends eves all the Xmas and Easter holidays etc.
I was told a pay rise was requested for me as my pay can now be obtained easily elsewhere with a low skill level and No formal training.
So far nothing just the odd agency telling me they get twice my rate of pay and I'm responsible for them.
I doubt we will recruit anyone for the rate they are offering so the remains team will drift away.
Ridiculous.

The pandemic has made it much more important for employers to offer benefits such as flexible working I agree.

Catering, hospitality and retail businesses who can't attract enough staff will eventually have to change their model or close their doors. Once the 40% energy price increase kicks in properly, a lot of people will be watching their spend on coffees, meals and non-essentials, and the bills for places such as restaurants will be even higher.

In early years care and elder care, I worry that provision will simply be lost because parents / elderly cannot pay any more for their care, and businesses will not be able to get the staff on minimum rates of pay. What I would like to see happen is more employee owned cooperatives offering these types of services, where any profit is distributed amongst the workers.

I left my previous job due to the toxic atmosphere, pay was ok but atmosphere was awful. I’d literally cry most nights after work and I spent the weekend dreading Monday morning. I lasted 5 months 😢 Previously I’ve always lasted at least 6 years in a job so this is really unusual for me.

I'm fairly intelligent but have no interest in promotions, climbing the ladder etc. My last employers attitude was that as I was in a particular job role any suggestions that I made outside of that were not worth listening. I should know my place.
An example would be a spreadsheet on excel that was having to be manually updated, have information moved around, several sheets etc. They had no concept of tables, filter and sort which could have saved them hours if they had given me 30 seconds to format it.
I don't necessarily want a huge amount of pay but a fair wage, recognition of my skills and the opportunity to use and build on them.
I found this attitude very disrespectful and one of the reasons for the high staff turnover.