Ever since the pandemic, businesses across the country have seen a decline in overall job seekers. And it’s an issue here in Humboldt County.
Redwood News spoke to the owner of Express Employment Professionals, Shelley Nilsen, to get insight why employment is low and what businesses can do to change that.
“We don’t have overall quite the same proportion of people in the workforce. and our unemployment rate is already low,” Nilsen said. “4.7% is a low unemployment rate while 5% is considered full employment.”
Shelley Nilsen says that there are multiple ways businesses and organizations can recruit to gain people’s interests and build a healthy environment for employees; like wage expectations, scheduling, communication, and especially here in humboldt—transportation.
“If there’s a way that you can align either your schedule with a bus line, if there is one nearby, or provide some commuting stipend,” Nilsen said. “Where are there opportunities to make it easier for people to be able to do the work that you need to have done?
But the most important thing Nilsen says businesses should focus on is workplace culture.
“You’ve got to hire, you’ve got to be able to get people in the door, but you also got to stop them from going out the back door and that comes down to your culture,” Nilsen said. “If you don’t have a healthy culture where people feel supported and built up and want to, in turn, support and build up the organization, then you’re going to be constantly trying to bring people back in at the same time that you’re trying to hire from the front.”
A big impact on the workforce is the amount of burnout employees have been experiencing–during and after the pandemic.
“You know, when i talk to people who are thinking of of shifting careers, there’s kind of an element of burnout there usually […]you know, if there’s a way to help somebody kind of manage that stress get over the burnout, you might see some people decide to stay in careers,” Nilsen said. “After that, the peak of covid, when you started seeing the numbers come down and people are starting to feel less fear, we started seeing people leave health care in droves to some degree, some of that was people are just exhausted.”
So when you are looking to recruit or hire, think of this…
“As an organization, are you looking at your culture? Are you looking at what you can do to create as much healthy work, culture and environment as possible?” Nilsen said.
