Every employer can relate to the challenge of finding employees, let alone good employees. According to experts, many people do not want to work and those that do sometimes bring with them unrealistic expectations. In a hunt for quality people, business owners turn to employment services to help them find the needle in a haystack. Recently, a group of staffing and human resource executives met at a roundtable sponsored by City National Bank and held in Las Vegas to discuss their industry and the battle they face with their clients and employees in Nevada.
Tarah Richardson, editor-in-chief of Nevada Business Magazine, served as moderator for the event. These monthly roundtables bring together different industries to discuss issues and solutions.
What Differences Are There in Employees From Generation to Generation?
Jaime Cruz: For the past decades, our birth rates have been declining. We are making less of the future workforce [for] tomorrow. We still can’t 3D print [people], despite all the advancements.
Bob Daniel: The biggest challenge deals with the expectations of one generation vis-a-vis the next generation. It is so different and diverse in terms of what they expect. Individuals nowadays will say they need Fridays off and [when an employer tells them] they can’t have Friday’s off, they will find somebody that will give them Friday’s off. That is a cultural difference and that is generational because Baby Boomers would work whatever hours they needed to work. If it were 10 hours a day, they would work 10 hours a day. And in today’s environment, a 22-year-old or a 23-year-old [places emphasis on] quality of life. They want to limit the number of hours. They want to limit the amount of work they do, but they want to be compensated extremely well.
Cruz: By 2030, just six years from now, every member of the [Baby Boomer] generation will be of retiring age. If that does not scare you, I do not know what else will, because with that departure, there is nowhere near the amount of supply coming in to fill it. Hopefully that supply demand equation [will have some] reliable solutions because it is not in the numbers so far.
Sarah Grimstead: [COVID] changed the mindset of even Gen X and Baby Boomer [employees]. We have not yet seen it go back. People who would have been at work 10 hours a day are okay with achieving less as long as the balance that they need in life [is there]. Secondary to that, the younger generation entering the workforce are motivated by different things. They want to be compensated in a way that, maybe, they have not yet earned.
Cruz: Two weeks ago, there was a young person [who came to us]. He is 23 years old and, before the pandemic, he was working in the hospitality business and serving food. Pre-COVID, he was [earning] $10 an hour plus tips. A restaurant [now] was offering $25 an hour plus tips. We told him there was a job opportunity that matched perfectly with his past experience and [he asked,] “Would they go to $35? Can we do a hybrid situation? Would they be okay with me bringing my emotional support animal?” I really thought I was dreaming. [His] final question was, “When you call them about the $35, would you ask them what the company’s stand on climate change is?”
Daniel: What I am seeing on the client side is a disconnect that is industry specific. You can look at certain industries and an individual that is Gen X or Z will work well in a particular industry, but not so well in another. For example, Las Vegas has an increase in warehouses that are opening up and is going to become a distribution hub. You have companies that are leaving California, moving to Las Vegas, opening up literally hundreds of thousands of square feet and moving their employees from California. When you look at what they are looking for in terms of skill set and experience, I am finding that they are looking for millennials because of the perceived work ethic in terms of what their expectations are.
Jason Bivins: [Employers] have to cater to [generations] differently. Maybe it means [offering] different work hours or trying to throw more perks at employees. That is super important. We have to be flexible to make them want to stay.
Grimstead: Employers need to meet the younger generations where they are. They value development and skills, much more so than older generations. Putting in programs that are going to speak to people in those generations and give them what they need increases retention and encourages the type of discretionary effort that every employer is looking for in their employee base.
Bivins: Being creative with scheduling is huge. A good example is In-N-Out and the way they operate. They are forward-thinking in terms of their scheduling. Most people are part-time, which some people [view] as negative, but the younger generation does not necessarily want to work 40 hours [a week]. They are happy working 25 or 30 and [In-N-Out] is able to create a schedule of four or five days off [while] still serving their customers.
Daniel: There is [also] a skills gap here in Las Vegas. It continues to be something that is out of sync in terms of what the employers are looking for and what an individual brings to the table. We administer a variety of assessments and tests to try and get at what a person’s true skills are and an individual will say they are a 10, but when you administer them the assessment, [they are] a two. There is truly a skills mismatch going on and it needs to be addressed because candidates often do not understand why they have not gotten a job.
How Can Businesses Attract and Retain Talent?
Grimstead: If you want choice employees, you must be an employer of choice. You can’t not offer programs that attract the right type of talent, not pay for the type of talent you are trying to attract and then expect [employees] to still want to come work for you. And if you do get them, you can’t expect them to stay.
Daniel: When you look at the specific industries and the specific clients that we all deal with, it is incumbent upon us to have candid conversations [with employers]. The day of being able to get a warehouse or an office worker at $12 an hour is gone. We have an obligation to help our clients realize that times have changed, the expectations of employees have changed, and you will get what you pay for.
Grimstead: A lot of women left the workforce during COVID because the responsibility of childcare and child learning responsibilities, even in a two-parent household, tend to fall on the woman. What employers can do [for women] is job sharing programs and flexible work hours. [Employers] need to look at productivity and output versus an 8:00am to 5:00pm, in the office, mentality. [Those changes can] pull people who can’t get back into the workforce, back in. Doing that with older workers and offering something that works for their lifestyle and maximizes their skill sets can [also] help fill those positions.
Laura Nowlan: I have had my best success hiring 16 year olds. They come in as sponges and want to be developed and become very loyal. Hiring someone who already has a lot of experience in the workplace as a recruiter and wants to run everything the way they used to run it somewhere else where the culture was totally different [can be challenging].
Cruz: We had a big win in the last legislative session. We work with employers and [encourage them to have] internships and to build a pipeline by getting to know a kid when he is 14 or 15. That was difficult because there was a law that said that before a Clark County School District (CCSD) intern enters [a business], all [the employees] have to go through a background check – for one intern to be there. Maybe that is not that bad [if the business is small], but the Bellagio, with 10,000 employees, [makes it impossible]. Even for a small business the logistical or price of that is enough of a burden. We advocated and legislators listened, they have changed that. So now, if we want to put a CCSD intern [at a business], the only person that needs to get a background check is the direct person that intern is going to be reporting to, which makes sense because we want to protect the child.
Grimstead: Employers need to be intentional about culture and the overall benefits [they are] offering. What does work-life balance look like for the employees? Why would someone want to work here? And how do you maintain a culture and provide the type of development, feedback and incentives to keep employees so that you can take your business [to the next level].
What Are Some Out of the Box Solutions?
Nowlan: I started looking into Mexico. There are visa programs already in place. Now [we need to] educate the community on the visa programs. We need to position ourselves to compete worldwide.
Cruz: We have been successful with the Hope for Prisoners program. It reaches into the justice system and tries to identify folks who are ready for a second chance. Employers need to be open to that. Across the nation, a reentry program that is half successful is [considered] good and gets funded by the federal government. [Hope for Prisoners] is 90 percent [successful]. [Meaning that] 90 percent of the people that complete it do not reoffend. That is good news for the employer. But there is still a stigma.
Daniel: A lot of [hiring previous offenders] depends upon what that violation was. For example, [a bank may be rightly] concerned about hiring someone that [was incarcerated for] embezzlement, but maybe that individual [can work as a] janitor. Those are the types of things we look at. It is job specific. We do give second chances and third chances. But there is a process that employers have got to go through, and not enough employers are doing that. They are basically saying, “well you have a conviction, so I will see you later.”
Cruz: Giving [offenders] a second chance is not only a social imperative, or a good thing to do, it is a business imperative. If we do not give these folks a second chance at supporting themselves and supporting their family themselves, then we [will be responsible to do that as a community]. It is just another labor pool that we have doubled down on.
Daniel: California has “banned the box”. You cannot ask about a conviction. We have not gotten there yet in Nevada. You can still ask that conviction question. If we could get to “ban the box”, then we could be more proactive in dealing with individuals that have previously been incarcerated.
Are Employers Supportive of Remote Work?
Grimstead: The biggest challenge that employers are facing today is the ongoing disconnect between what employees want and what employers want them to do. [That includes] the ongoing challenges of a hybrid workforce and remote work.
Daniel: [Support of remote work is] industry-specific because it is difficult to be as flexible as maybe a business would like to be if they are in a distribution environment [for example]. You have trucks coming in. They have to be loaded and unloaded in a specified period of time and you need to have adequate staff there in order to do that. It is industry specific. Some of the more administrative types of positions can certainly be more flexible because it boils down to the results [as opposed to physically being there].
Nowlan: I have mixed emotions on [remote work] since I went remote. At the beginning of 2023 I felt like a brand-new startup. It was the hardest thing to learn how to remotely oversee the operation. [I constantly heard] “I am at the office and my camera’s not working” or “I am doing the walk through” but they really were not there. There are very few people that still work for me remotely, but they earned that right to work remotely because I can trust them. It has been very difficult.
Daniel: You can look at a lot of metrics to see what an individual is doing. Even in distribution, you can look at metrics. But it is industry specific. I don’t know how you would allow someone to work remotely if they are supposed to be unloading a truck.
What Impact Is AI Having on Workforce Development?
Daniel: It is too early [to say]. Some companies are on the [forefront] of utilizing AI. [But] it is too early to determine how, for example, a distribution center would use AI. Amazon is the best indicator [of the future use of AI], but some of the smaller and medium-sized warehouses, have not gotten there yet. There is some degree of automation, but they are not at the point of using robots to go down and grab things.
Grimstead: The adoption of AI [in businesses] is moving at the speed of light right now. In April 2023, 31 percent of business owners surveyed said that they were thinking about AI relative to their business. That surged in just a three-month time span. We did the same survey and asked the same question in July of 2023 and [the number] surged to 56 percent.
Bivins: AI has not [significantly] impacted the average size business or employer. It is not speeding up the process in terms of finding [the right employee]. It will be at some point with interactive interviews, [but today] there is still legwork that is done either by agencies or internal recruiters. It [requires] tedious and messy work to find that person. Many people are using HR AI tools, but they still need boots on the ground and recruiters talking to them.
Daniel: Many companies are using [AI] and there are a lot of diverse ways to use it. But, you still have to have human interaction to make a final decision.
Cruz: We do not know for certainty what [impact] AI [will have on staffing] despite the common belief that it eliminates jobs. Yes, it eliminates jobs, but it also creates new ones. We are still going to need people. Some jobs will go away [with the increased use of technology] but new jobs that require higher skills will come along.
Grimstead: AI is absolutely becoming essential in businesses, but they are not keeping up from a training perspective or [creating internal] policies around AI. [For example,] if your employee enters proprietary information into ChatGPT, and you do not have a license for that, you no longer have confidentiality. Now, your proprietary information is out there for everyone else to use.
Nowlan: We need to continue developing the workforce to work in robotics and with AI. We do not have people qualified to even do that type of work [in Nevada]. We are not even training [employees] in those areas that we really need to or in the amount that we should be.
Grimstead: It is not as simple as saying we need to upskill workers into learning AI, although that is absolutely part of it. It is not as simple as saying we need to bridge the employment gap by creating these efficiencies by using technology. Business owners need to have an overriding philosophy and approach to this new technology, because if they do not have a plan, they are going to find themselves behind the eight ball with a lot of information that they did not intend to have exposed. Creating policies, training employees and making sure that they are using the technology in the right and most effective way is key to maximizing this phenomenal technology.
