Q. What is a creative way to attract qualified employees to my business?

June 9, 2016 | 2016 CEO Survey: Workforce, Health Care are Top Priorities Michele Farrell & Kathleen Riessen, Measured Intentions, mfarrell@measuredintentions.com

Q. What is a creative way to attract qualified employees to my business?

A. Marketing is most often used to attract external customers to buy or utilize a company’s products and services.

However, in today’s tight workforce climate, attracting and keeping great employees can be just as important as (and sometimes even more important than) attracting great customers.

More than 80 percent of employers in the Iowa Association of Business and Industry’s Annual CEO Survey reported meeting their workforce needs in five to 10 years as their top or second to top business concern.

Many Iowa companies are actually turning down jobs because they don’t have the workforce necessary to meet the required production timelines.

Human resource departments are already charged with everything from navigating the new health care laws to handling employee relations issues, and now they are supposed to be experts in how to market to prospective employees.

Workforce marketing has emerged as a unique niche to help companies recruit and retain the best workers by applying proven and innovative marketing techniques. Marketing to future employees must be done just as thoughtfully as marketing to future customers. Workforce marketing must therefore include these key steps:

  1.  An investigative research audit conducted by an objective thirdparty to identify exactly what employees value (and what bugs them) and an understanding of the employer’s value and perception within the community.
  2. A strategic plan including both short-term and long-term strategies to fill immediate needs with the right employee, not just the available employee, and avoid deep employment gaps in the future. A plan should also incorporate strategies to attract untapped workforce markets and increase employee retention.
  3. Oversight for consistent implementation. Once the plan is created, it can often be implemented by the HR department.
  4. Continual evaluation and adjustments as best practices yielding the best results are discovered. Workforce strategies and best practices often vary by region, rural/urban setting, skill-set desired and characteristics of the available workforce. Employing focused and targeted workforce marketing strategies can ensure that your company will have enough hands on deck to be able to say, “Yes, we can do that” to every customer brought to your door.