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Like many other industries, staff shortages can have an impact on in-person and group incentive travel events. Experienced meeting planners have the right connections, experience, and creativity to get things done. Challenging situations due to short staffing can’t always be avoided, but there are ways to minimize their impact. (1)

Stephanie Ferguson, Director of Global Employment Policy & Special Initiatives at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, indicated that during the pandemic reshuffling, jobs that require in-person attendance and often have lower wages have had more challenges retaining workers than other occupations. For example, the leisure, hospitality, and retail industries have had the highest quit rates since November 2020, consistently above 4.5 percent. But at the same time, the hiring rate has been even higher. Leisure and hospitality lost one million workers in November 2021, but 1.2 million people were hired into the industry that same month.

Leisure and hospitality have maintained the highest hiring rate of all industries since November 2020 at 8.1 percent. This is double the national hiring rate which recently hovered around 4.4 percent. (2)

Staffing challenges, to one degree or another, will always be present. The following is a guide to help you meet those challenges head-on and at the same time create a work environment that will attract new employees and retain the current ones.

1) Retain Existing Employees

What’s the one certain way to avoid staff shortages?  Keep your existing employees happy with the culture, the work they do, and your organization! (Read here and here  for more information.)  Consider workloads. Make sure they are evenly distributed and, if needed, take creative steps to mitigate work overload, such as:

  • Allow employees to work remotely.
  • Consider a four-day work week with 10-hour shifts.
  • Job flexibility.
  • Allow two longer work weeks, with the third week only four days (and a paid day off).
  • Pay existing employees more.
  • Offer better benefits.
  • Show you appreciate them.
  • Keep the morale high with encouragement and avoid gossip

Another factor to consider is compensation for current employees. New hires are being paid more than existing employees. According to Nadine Evans of Employment Benefit News, “U.S. employers are offering more lucrative deals to attract and secure the talent they need, both in terms of salary and workplace perks. While this means great opportunities for workers in transition who are looking to fill new roles, existing employees may question why their compensation doesn’t equal that of new recruits. These employees are well within their rights to take issue with staff being brought in at their level and earning more money.” (3)

HR professionals must remain objective and make every decision on a case-by-case basis. If someone is doing excellent work and their contribution to the organization is valued, you don’t want to lose them. The organization will need to consider a variety of practical solutions. The answer may be a salary adjustment, but it could also be increasing an employee’s responsibilities or implementing a progression plan. An effective way to improve productivity and drive your organization is to set goals and schedule regular performance reviews, giving employees clear objectives to work toward to earn the pay raise or promotion they are looking for. Not only does this demonstrate that you are willing to invest in their progression, but it also shows your team that there is a clear career path for them within the business. (3)

PRO TIP:
Keep in mind that not every employee desires increased responsibilities or promotion opportunities. Some employees desire learning, fresh perspectives, and tackling challenges. One employee, for example, may offer the greatest contribution by thriving on solving complex issues. Another employee may serve as the resident expert on certain protocols, industries, technology, etc. And finally, other employees may want to vary perspectives by switching from different departments to explore more such as transitioning from sales to marketing; customer service to sales; IT to research and development; and so forth. Offer these options in addition to the more traditional promotion or increased responsibility pathways.

2) Offer Cross-Training and Seek Talent with Multi-talented Skills
Mastering a single skill is great but having a diversified skill set is in high demand. Cross-train existing staff in a different area of expertise to enable them to do each other’s roles if needed. When hiring talent consider those with a variety of skills and experiences. Provide additional training and opportunities to gain experience. This might include cross-department interactions and job training.

PRO TIP:
Find out what your employees, whether long-term or new hires enjoy doing the most. Get feedback from managers, co-workers, and customers about what each employee is good at doing. Look for gaps in specialty skills within your talent pool so you can identify what additional training might need to take place. Allow employees who enjoy certain work and who are excellent at doing it to take on those responsibilities or add to their workload especially when staff shortages occur.

3) Develop Candidate and Supplier Pools for Talent
Temporary agencies can be great for unskilled talent. But when highly skilled, experienced talent is needed it’s critical that you have a partner who has taken the time to recruit, train, and have the right talent ready when you need it. This might mean utilizing a supplier network, vetting it, and sampling them on a smaller scale. You can also bring them to work if you need them on a bigger scale.

PRO TIP:
Contracting work can be a great way to navigate staffing shortages, especially regarding larger events such as high profile, in-person global meetings or group incentive travel programs. Bring in a professional agency to support you where you need it the most, such as researching the venue, negotiating with your vendors, tapping an existing vendor network, or augmenting onsite support. This way, you can focus on the event and let your contract partner manage the smaller details for a fantastic experience for you and your attendees.

4) Create Training Programs
Training programs, whether you create them or purchase a program that can provide the basics and you fill in the more specifics of your organization, can ensure training consistency. For example:

  • Look at training programs that provide meeting and event planning basics that align with your organization’s goals, approach, and philosophy.
  • Offer education to learn more about apps, websites, or other tools that are part of your standard tools.
  • Build a reference library of books, thought leader blogs, and industry publications, that your job candidates, new hires, and existing employees should be tapping.
  • Encourage attendance at local events and functions or participation in volunteer activities to learn how to plan and execute events, and meetings.
  • Identify the professional certifications that are most meaningful to your organization and encourage your employees to obtain them.
  • Consider a partnership with a local college or technical school.

PRO TIP:
Offer incentives to employees to achieve additional training and education and go the extra mile to add value to themselves and your organization. One way to do this is to establish a set of training goals and/or certifications that your company values most. Some of these will be specific to employees and have unique roles and duties. Others will be more general and applicable to almost all employees.  For example, all employees can benefit from safety training, but training about your target audience might be best for those in marketing and sales. An incentive can be based on how many training hours, certifications have been achieved, etc., and then awarded to the top achievers at the end of the year.

5) Eliminate Redundant or Mundane Tasks
Meeting planners can use automation to minimize employee workloads and reduce the impact of staffing shortages. Utilizing automation frees up more time for employees and thus increases their working efficiency and helps with productivity. The implementation of automation can impact an organization at any time, but its relevance is even more critical during staff shortages. Here are a few ways that automation can be used to help current workers do more with less:

  • Chatbots – Chatbots (e.g., ManyChat) can provide 24/7/365 answers and support through a website, eCommerce site, email, SMS/text, or social media. A chatbot is a fantastic way for attendees to ask questions and receive answers, address concerns in real-time, gain insight into the event, get directions, receive feedback, etc.
  • Social Media Dashboards – Social media dashboards (e.g., Emplifi, Hootsuite, Sendible) can help schedule, post, monitor, and easily interact with audiences, generate reports, and do so across multiple social media channels/platforms. While scheduling social media posts does indeed free up time for employees, there are other valuable uses for a social media dashboard. A huge asset of a social media dashboard is the ability to consolidate information. It’s easier to meet, engage and network with peers. There’s access to knowledge and information on a global scale. Crowdsourcing ideas, for example, can be exceptionally helpful when meeting planners need ideas or are pinched for time.
  • Email Marketing – Whether email marketing is used for lead funnel nurture campaigns or scheduling newsletters, services such as MailChimp, or Marketo are highly valuable. Automating email marketing allows staff to build campaigns in advance. This means when preparing a global meeting or group travel incentive program you can have your content loaded and sent automatically at timed and/or dated intervals. Automated email campaigns are ideal for meeting and event planners because they can be used to send out helpful reminders, tips for attendees, and other general content that applies to almost all meetings, events, or group travel programs.
  • Data Entry Automation – Data entry automation results in quicker information processing and reduces errors from manual entry. Data entry automation can be done through something such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR). OCR is the digital conversion of information into something that can be read/understood by technology. It’s ideal for handwritten, printed, or typed documents such as business cards. This can virtually eliminate extensive manual data entry.

PRO TIP:
Using automation isn’t a replacement for humans, but it will lighten the load of employees.  In some cases, there will be time required for set-up, testing, and machine learning such as with chatbots, a social media dashboard, and to a limited extent email marketing. Data entry automation will require a review of OCR scans for accuracy especially if the original document is handwritten, blurry, or the font is unique. Despite the time required to set up, test, and verify for accuracy automation can have significant benefits.

With an increased number of job openings and growing turnover, companies are having to change their approach to hiring and workforce retention. Creative thinking can help reduce the negative impacts felt by companies experiencing staffing shortages. While challenging situations due to short staffing can’t always be avoided, it is possible to minimize impact.

 

Does your upcoming global meeting or group incentive travel event need extra support? If so, contact Gavel International to see how working with a meeting planning company can benefit your organization.

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SOURCES:

  1. https://meetings.skift.com/labor-shortage-horror-stories/
  2. https://www.uschamber.com/workforce/understanding-americas-labor-shortage-the-most-impacted-industries
  3. https://www.benefitnews.com/news/how-to-handle-pay-discrepancies-in-the-face-of-staff-shortages
Eloisa Mendez
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