We all remember the children’s poem, The Pied Piper of Hamelin. In the end, the mysterious piper lured away the children of Hamelin Town and made them disappear after the townspeople were unwilling to pay him for his services.
This poem by Robert Browning was published in 1842. Nowadays, 180 years later, we are still looking for the missing workforce that seems to have disappeared as a result of the pandemic.
My spouse has been running a kindergarten for more than 20 years. Her biggest challenge in the past year has been a marked scarcity of teachers and teachers’ assistants. And this is true for every education facility in our town.
In fact, the Mayor now offers free housing to any teacher who will be willing to relocate and work in the city school districts.
If you run a business and need employees, you are probably in a difficult situation. Restaurants, hotels, airports, health care, the public sector, the private sector, low tech, high tech — you name it. You’ll find scarcities in the workforce everywhere you look.
So, where did all the employees go?
COVID lockdowns forced us to reassess the way we used to live. Governments compensated employees who lost their jobs for some time, which was essential during that time of the pandemic.
People stayed at home, worked from home, got paid, and started to question whether it was worth their while to go back to their old way of life.
This was especially true after we all witnessed the prosperity in the stock markets and the sense of freedom we felt during the post-pandemic era.
All of a sudden, everyone now wants to have a better job, a better work/life balance, and a higher salary. And this is the shift each of us experienced in the past year or so: a chance to improve my position.
In Israel, the young people seek workplaces and industries that have the word “tech” in them. Hightech, Biotech, MedTech, Fintech, Foodtech, Agritech. Whatever sector involves technologies means more challenges, better terms, and higher salaries.
Some become self-employed — being their own boss. This is the reason you see a long waiting list to join Walt Deliveries and similar service companies. Fiverr is full of talented people that offer their gigs. More free professionals quit their jobs and become freelancers.
As an employer that wants to stay in the game and be relevant, you would need to invest more time and resources in retaining your workforce and invest heavily in recruiting new ones.
When talking with managers, they all say that they invest 50% more time in HR-related issues.
It is a well-known fact that recruiting new customers costs five times more than retaining current ones. With new employees, it’s even more than that. Some say it is 8–10 times more if you consider the overall impact of this change.
Recruiting new employees, training them, getting them up to speed until they are productive, and on top of that, paying them higher salaries to get them on board in the first place, costs money — a lot of money.
In the past few weeks we have seen a rise in interest rates, higher inflation rates, and a sharp decline in the stock markets. There are even talks about “the upcoming recession”.
As a result, there are signs of a slowdown in the recruitment rate of new employees to the “tech” sectors, as well as even a few layoffs in global companies.
No one can tell what is ahead of us in these crazy times, but one thing is for sure: the pandemic aftershock is not over. We will face some challenging times ahead until the new order takes place.
As I was writing these lines, my car was stolen from right under my nose. I just can’t begin to describe how frustrating this experience was. The police say that unfortunately there is a peak in car thefts due to a shortage of new cars and spare parts. And yes, this is another sign of COVID aftershock.
Crazy, crazy times…
