The last time we were together, we were taking a closer look at the labor shortage. If you remember, we were looking at Madison Hoff’s and Juliana Kaplan’s perspectives from Business Insider.com. With some creativity from yours truly, we examined three of the 13 reasons for the labor turnover. In today’s thoughts, we will look at another three perspectives.
If you remember, I divided the reasons for the labor shortage into both financial, and social issues. The first three last time were: (1) more money, (2) people want to be their own boss, and (3) more retirees than usual simply retired.
The three that we will focus on here are: (4) automated hiring software, (5) employers who filter out workers because of pre-existing biases, and (6) pandemic related issues.
Automated hiring software – have you heard of it? I have personally taken issue with said software. Interestingly enough, not only are Hoff and Kaplan pointing a questioning finger at automated hiring software, a recent report from Harvard Business School reports companies, “mistakenly rejecting millions of viable candidates,” for open positions.
This software scans submitted resumes for criteria within a resume to screen in or screen out submitted resumes. These software programs blindly accept or reject applicants.
Qualified applicants may be rejected using this system. If an individual has a certain number of positions, the software may be able to determine an applicant’s age, this, being a very subtle form of age discrimination. Harvard spoke with a number of hiring executives when researching their story. The industry executives stated that, “over half of potential candidates for their high-skilled positions were filtered out.” Adjustments in the criteria for the automated hiring software appears to be in order.
Pre-existing biases by a company may also prevent a company from finding a suitable applicant. Let’s say an organization imposes a requirement for a position. Organizations do this all the time. For some positions, an organization may require a college degree. According to [email protected], “roughly 70 million workers do not have a college degree but are known as STARS. STARS stands for: Skilled Through Alternative Routes. These individuals can perform admirably, have vast amount of experience, but do not meet the criteria of having a college degree.” Again, criteria for hiring should be examined to assure viable candidates are not being missed.
As we are all well aware, we are still in the midst of the pandemic. S & P Global Economists said in a note that, “1.4 million workers may not return until pandemic-related issues are resolved.” There are almost daily reports about discussions, debates, and disagreements about the pandemic. Organization requirements, no doubt, have influenced those in favor of, and those not in favor of vaccinations. We do see health care organizations stretched and stressed with negative impacts on those who take care of those who are hospitalized.
On a positive note, those in leadership, now have an opportunity to positively impact their organization and society. It will be interesting to see how those leaders perform.
