How to alleviate compounding labor shortages in these major industries

Staffing challenges in certain industries seem unavoidable for the foreseeable future. There currently aren't enough nurses, teachers, hospitality workers or truck drivers to keep those businesses functioning as designed. The inflation that's currently plaguing the global economy is one of the unavoidable outcomes. 

Amazon, for example, found itself in an embarrassing situation in June when an internal memo leaked that projected the company might exhaust its pool of available warehouse employees by 2024. The report warned Amazon might run out of workers in the Phoenix metro area by the end of 2021 and in the suburbs outside Los Angeles by the end of 2022. Amazon calculated the future labor supply based on characteristics like income and household proximity to current or planned Amazon facilities.

Read more: How IBM solved their talent shortage by revamping their recruiting process 

Similar crises are playing out in healthcare and education. In medical clinics and hospitals, where the limited pool of available workers requires extensive credentials, pandemic-fueled burnout, training shortages, and early retirements have fueled a labor crunch that has necessitated ever more broad reliance on expensive traveling staff.  In public education, where teachers are likewise burned out after years of remote learning, dwindling resources and job-related political tension have made recruitment so hard that the state of Arizona has eliminated the requirement that public school teachers have completed a Bachelor's degree. 

Other industries, such as hospitality and travel, cut loose vast swaths of their workforces when the pandemic shut down their industries. They are now having trouble hiring candidates who have often moved on to other opportunities. To survive, any business troubled by staffing issues would do well to consider the following strategies:

1. Get creative sourcing talent — Talent resides in numerous online communities beyond the traditional employment platforms. Searching in passionate communities on social media can entice the attention of standout individuals who might be on the job market. Also, it can be fruitful to look at previous candidates who for one reason or another might have been passed over, but who still might have interest in your company.

1. Make life easy for job-seekers — Current labor market conditions mean that candidates might have numerous opportunities in front of them. Beyond compensation, they're often engaged by employers who make the application and recruitment process as frictionless as possible. A thoughtful, seamless recruitment process not only reduces candidate drop-off, it excites and engages new hires when they arrive on their first day.

1. Everybody wants flexibility — The home/office work/life genie isn't going back into the bottle anytime soon. Workers who moved or became comfortable with work-from-home conditions during the pandemic will expect some acknowledgment of this from management. By offering reasonable flexibility with work arrangements and scheduling as clear benefits in the job description, an employer that acknowledges this will attract better talent than ones that don't.

Read more: 4 recruiting tips for employers looking to hire more women in tech 

The labor market will eventually become more stable and less onerous, even if current conditions have many business leaders scratching their heads. More thoughtful hiring practices should be an essential part of the solution.