1 COUNCILMEMBERS
Dominic D. Aliano, Mayor
Laura M. Hoffmeister, Vice Mayor
Edi E. Birsan
Timothy A. McGallian
Carlyn S. Obringer
Civic Center
1950 Parkside Drive
Concord, CA 94519
www.cityofconcord.org
Special Meeting of the
Concord City Council
Saturday,
April 2, 2022
9:00 a.m. – Continental Breakfast
9:30 a.m. – Open Session/Workshop
Concord Senior Center
Wisteria Room
2727 Parkside Circle
Concord, CA
This meeting is being held in-person only.
Welcome to the City Council meeting. To assist the Mayor in allowing all speakers to be heard, we ask you to fill out a blue Speaker’s Card if you wish to address an item. Please complete the Speaker’s Card and give it to the City Clerk before the agenda item is called, and preferably before the meeting begins. When the Mayor recognizes you to speak, come forward, give your name, and direct your remarks to the Council. Please limit your comments to three minutes, or less if so directed by the Mayor.
AGENDIZED ITEMS – The public is entitled to address the City Council on items appearing on the agenda before or during the City Council’s consideration of that item. Each speaker will be limited to approximately three minutes.
1. OPENING
Roll Call
2. ANNUAL WORKSHOP ON CITY COUNCIL PRIORITIES
The public is entitled to address the City Council on items appearing on the agenda before or during the City Council’s consideration of that item. Each speaker will be limited to approximately three minutes.
a. Council Workshop - presentation and facilitated conversation among councilmembers on staffing, economic development, and work program priorities.
3. ADJOURNMENT
2 Next Meeting: Regular Meeting
Date: 4/5/2022 6:30 p.m.
NOTICE TO THE PUBLIC
There is a 90-day limit for the filing of a challenge in the Superior Court to certain City administrative decisions and orders which require a hearing by law, the receipt of evidence, and the exercise of discretion. The 90-day limit begins on the date the decision is final (Code of Civil Procedure §1094.6). Further, if you challenge an action taken by the City Council in court, you may be limited by California law to raising only those issues you or someone else raised in the hearing or in a written correspondence delivered to the City Council prior to or at the hearing.
In accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and California Law, it is the policy of the City of Concord to offer its public programs, services and meetings in a manner that is readily accessible to everyone, including those with disabilities. If you are disabled and require a copy of a public hearing notice, or an agenda and/or agenda packet in an appropriate alternative format; or if you require other accommodation, please contact the ADA Coordinator Tianjun Cao at (925) 671-3243 or [email protected], at least 24 hours in advance of the meeting. Advance notification within this guideline will enable the City to make reasonable arrangements to ensure accessibility.
CITY OF CONCORD MEMORANDUM
Office of the City Manager
Date: April 2, 2022
TO: Mayor Aliano and City Council Members
FROM: Valerie Barone, City Manager
SUBJECT: Council April 2 Annual Workshop
Workshop Basics
Council’s workshop is scheduled for Saturday, April 2nd at 9:30 am in the Senior Center’s Wisteria Room. A continental breakfast will be available starting at 9:00 am. The meeting will begin at 9:30 am and is anticipated to end at approximately 3 pm. Lunch will be provided. Attire is casual.
The Mayor, Councilmembers, and Executive Team will be attending. The meeting will be facilitated by Patrick Ibarra of The Mejorando Group.
The goals for the workshop are:
Continuing team development of Council;
Continuing development of the Council-Staff team relationship; Update for Council on two topics:
o Staffing Challenges
o Concord’s Economy
Council agreement on the organization’s Tier 1 priorities for the next 15 months; and Commitment to stay focused on the agreed upon Tier 1 priority(ies).
Discussion
The City of Concord is a high performing organization that embraces its mission: To join with the community to make Concord a city of the highest quality by providing responsive, cost- effective, and innovative local government services.
To achieve this mission, the Council has remained focused for many years on what the City terms: “Priority Focus Areas.” These are listed below in no particular order.
2.a2.a2.a2.a2.a2.a2.a
Council Workshop
April 2, 2022
Long Term Fiscal Stability, including Economic Development Concord Naval Weapons Station
Public Safety
Infrastructure Maintenance
Organizational Health & Employee Success
Quality of Life
Customer Service
Additionally, since a state of emergency was declared in the State, the County and the City, the Council has also set “Pandemic Recovery” as a main area of focus for the City organization.
These Priority Areas of Focus remain relevant in Concord and they continue to guide the organization as budgets are developed and services delivered. However, if used without any clarity around defining Council’s highest priority projects in any given year they spread the City’s limited resources over too many projects, diffusing the organization’s impact.
Starting in 2019, the Council began identifying Tier 1 Priority Projects. Defining Tier 1 projects assists the organization in focusing on what is most important to Council. In February of 2021 Council established the following Tier 1 goals for the organization. A brief update on each was provided for Council at the recent mid-year budget review and will be provided again during this year’s priority setting workshop:
Make the CORE and MHET programs a reality;
Pandemic Recovery: Position the City to receive State and Federal Covid relief dollars, invest the dollars in the community, assist tenants negatively impacted by the pandemic, assist businesses, particularly small businesses, negatively impacted by the pandemic; Identify a new Master Developer Partner for the Concord Naval Weapons Station and make progress on a term sheet;
Additionally, the Council identified a Tier 2 priority project—which is to be worked on if time and resources allow. This was development of a flavored tobacco ban.
All Tier 1 projects have been achieved or are in progress. Staff anticipates initiating the Tier 2 project by June.
This year, Council will again participate in a facilitated workshop with the goal of creating consensus around Council’s highest priority special projects for the next 15 months. Staff will share a list of projects currently on the organization’s “to do” list; Council will discuss the various projects amongst themselves and with the Executive Team then take public comment. Council will then be asked to participate in a dot voting exercise to identify the
Council Workshop
April 2, 2022
project or two that it wants to assure the organization focusses on over the next fifteen months.
Attachments:
Mid-Year Accomplishments List
Article: Recruiters Respond to the Great Resignation in 2022 (shrm.org) Article: Job Candidates’ Expectations Have Changed. How Are Employers Responding? (shrm.org)
Article: Opinion: The Great Resignation is also the Great Retirement of the baby boomers. That’s a problem. (washingtonpost.com)
Economic Indicators Dashboard
“To Do” List of Projects—April 2022 through June 2023
1 Recruiters Respond to the Great Resignation in 2022
Soaring hiring demand presents singular opening for talent acquisition By Roy Maurer February 14, 2022
he Great Resignation may taper off later this year, but turnover is expected to remain elevated, providing talent acquisition professionals with a stellar opportunity to lure talent to the organization and to play a more critical part in retaining that talent.
The post-pandemic hiring recovery will continue to be tumultuous in 2022, exemplified by intense hiring demand, fierce competition for talent and an overhaul of the employee experience to meet candidate expectations.
"2022 will pose its own challenges, but the market gives us in recruiting a fantastic chance to refresh our message and go out there and highlight the reasons we work at the companies we do," said Jennifer Shappley, vice president of global talent acquisition at LinkedIn. "This could be a once-in-a-career situation where talent acquisition is so central to the business's success and TA leaders can step more into that business leader role."
Todd Bavol, president and CEO of Integrity Staffing Solutions, a nationwide staffing firm based in Newark, Del., said there will be a smoothing of the level of urgency in 2022, but hiring will not get easier. "I think it will be harder," he said.
"Not only will quality candidates continue to be in high demand, but there will also continue to be a large number of job openings and competition will be even tighter than in 2021." He pointed to the latest labor market data that shows the economy is still about 3 million jobs shy of pre-pandemic levels with about 4 percent unemployment and a depressed labor force participation rate.
What had been a job-hopping trend pre-pandemic-- employees looking for a new position after two or three years—was exacerbated by the upheaval of the past two years. "With the rise of work from anywhere, hire from anywhere and an easier interview process all done virtually, there's no reason for employees not to be looking for a better opportunity," said Evan Sohn, CEO of Recruiter.com, a hiring platform based in New York City. "Companies now need to be thinking about having a constant stream of potential candidates to fill their workforce."
The bottom line is that the supply chain of talent will cost more in 2022 than in prior years, Sohn concluded. "And employers will need to invest more in recruiting and hiring. This is one of the reasons why we have seen a surge in hiring recruiters and talent acquisition professionals." Communicating What Workers Want
It's being realized that people want more from their employers. Job seekers want flexibility, well-being and purpose on top of competitive pay, good working conditions and skills development. It's up to recruiters to signal to candidates how their organization will meet their expectations. "Recruiters must make sure that in their outreach, in their job postings, in interviews with candidates, that they are very attuned to what is top of mind for those candidates," Shappley said. "We're seeing a significant increase in views and applies for job ads that mention flexibility and work culture." T
2 Bavol agreed that employers must work toward their brand being hyper-focused on what workers want and delivering on that promise. "This is a perfect time to get in front of the wave of quitting that is going to continue this year," he said. "Recruitment messaging should be speaking to the needs of today's workforce, showing that the company is putting people first. It's also a great opportunity for recruiters to look at where people are leaving—and building relationships with those folks now." Lenka Burnett, vice president of global client services at international recruiting firm Korn Ferry in London, noted that many employers that were still in a reactive mode in 2021 are taking a more structured and focused approach to hiring and turnover challenges this year. "TA teams are looking at articulating and bringing their EVP [employee value proposition] to the forefront of their hiring process and in engagement with candidates," she said. "Last year, companies were focused on hiring numbers. They had to fill demand. The focus is shifting now to candidate and employee experience."
Shappley said boosting employer brand has taken on a renewed focus. "So much of what an employer saw as their culture to be communicated has fundamentally changed over the last couple of years," she said. "This is a real opportunity to go back and refresh that messaging. It's important to have a partnership between TA and the marketing/communications team when doing this work. Activating your entire employee base is the biggest way to get your message out there." Job seekers are clamoring for flexibility in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. "For the roles that allow it, hybrid working will continue to spread its roots in 2022," said Johnny Campbell, CEO of Dublin-based SocialTalent, a learning platform for recruiters. "Workers are craving flexibility, in all its forms. There is a lot of work and structure involved in getting flexibility to function, but it's better to plan with this in mind and stay ahead of the curve. Talent is demanding it." And employers know this: There was an 83 percent increase in job posts mentioning flexibility in 2021 over 2019, according to LinkedIn, and 343 percent more mentions of flexibility in company posts during that time. For their part, recruiters need to know the ins and outs of their company's flexible work policies and how the organization supports remote and hybrid workers, Shappley said.
Retention Role
Employers must also focus on retaining their existing employees in today's highly competitive job market. As the gatekeepers of their organization, recruiters can play a big part in supporting retention.
The epic talent migration that is taking place is a challenge but also another opportunity for recruiters to help preserve and evolve their own organization's culture, Shappley said. "It's crucial to make sure new hires are adding to, rather than subtracting from, your culture," she said.
John Vlastelica, founder and managing director of Recruiting Toolbox, a global management consulting and training firm in Seattle, recommended every company pressure-test their EVP. "Spend time thinking about this question: 'Do we really deliver the experience and opportunity we sell as recruiters?' "he said.
Additional ways recruiters can support retention include being authentic when engaging with candidates and participating in onboarding.
"When engaging with applicants, it's very important to ensure candidate fit and promote the uniqueness of the organizational culture," Bavol said. "Ensuring that there is a synergy between what is important to a candidate and the organization's interests will help support retention down the road."
3 Onboarding is another key piece of the candidate experience, Burnett said. "Companies should focus on personalizing communications with new hires and invest in digital onboarding tools." Shappley added that talent acquisition leaders should consider refreshing onboarding materials and even re-onboarding the recruiting team as they prepare for a new year of work. "The world has changed, and recruiters must know the organization's latest changes in order to prepare the right message," she said.
Hidden in Plain Sight
Facing talent scarcity, employers have begun to examine the people they already have on staff to fill open roles.
"Organizations are realizing that you can't just bring in people externally," Burnett said. "There has been an increase in interest in internal mobility since the onset of the pandemic, and in 2022, companies are looking at workforce planning and talent acquisition more holistically." Internal mobility programs are in the spotlight as a retention tool as more data shows that employees are more likely to stay in their jobs if they see investment in their careers and professional development.
LinkedIn found that employees at organizations with high internal mobility stay at their companies almost two times longer.
"With the current crisis, it's never been more important to upskill, reskill and invest in your employee base," Campbell said. "By building internal mobility programs, you are demonstrating how serious you are about the development and progression of your staff, the absence of which is a top reason why people leave a company."
The shift to remote work may be making internal mobility more of a challenge, however. "Internal mobility is a no-brainer but can be difficult when there isn't a constant visual on your employees," Campbell said. "Less interactions with managers could hurt hybrid and remote workers if organizations don't adapt to this new structure of work. Proximity bias needs to be eliminated in order to allow a fair and equitable process."
He recommended establishing new methods of nurturing employees, being transparent in sharing opportunities and regularly checking in with direct reports about their career goals.
Recruiters Respond to the Great Resignation in 2022 (shrm.org) HR DAILY NEWSLETTER © 2022 SHRM. All Rights Reserved SHRM provides content as a service to its readers and members. It does not offer legal advice, and cannot guarantee the accuracy or suitability of its content for a particular purpose. Disclaimer (www.shrm.org/about-shrm/Pages/Terms-of- Use.aspx#Disclaimer)
1 Job Candidates’ Expectations Have Changed. How Are
Employers Responding?
Recruiters must create an employee value proposition to meet the moment, with better pay and benefits that matter to workers.
By Roy Maurer | December 1, 2021
Veteran talent acquisition specialists are worried. Many say they can’t remember the last time hiring was this hard, and that recruiting is unlikely to get any easier next year. “The biggest issue is a lack of applications,” explains Greg Muccio, director of talent acquisition at Southwest Airlines, referring specifically to interest in airport staff roles.
While some sectors have begun to bounce back, none have been completely immune to the rapid changes brought on by the global coronavirus outbreak. “It has been the most unpredictable labor market I can recall—truly uncharted waters,” Muccio says.
Traditional conventions about how, when and where people work have been upended, accelerating major shifts in how talent acquisition is practiced. For HR and recruiting teams, the near-total move to working from home led to revamped hiring practices that included virtual technologies. But the most enduring challenge may be changed candidate behavior and expectations.
“This is a different candidate than we had in January 2020,” says Melissa Thompson, former senior vice president of talent acquisition at Nielsen, the global information and data provider. (She recently joined Ford Motor Co. as global head of talent acquisition.) Across industries, recruiting leaders believe job seekers and candidates are more selective and expect something different from before. That makes it essential for employers to develop a compelling employee value proposition that includes competitive compensation and meaningful benefits, especially career development opportunities and flexible work.
The War for Talent Is On
“Hiring is hard,” Thompson says, especially when it comes to field technicians and call center staff at Nielsen. Recruiters there told her they never had so many job offers declined, she says.
For retail pharmacy chain CVS, hiring for in-store and distribution center positions has been a recruiting pain point, even while the company managed to scale up staffing massively during the pandemic to meet the demand for vaccines. “It feels like zero percent unemployment in some markets,” says Jeff Lackey, vice president of talent acquisition at CVS Health, which owns CVS Pharmacy stores and other businesses. He adds that across the country, businesses dependent on hourly, front-line workers are going under because of labor shortages. In the hospitality, food and leisure industries, for example, 93 percent of employers are struggling to hire for entry-level positions, according to Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) research.
2 “We just can’t find the talent we need” has become a common refrain, whether spoken about customer service representatives at Enterprise Rent-A-Car sites, assembly line workers at General Motors or delivery drivers at LaRosa’s Pizzeria.
To respond to the challenge, HR professionals are reimagining talent acquisition strategies and deploying a variety of new tactics and technologies.
As a result, organizations are experimenting with novel ideas involving benefits such as flexibility, career development and holistic care and adjusting them to candidates’ new expectations. At the same time, companies are refocusing on the basics: streamlining the candidate experience, reviewing pay to be more competitive and sprucing up employee referral programs.
“There definitely is a war for talent, and, even more than that, it is an arms race to attract talent,” says Jamie Kohn, research director for the HR practice at consulting firm Gartner. “Companies are trying to get back to pre-pandemic growth and are focused on increasing headcount, while job seekers feel they have more options and now expect more from potential employers.”
The power balance between employers and employees has shifted, according to Amy Gold Finger, senior vice president for global talent at Walmart. “The pandemic has fundamentally changed the labor market, creating a high demand/supply gap for talent, and today’s job seekers have higher expectations,” she says. “We’ve introduced cash bonuses, leave policies, vaccine incentives and counseling services to help associates get through these trying times.” A Matter of Supply and Demand
The latest data from the U.S. Department of Labor shows there are approximately 4.2 million fewer workers in the labor force compared to just prior to the pandemic. Labor force participation today is lower than at any time in the past 20 years.
But job openings, a measure of labor demand, stood at 10.9 million at the end of summer 2021—the highest level ever recorded. That’s all the more remarkable because it occurred during a period of elevated unemployment.
At the same time, the number of people quitting their jobs monthly is setting records.
Workers tend to quit at high rates when jobs are abundant, but evidence suggests that the pandemic-induced “turnover tsunami” has been propelled by additional factors. Workers are unwilling to return to industries that experienced severe lockdowns, for example, and they have been able to be more selective due to stimulus payments and enhanced federal unemployment benefits (which ended in September 2021).
Employees are also motivated to change jobs for better pay and benefits, as well as more flexibility. Or they may have concerns about health, safety and wellness. Many are pursuing career changes or going into business for themselves.
3 “The leisure and hospitality sector was grounded during the pandemic, opportunities shrank, and employers did not realize how difficult it would be to get furloughed and laid-off employees to come back,” says Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter. “Leisure and hospitality and manufacturing are having the biggest troubles, because so many of those jobs need to be done in person and face-to-face. One of the main difficulties is that remote opportunities have expanded in other industries.”
While the supply and demand for workers will eventually come back into balance, experts and practitioners believe many of the changes in how companies recruit and hire talent will remain long after the pandemic subsides.
“The pandemic was a catalyst for changing things that organizations maybe knew should be changed but lacked enough incentive to make the change,” says Jeff Lackey, vice president of talent acquisition at CVS Health.
Greg Muccio, director of talent acquisition at Southwest Airlines, says, “The last 20 months have taught employers that you can’t discount how people feel about their jobs, their lives and their families, and how important it is to take care of your employees and their families.” — Wages on the Rise
As the U.S. labor market began to rebound in the summer of 2020 and the competition for hourly workers got fierce, employers began citing labor shortages as the cause for hiring difficulties. Critics responded that the lack of job seeker interest was proof that low-wage workers simply aren’t paid enough. These employees also are often asked to enforce mask mandates and risk physical harm at the hands of irate customers. In response, employers such as Chipotle, CVS, Southwest Airlines and Walmart have given frontline workers raises. “Employers are realizing they have to be wage-competitive,” says George Kelly, senior vice president at Milwaukee-based recruiting and staffing firm ManpowerGroup. “Wage growth in the U.S. has been incredibly slow over the last 30-plus years, but since the summer of 2020, wage growth has accelerated, driven by competition.”
Nela Richardson, senior vice president and chief economist at payroll provider ADP, notes that compensation in October 2021 grew 4.9 percent year-over-year. “In the decade leading up to the pandemic, wages never grew more than 3.5 percent from the previous year,” she says.
Wages in low-paying service-sector jobs have been growing fastest during the recovery, she adds.
The number of postings on jobs sites like ZipRecruiter that advertise pay of $15 an hour has more than doubled since 2019, says Julia Pollak, the site’s chief economist. The proportion of jobs that offer signing bonuses has also risen.
Practitioners tend to agree that resetting compensation is a solid long-term move, but many say the increased use of signing bonuses is an ugly and unsustainable facet of the current environment.
4 “Because many employers thought this labor shortage would be temporary and would clear up this year, they resorted to solutions like hiring bonuses,” says Niki Ramirez, SHRM-CP, founder of Phoenix-based HR Answers, an HR consultancy for small businesses. “[The practice is] flexible and easy to roll back, but some employers have found as a consequence that workers are staying for a short period and then moving on to the next job, trying to snap up multiple signing bonuses.”
Steve Browne, SHRM-SCP, chief people officer at Cincinnati-based LaRosa’s Pizzeria and a member of the SHRM Board of Directors, says his team is reviewing compensation but does not want to end up in a reactionary predicament, despite the difficulty the company is having recruiting cooks, drivers and servers.
23% of organizations are planning to increase pay to attract more job applicants for difficult-to- fill positions. Source: The COVID-19 Labor Shortage, SHRM, 2021. “I see companies trying to compete from a wage perspective, offering signing bonuses, and people just chase the dollars,” Browne says. “I know several employers in the Cincinnati area that are offering a high wage, and they still can’t get applicants. If you only change wages, it won’t work.”
In today’s talent-scarce environment, employers should be conducting regular industry benchmarking and reviewing salary plans, experts say. However, pay is just a starting point.
Thompson’s team at Nielsen worked closely with the compensation professionals in HR to understand where they needed to adjust compensation in order to hire in this labor market. “But winning the competition for talent will be more about the culture and the people and not just about the money,” Thompson stresses.
Offering Perks that Matter
A prominent feature of the war for talent has been the way companies have been one-upping one another when it comes to employee benefits.
“Creative perks have become in vogue again,” Kelly says. These benefits, many of which are designed to alleviate the stresses of the pandemic, include mental health, well-being and family caregiving support; financial planning; onsite child care; sponsored transportation; and allowances for home office and remote technology.
Organizations have also announced they are making big investments in workers’ professional development, with the idea that employers can offer their front-line workers something truly meaningful: a brighter future through upskilling and an internal career path, or a debt-free college education.
Walmart is investing nearly $1 billion over the next five years in career training and development. Other large employers of hourly workers, including Amazon, Chipotle, Starbucks and Target, have announced enhancements to their tuition and training programs.
5 Walmart’s Live Better U program pays 100 percent of tuition and books for eligible associates who want to earn college degrees or learn trade skills. In addition, “Walmart Academies give us more avenues to upskill associates so they can reach for their dream job internally,” Gold Finger says. “For example, as we grow our health and wellness business, we’ve made available degrees and certifications to support these business areas, like pharmacy technicians.” Chipotle offers to cover all
expenses for 100 types of degrees
across agriculture, hospitality,
culinary, technology and business
studies at 10 universities, says
Mike Miller, director of talent
acquisition at the company. “Our
retention rate is three-and-a-half
times higher among employees
enrolled in the education
assistance program, and crew
members participating are seven-
and-a-half times more likely to
move into a management role,”
he adds.
Ramirez says she’s seeing a renewed focus on reskilling and upskilling across organizations of all sizes, as well as training and career pathing being promoted in job ads. SHRM research shows that 2 in 5 organizations plan to offer additional professional growth and development opportunities to attract more job applicants to positions that are difficult to fill.
Southwest Airlines officially launched its internal career mobility program earlier this year.
Muccio says there’s already been a lot of interest from employees who want to understand the roles available to them and the development opportunities that can help them land those positions.
Chipotle believes its transparent path to advancement can be a life-changing inducement for hourly workers. “Crew members can advance to restaurant management in just three-and-a- half years, making an average salary of $100,000 and leading a multimillion dollar business,” Miller says. “More than 90 percent of our restaurant management roles are internal promotions.”
A Downsides of Signing Bonuses
Sign-on bonuses have gained widespread popularity this year as employers struggle to attract talent.
Countless busy roads are lined with temporary signs in front of retail and hospitality businesses offering bonuses of as much as $1,000 to new hires. But hiring experts warn that one-time bonuses have a range of drawbacks that employers must consider, including the following:
6 Sign-on bonuses should be offered consistently to all new hires regardless of position; otherwise, engagement may be low for those not cashing in. Current employees will wonder where their bonuses are and may jump ship to collect them somewhere else absent a monetary reward for staying.
Some new hires will take the money and run; even if payments are spaced out over time, many workers will still leave if they don’t find value in the work. Attempting to reclaim bonuses from employees who leave early can be a legal nightmare that’s rarely worth the expense.
Keeping employees on board for a year or more without offering additional bonuses may prove difficult, since those workers have already shown a preference for such payments. —Tony Lee
The Most Desired Benefit
Then there’s flexibility, the most sought-after benefit of all, according to widespread research.
The demand undeniably grew out of the pandemic experience. Job seekers from all sectors and levels are making it clear that flexibility is a top priority—including for jobs that can’t be done remotely. It’s also a critical factor in managing employee retention. “Where people have gotten the flexibility to be able to choose how they integrate their work with the rest of their life, they are not willing to give that up,” Kohn says. “Job seekers have so many options right now that they don’t have to make the trade-offs and sacrifices they used to make and are proving unwilling to do so. That’s why flexibility is the most common theme employers are promoting to attract talent.”
She adds that flexibility is different for varied talent segments. For knowledge workers, autonomy is paramount. And for employers hiring for remote-friendly roles, proximity is no longer a limiting factor for recruitment.
“Rethinking talent location has been one of the biggest changes,” Kohn says. “HR leaders are pushing the business to think about which roles really need to be in the office and how often, and then determining whether they can source talent from anywhere.” Throwing off the shackles of geography-bound recruiting by offering work-from-home opportunities has helped General Motors boost its hiring above prepandemic levels, says Cyril George, the company’s global talent acquisition director.
In April, the automaker unveiled its “Work Appropriately” campaign, which George describes as a culture change for its professional workforce. “Leadership decided to put the trust in the employees and their managers in terms of deciding what works best for them based on their roles and situation,” he says. “From a recruiting standpoint,” George adds, “it has significantly opened up the talent pool for us.”
Then there’s the majority of workers in the U.S., especially in front-line roles, who aren’t able to work remotely. For these employees, flexibility and predictability in scheduling are important, specifically in support of health and wellness, as well as child care and caregiving responsibilities.
7 “Flexibility matters to hourly workers,” Kohn says. “Think about the struggles that front-line workers have had during the pandemic. Retail workers are leaving their jobs to work in customer service roles that can be done at home to get that flexibility that meets their core needs.”
It’s not possible to offer field agents at Enterprise a work-from-home experience, says Marie Artim, vice president of global talent acquisition at Enterprise Holdings. “But what we can do is offer more flexible scheduling and schedule certainty so our employees can take care of the things they have to do in their lives outside of work.” Getting Back to Basics
The pandemic has forced organizations to be agile and to adopt creative recruitment approaches, but the public health crisis has also presented an opportunity to perfect the fundamentals.
“Candidates are walking in the door with a couple of offers in hand, and employers need to be ready to move as quickly as possible,” Kohn says. “That means rethinking assessments, controlling the number of interviews and postponing background checks, all to eliminate any delays in the process.”
As a result, many companies have streamlined their application processes. General Motors invested significantly in technology to improve the candidate experience, including by integrating online job postings with the applicant tracking system so candidates don’t have to duplicate their application information.
Employers have also been removing unnecessary obstacles that historically limited candidate opportunities. “We’re focused on lowering barriers to entry,” Walmart’s Gold Finger says. “For example, we do not have arbitrary education requirements—even our store managers are not required to have a college degree.”
Lackey says CVS eliminated a high school education requirement for many front-line positions and uses a simple assessment instead. In addition, CVS has been recruiting against attrition in order to have roles filled prior to employee departures.
Employers have also reinvigorated their employee referral programs. “Referrals have been a top source of new talent for us and a great way to recognize our employees,” Artim says.
Old-school sourcing channels produced stellar results for Thompson at Nielsen. Those channels included reaching out to local churches and running ads for bilingual roles in ethnic community newspapers. Experimenting with a mix of old and new—including virtual hiring events—was also “hugely successful,” she says.
The pandemic is provoking employers to rethink traditional ways of operating—and to rethink talent acquisition. As candidates at all levels weigh opportunities differently and the competition for talent continues to intensify, companies will need to offer an employment experience that candidate’s prize.
Roy Maurer is an online writer/editor for SHRM who focuses on talent acquisition and labor markets.
8 Job Candidates’ Expectations Have Changed. How Are Employers Responding? (shrm.org) CONTACT US (WWW.SHRM.ORG/ABOUT-SHRM/PAGES/CONTACT-US.ASPX) | 800.283.SHRM (7476) © 2022 SHRM. All Rights Reserved
SHRM provides content as a service to its readers and members. It does not o ffer legal advice, and cannot guarantee the accuracy or suitability of its content for a particular purpose.
Disclaimer (www.shrm.org/about-shrm/Pages/Terms-of-Use.aspx#Disclaimer)
Opinion: The Great Resignation is
also the Great Retirement of the
baby boomers. That’s a problem.
Helaine Olen
A sign at a restaurant on Feb. 4 in Los Angeles. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images) Then covid hit. The longer Valadez was out of work, the less he wanted to return to 12-hour days in the stressful environment of the restaurant industry. When the economy reopened and potential employers began to reach out, he surprised himself by saying no. “I talked to my wife, I talked to my sons, and they told me, ‘Don’t work. You work too much,’” Valadez told me. Instead, he filed for Social Security.
And that’s how Valadez came to take part in the Great Retirement of 2/18/22, 6 :48 AM
the baby boomers — a workplace exodus with the power to upend both the workplace and the U.S. economy.
Goldman Sachs estimated last fall that more than half of those who had left the workforce during the covid era’s Great Resignation were over
55. An analysis released by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found workforce exits are higher among baby boomers than pre-covid trends would indicate, with a report last month finding women
— many of
whom work in public-facing positions and are between the ages of 65 and 74 — among the groups leading the way.
Employers are dependent on the outsize baby boomer cohort, whose exit is contributing to growing shortages of workers everywhere, from nursing
to school bus drivers to the service industry. It’s not just 22- year-old baristas who have had it with working conditions. Those understaffed stores? Retailers became increasingly reliant on older workers in the wake of the Great Recession. Many are now making an exit.
This is a significant reversal. In the years leading up to the pandemic, many Americans said they wanted to work well past the traditional retirement age. In 2013, a solid 10 percent told Gallup they would “never” exit the workforce. Sure, some of this was driven by financial necessity — Americans, famously, do not have enough money set aside for their senior years — but it also reflected an obsession with work as a way of finding meaning in life.
By refusing to go gentle into the good retirement night, baby boomers were doing the economy a favor. Their continued presence in the workforce helped compensate
for everything from reduced immigration
to the falling birthrate.
2/18/22, 6 :48 AM
Their sudden exit, on the other hand, raises a host of gnarly issues. It’s potentially inflationary because employers competing for scarcer labor will have to pay higher wages, so they will raise the prices of their products. This could contribute to a wage-price spiral, where rising prices lead empowered workers to demand raises to keep up, fueling even more inflation.
It could also turn into an economic drag. Long before covid, there were fears the baby boomer retirements would stress the finances of Social Security. And the new retirees — many currently flush with outsize gains in the stock and housing markets — could find themselves in a more difficult economic position than they expect if those assets decline significantly in value.
All this provides yet another reason for American employers to improve labor conditions — for older workers and for everyone else. The American workplace is often harsh and takes more than it gives back.
There’s no mandated paid sick leave
or vacation time. Age
discrimination is rife. The vast majority of us are at-will employees, which means we can be let go at any time. The mass layoffs and remote commuting of the covid period, it seems, finally gave Americans reasons to decide they no longer wanted to take part in it.
Many older employees, however, say they would like to stay connected to their jobs in retirement, but worry that they won’t be able to do so. In a recent survey conducted by the Harris Poll for Express Employment Professionals, a staffing agency, a vast majority of respondents expressed interest
in semiretirement, where they could either work a
flexible schedule or reduced hours or consult — but only one in five of their employers offered up such an option.
2/18/22, 6 :48 AM
Let me be clear. The boomers are going to retire at some point anyway.
But it would be better for all of us in the immediate future if we could entice them to do it on a gradual basis. Valadez provides an example.
When he found he needed more money than his Social Security check provided, he took a part-time position selling organic fruit at farmers markets. The gig is pleasant, and if he wants to take time off to see his mom in Mexico, no one complains.
He doesn’t rule out the possibility of returning to restaurant work. But it would need to be in a place with enough staff — something not common in the covid era. And he doesn’t want to put in any more monster workweeks. Now , “I can spend more time with the family, with the friends, go to visit my mom, my brothers, my sisters,” Valadez told me. “I start enjoying life.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/18/great-resignation-is-also- great-retirement-baby-boomers-thats-problem/
2/18/22, 6 :48 AM
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“To Do” List of Projects—April 2022 through June 2023
(4/2/2022)
Long Term Fiscal Stability & Economic Development
Consideration and Implementation of an Unfunded Personnel Liability Reduction Plan
CNWS—Term Sheet/Specific Plan/Disposition & Development Agreement/Environmental Impact Report
Coast Guard Site—Expected Large Development Proposal
Cannabis Permitting/Licensing—Implement Development Agreements/Process Remaining Applications/Monitor
Successor Agency Parcels Request for Proposals
Property Based Improvement Districts Support—Downtown & Monument Develop American Recovery Plan Act Investment Act (ARPA) Plan and Implement It Consider the Responses to the Broadband Request for Information and Develop Next Steps to Enhance Broadband Capacity
Economic Development Strategy
o Complete research and focus groups
o Explore if changes needed to life-science/R&D attraction plan o Explore incorporating new use classification for “tesla-style” automobile showrooms into the zoning code
Public Safety
Focus on Building Staffing Levels in the Police Department—Civilian (including Dispatch) and Sworn
Coordinate/Partner with the County on the Rollout of New A3 Program as a Mental Health Crisis Response Program
Increase Lighting and Install Camera Surveillance in the Civic Center and Adjacent Parking Lots
Complete a Citywide Computer Infrastructure Refresh to Improve Security, Network Speeds and Systems Reliability
Deploy License Plate Recognition (LPR) Cameras Throughout the City and Upgrade Software to Assist in Identifying Vehicles of Interest More Efficiently Neighborhood Traffic Calming Process & Tools Review and Community Education Effort
Neighborhood Cut Through Traffic Analysis Review
Select List or Organization’s To-Do
April 2, 2022
Infrastructure (note: this is not inclusive of our entire CIP) Continued Implementation of the 5-Year Measure V Roadway Investment Plan Development of a Local Roadway Safety Plan
Investment of Recent Grants for Traffic Signal Upgrades (HSIP), Inclusive of 98 Signals Willow Pass Road Fiber and Adaptive Signal Control Project Implementation Traffic Impact Mitigation Fee (OSIP) Update
Sanitary Sewer Rate Update
Pursuit of Various Grant Applications to Aid with Infrastructure Improvements and Maintenance
Quality of Life
Flavored Tobacco Ban (a Tier 2 priority for FY 2021-22) Housing Element Update
New Trash/Recycling Regulations Implementation
Complete the Anti-Harassment Tenant Protection Ordinance Complete Corridors Plan for Pine Hollow
Complete the Hearing/Public Review Process for Council Consideration of Draft Sidewalk Vending Regulations
Customer Service
Design and Build a Parking Guidance System for City-owned Garages Complete the Accessory Dwelling Unit Construction Ready Plans Project Streamline the Housing Development Review Process
Select List or Organization’s To-Do
April 2, 2022
Organizational Health & Employee Success
9/80 Flexible Work Schedule
Nepotism Policy Pilot Program to Create Flexibility
Recruitment Incentives for Hard to Fill Positions (Hiring Bonuses and Referral Payments) Hire Recently Retired Employees for 6-months for Hard to Fill Positions Replacement of the HR/Finance System (Lawson)
Enhanced Communication to Prospective Candidates on the Benefits Offered in Concord Modernize Job Specifications, Remove Barriers
Expand Training Opportunities for Employees
Labor Negotiations Beginning in January 2023 (Contracts Expire in June 2023)