Like many of you, the NCEO has been posting job announcements. In April and May, we hired three additional staff people, so you’ll be seeing new faces when you call, join a webinar, or come join us in San Diego for the Fall ESOP Forum.
I do not need to tell you that it is a tough environment for trying to hire. I’m hearing from member companies with many open positions they have been struggling to fill. Others tell me that they are finding their recruiters more likely to be “ghosted” by people who agree to take jobs and then simply never show up. And people are telling me about new staff who remain on the payroll for a few months and then just move on.
What does the research say? There is no research directly on the impact of employee ownership on companies’ ability to effectively hire, but, for example, a 2016 Public Policy Polling report found that 68% of the public supports the idea of employee ownership. And since retention is closely related to recruiting, our own analysis of the National Longitudinal Surveys of the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that “The median job tenure of employee-owners is 5.1 years, 46% greater than the 3.5 years for those without an ESOP.”
But from where I sit, the biggest argument in favor of employee ownership helping with recruiting is the stories I hear from members. Not all of our member companies use employee ownership as part of their recruiting, of course, but some of the ones that do have built the idea of employee ownership into their recruiting materials or engaged all of their employee-owners in the search for possible new hires. One of the best ideas we have heard is when people come to interview, let them talk to non-supervisory personnel about what ownership has meant to them at your company.
As so often happens, a stellar example of both of those things comes from SRC Holdings. I do not usually include photos, but take a look at the yard sign SRC’s subsidiary NewStream created to announce job openings at the company. This idea not only reaches new people but gives each employee-owner the chance to be a recruiter. If you are hiring, don’t forget to lean on the community of advocates who work every day at your company.