Attracting and Retaining Supply Chain Talent

Managing supply chain talent has hardly posed a greater challenge than now. Uncontrollable factors—market variability, health crises, transportation errors, etc.—alongside a changing workforce means that firms must be proactive if they wish to compete within their market. According to a 2020 study on talent management, finding the right talent to navigate what the uncertain future holds is the only way to achieve success. In this article, you will learn different strategies for improving employee recruitment, retention, and satisfaction, as well as the challenges that accompany each step.

Building an Employer Brand

Building an attractive and reputable employer brand is harder than it sounds. It starts, however, from within. To help build an attractive employer brand, companies can offer competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits, opportunities for career development and training programs, flexible work arrangements, and work-life balance initiatives.

Finding a way to effectively navigate the fiscal restrictions and individual variables of these goals can be a costly managerial nightmare. Remember, a company must also focus on fostering a positive work culture which recognizes and rewards high-performing employees while they balance all the factors listed above. So how would a company go about staying on top of all these goals while also seeking talent that will contribute towards company objectives?

Targeted Recruitment Strategies

Through specialized job boards, recruitment agencies, and partnerships with universities and industry organizations, a company can find talent. Of course, without the attractive employer brand mentioned above, getting the qualified talent you need can be difficult. It is always important to be cognizant of how a company presents itself to the potential job force.

This is why understanding the desired skill sets and competencies of your potential job force can help a company cater to their brand for optimized recruitment. Targeting specific colleges, for instance, that have exceptional data science programs would be advantageous for companies looking to bolster their IT department. For those companies needing a stronger legal department, using resources to develop relationships with organizations like The American Mock Trial Association can prove invaluable down the line.

If deploying recruiters to job fairs or student organizations is unfeasible, companies should look towards philanthropy. Giving to a university goes beyond enabling material changes on campus—it also creates lifelong impact on students who will remember that donation, which had furthered their education, as they enter the work force.

The New Work Force

The next-gen work force has arrived. College graduates today have different work-based needs and priorities than the generation before. A 2020 study published in the Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences found that the Generation Z work force has a greater focus on achieving a healthy work-life-balance, and companies who respect this need actually experience greater employee engagement at work.

But at the same time, some traits that a company can offer never change despite new employee pools. The litany of attributes and opportunities that companies should strive to always offer include:

• Encouragement of international assignments
• Regular commutation of company goals and achievements
• Support for employee feedback and tangible implementation in response
• Support for continued education

Technology and Innovation

The supply chain world relies on improvement. Companies that are constantly seeking new solutions or encouraging employee-led innovation will succeed at retaining and attracting talent. Working within a complacent organization can lead to job dissatisfaction and, in turn, hurt a company’s employer brand.

Instead, companies should invest in new supply chain technologies, provide training on those technologies, and promote an overall culture of experimentation and learning. This way employees feel engaged, valued, and, most importantly, proud of their work.

Working with an Employer of Choice

Finding the right talent for your company rests on a few keys, yet nuanced concepts: building an attractive employer brand, fostering positive relationships with universities, catering to a new work force, which values communication, reward, and work-life balance, and positioning your organization at the head of innovation and technological improvement.

But simultaneously managing these goals can be a costly. Sure, a company can divert resources to increasing their presence in universities and funding employee-led innovation, but in turn, they may lose the ability to monitor specialized job boards, or to respond to employee feedback in a timely manner.

This is exactly why outsourcing to an experienced and established third-party logistics (3PL) provider like Ryder can be the best option when seeking to attract and retain talent. Ryder has access to and the resources necessary for successfully finding, attracting, and keeping the talent that will undoubtedly improve a company’s supply chain operations. By partnering with Ryder, a company has access to an expert database dedicated specifically to employee recruitment, training, and retention.