Small Business & The Hiring Crisis
The Current Hiring Climate:
“Help Wanted”. This is a sign that litters every road and sits at the door of almost every business. Each business is offering more and more extravagant packages to new hires. McDonald’s is offering a $500 bonus to new hires, just to get more help in their business. Aside from the bonuses, starting hourly wage continues to rise. Walmart’s hourly wage is at $16.40 as of 9/2 2021. The forced closure of many businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic, over 200,000 businesses closed their doors forever, decimated many dreams. That is just in 2020. The small businesses that did survive, are running extra lean operations. Most of these small businesses don’t have the kind of cash reserves needed to offer bonuses for new hires, or match the hourly wages the large employers can manage. Their available talent pool is effectively: people they know, or individuals who couldn’t get a job anywhere else.
Small businesses in the professional service industry are at an even bigger disadvantage. Their offerings tend to require specialized skills and training. Training a new employee is a costly endeavor, and if that employee doesn’t stick around, that’s wasted money. Rich Baris of Big Data Poll, surveyed economic confidence index and found incredibly low levels of confidence in the current economy (44.9). All of this means businesses are looking for a sure thing when they hire. If a business does choose to hire in the business climate, they are going to severely cut into margins, and therefore have to raise their prices. It’s a Catch-22 where a business needs to hire to keep up with demand (especially in the home improvement space), but if they hire they have to raise prices (potentially limiting their demand). There is a third option, though. Reduce the headcount necessary to get the job done.
Reducing Time Needed:
In the home improvement space, demand remains high as homeowners and new home buyers renovate their spaces. In most home improvement businesses, customer communication (invoicing, estimating, handling insurance, payments, etc.) is a full time job in itself. Generally, home improvement companies don’t have a stellar reputation in this area. Rather than hiring a new person, there is a way to remove over 90% of the time needed for customer communication. Have customers manage that themselves.
It may sound counterintuitive that a customer would want to manage their own tasks and communication, but if done properly, it can be a huge success. Traks offers a way for customers to manage themselves through a simple, and easy to use Tracking Link (example link). When using the tracking links, business owners saw a 90% reduction in calls and emails from customers that were already sold. Even better, customers managed to make payments on schedule, and upload the documents needed without any intervention from the business owner. Stacy, the owner of SEE Home Improvements, said, “I thought I would have to hire another person for the office just to handle the calls. After implementing the tracking links, that isn’t a problem anymore.”
“I thought I would have to hire another person for the office just to handle the calls. After implementing the tracking links, that isn’t a problem anymore.” -Stacy Elmore: Small Business Owner
Traks is free to start and has “smart presets” that make each new tracking link easier to complete than the last. Their goal is to make sure every business can save time, money, and survive the unique conditions small businesses find themselves in today. After signing up for a subscription, you also get access to a full suite of tools that give you automated reports, labor planning/scheduling, project management, and more to keep your business running as efficiently as possible. Businesses can sign up at Traks Tracking.