Andy Challenger, Senior Vice President of Outplacement and Executive Coaching at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, talks about the challenges employers face in hiring skilled workers and how easing requirements could impact the labor market. 

Opening Bell

Labor-Strapped Employers Being Forced to Drop Some Job Requirements

here to discuss this. Andy Challenger senior vice president of outplacement and executive coaching at Challenger Gray and christmas. Andy glad to have you on this morning. Can you just start by telling us just hiring challenges that employers are facing and how competitive this job market still is right now. Yeah. Thanks for having me. The labor market remains abnormal. We remain in a labor shortage when we talk to companies and hR leaders that are in charge of hiring. Uh they are still scrambling to try to get candidates in the door, get people hired. We just did a survey last week That should 81 Of employers are having a hard time filling roles. 41% of them, 42% of them said they're having a hard time filling in person jobs in particular. So it remains a really tight market with quits rates near an all time high job openings in an all time high. Still definitely a candidate's market. So let's talk about the industry's right which industries need to be more hires and and how are they kind of, you know, adjusting the hiring requirements to encourage a new applicants? Yeah, we see the most openings in areas of the economy clearly like restaurants, hotels, food, accommodation. Those areas where in person rolls are really kind of the bread and butter job. That is a very difficult position to fill in this environment. We're still missing uh say 123 million people from the labor market, not everybody's returned to working and because of that it makes hiring very difficult um at the higher end we're seeing healthcare very, very a lot of openings and healthcare people are burned out quitting the industry altogether. So you see a lot of competition amongst hospitals and healthcare organizations to try to lure people in. But not far behind that. We see professional and business services, that's kind of a broad category. But generally corporate jobs, like lawyers, accountants, HR professionals, people that can go across lots of different industries but have a defined skill set are in super high demand. Um We see companies doing all sorts of things to try to attract them. Uh Yes, they're raising wages and increasing benefits, but they're also in some cases lowering qualifications. The years of experience you might need to get into. One of those roles is coming down a bit because companies are uh just scrambling to get people in the door. You know, the idea of lowing higher hiring credentials in some sectors doesn't seem to be a bad idea right? When it comes to like maybe um you know, restaurant worker or even some lower skilled to be on the job training sectors in the business space. But I look at something like, you know, the healthcare sector and how critical some of these skilled roles and these credentials are. I'm curious just lowering the hiring credential kind of raise any concern over, you know, professionalism in the field that's required for especially those higher qualification um jobs and in those standards. Yeah, I think it's a fair concern, uh you know, it's a tough time to get people. So companies are lowering, I think not that literal qualifications, You still have to have certificates, you still have to pass a certain exams to get into highly professionalized skilled roles. Yet maybe the type of experience, the length of experience you need to have before getting into a roll with a little bit more management component to it, where your uh, you know, serving more of a leadership role in a company. That's where I see companies really starting to maybe lower the bar. And part of that is that we've seen a record number of retirements, The the most experienced portion of the labor market right now has been leaving at a record pace. We saw a lot of people just not come back from Covid, there are in late stage of their careers and that makes uh, you know, creates all this room throughout the organization as people get moved up into higher and higher roles. So there's a lot of new leaders in positions, I think, you know, they're very, you know, well, they might not be qualified in terms of length of time. You know, it's, we have a new generation coming up and uh serving those companies well, yeah, and new ideas. I think it's just so interesting to kind of follow this and and see that listen, on the employee side, it presents a major opportunity for leadership and growth at an accelerated pace. And on the other side it's an experiment, so to speak to see if the previous qualifications were actually truly necessary or maybe um just overly unnecessary um in order to kind of you know have people in these roles and bring these new ideas. So this I think will be one of those when we look back and it will be the experiment that that will gauge um you know on also just curious obviously the pandemic kind of ushered in this accelerated era of a hybrid work model or even fully remote kind of work model. How is the remote and hybrid hybrid work model kind of impacting the hiring process and this overall kind of labor market? Yeah, it's a big factor, right? I'd say about 30 to 40% of all jobs in the country could be done remotely, but it's a kind of an important piece of it. Uh Most people still are working in person jobs but for that group that is working remotely, they have a lot of options. When I talked to HR leaders and we just conducted a survey. The number one thing that they say candidates are asking for and employees are asking for our flexibility and remote work and that's above higher paying higher salaries. There is really this really deep desire coming out of covid too to maintain some of that ability to have more flexibility in your life to have some autonomy and when and where you're going to work. Uh And some companies are fighting to figure out ways to adapt to that while still bringing people back to some degree. Uh There is a rising consensus among HR folks and leaders of organizations that uh there is some cost to everybody working from home. People don't know each other. They brought in a whole new classes of workers into their organizations and they've never met each other and they don't know each other turnovers really high because people don't feel connected to the work of their jobs. And so companies are kinda riding this fine line over the next year as we see them attempted to create some of that company culture, bring people back together but also higher at a time when people really want flexibility. Yeah. And give them that flexibility. It's such a fascinating time um you know, in this kind of labor market and in this space right now and I really appreciate your time and your insight. Andy Challenger senior vice president of outplacement and executive coaching at Challenger Gray and christmas