Workforce Crisis: It is an applicant’s market!

Have HR attitudes and processes adjusted to the new reality?

Human services providers are currently experiencing a veritable workforce crisis with some agencies literally unable to find applicants, let alone to fill vacancies. Current outcomes are unsatisfactory and unlikely to improve without solving this workforce crisis.

Quality of care is unacceptable as incidents of theft, abuse and neglect are too frequent and often frighteningly severe. Medicare and Medicaid expenditures are unsustainable as the US debt now exceeds $20T with no end in sight. The 2016 NCI study indicates direct support staff average compensation is at $10.71 per hour, a below minimum wage in many jurisdictions.

Several states assert it is a full-blown workforce crisis. “A perfect economic storm of increasing demand, a shrinking workforce and low wages threatens the care of one in 10 Massachusetts residents who rely on human service providers…” Pennsylvania is facing a crisis because government funding for Direct Support Professional (DSP) wages has flatlined for 10 years.

You know that real estate markets cycle from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market and back again. So too the labor markets shift between an employer’s market to an applicant’s market. Given the industry claim of crisis, providers must rethink their attitudes and processes to cater to the applicant.

This workforce crisis is not the applicant’s problem. It is yours.

Let’s talk.