11 Creative Tactics to Attract Service Employees

If you have a service business, you’ve taken a big hit during the past two years.

Many of you are out of business. Some are still alive – but suffering. Very few are as prosperous as they used to be.

And I am so sorry for your experience! So. Very. Sorry.

It really is unfair.

I love the entrepreneurial spirit of the small business owner.

The big corporates made it through. Public sector employees all kept their jobs, working from home, every dollar intact. 

But what happened to the small shop owner?

Did they get to stay home? Well, yah! But not in the way you think. They had to pretty well shut down and many really did lose their business. They didn’t get paid.

I know quite a few people who really are second-class citizens in their own right. They found a place to lease. They put some (or all) of their retirement savings into renovations, hired staff, bought some advertising, and toiled away day after day to eke out more or less what they would make at a salaried job.

And then they got mandated out of business.

Make no mistake. I love these entrepreneurs. Many of my family members have exactly these kinds of business. But I see how uneven the impact was. Uneven.

IF they did survive, if they did make it through, now their big issue is THEY CAN’T FIND STAFF!

People contact me all the time now – how do you find staff these days?

They’re past trying to figure out why. They just need to know how.

So I got to work and put a list together.

Hope it helps.

1. Offer signing bonuses, retention bonuses, creative new benefits like a regular stream of coffee gift cards, and add novelties like regular in-house draws for a trip or weekend getaway. Keep it interesting.
2. Brag about how you offer paid training. Yes, paid training.
3. Change-up your hours. Open in the evening. Open super early. Close between 3 and 5. Offer three work hours for the price of four. Or work six in a row and get three days off with a pizza or fish and chips delivered to their home one night. You might catch some employees who want these kinds of gigs.
4. Hire a consultant like Donna Crombie (a great speaker at our January 11th summit) for two hours. She will teach you how to access the hidden job market. You can reverse engineer her knowledge to find the people you need.
5. Do a brainstorming with your customers to ask them how they would find staff for your business!
6. Put signage on your vehicles: Now hiring – great pay and conditions!
7. Do way more serious recruiting on social media.
8. Blitz all the job boards way more intensively than ever.
9. Paper the neighborhood with good old-fashioned flyers and mail drops.
10. Plaster all the community bulletin boards at the grocery store. Hit all the bulletin boards at the local college campus. Put a sticker on the light pole in the left turn lane.
11. Do a pop-up trade show or job fair in unusual places. Get rid of the usual offering and put in an employees wanted sign.

I think you see what I mean. Nothing is a guarantee. But if we use the old methods we will get the old results.

Hang in there you small business owners! Hang in there.