How to find, onboard and retain employees

When you ask a company leader what the biggest challenge is these days, it’s almost always one thing: labor.

That’s why learning creative strategies in recruiting, onboarding and retaining workers from leaders in several different sectors of the produce industry should be quite helpful— the whole point of United Fresh Produce Association’s Reimagine Conversations supply-chain track session called “Filling the Needs of the Post-Harvest Workforce: An Industry Roundtable Discussion.”

Labor shortages and rising costs are not only at the farm level, a fact felt by leaders in wholesale, distribution, retail and restaurants.

Yet the panel moderated by Steve Grinstead, CEO of Midwestern produce distributor FreshEdge, focused on solutions.

“My concern is how we deal with each other,” Grinstead said. “As an industry, we can’t absorb these costs, and ultimately, they have to be passed on to the consumer one way or another.”

Several panelists agreed that to find employees, they’ve had to look beyond Indeed, a popular job search and recruiting engine.

“Indeed is a great source, but so is Facebook,” said Judy Clark, CEO of Fresh from Texas, a San Antonio, Texas-based value-added produce and meal-service provider, serving mainly retail outlets. “I don’t know that we thought of Facebook a couple years ago as a primary source, especially for entry-level positions, but a lot has changed, and finding those ways to source the labor is so important.”

In the past 16 months, managers could no longer rely on onsite hiring events to find much-needed drivers and selectors for Rosemont, Ill.-based US Foods, which partners with about 300,000 restaurants and foodservice operators, said Ravi Subramanian, vice president of talent acquisition.

“We had to rely on social channels, Google, and whoever thought Craigslist would be a great source of talent, but believe me, it is,” Subramanian said.

Panelists said the time between a successful interview and the new hire’s start date needed to be faster than ever.

“If you come in to do an interview today, you can start tomorrow. We’ll get you in orientation the next day,” said Kathleen Quandee, vice president of human resources at Pacific Coast Fruit Co., a produce distributor based in Portland, Ore., and Seattle. “We find, if you wait, they find something else for a couple more pennies, and you lose them.”

Quandee has also noticed that texting job applicants elicits faster responses than e-mail and voice phone calls.

Pacific Coast added to its employee referral program, making everyone “friends and family, anyone who can recruit,” she said, even nurses working at their vaccine clinics. The company also started recruitment ads on electronic billboards and used its trucks as recruitment vehicles — “literally,” Quandee said.

While increasing wages and salaries helps attract and retain workers, so do great, innovative employee benefits.

Fresh from Texas started offering pay increases after 30 days, 60 days and 180 days for a whole dollar increase in that time. Starting pay is $15 an hour, which rises to $16 in six months.

“We just think it’s the right thing to do to earn a good living here. We don’t want to wait for federal law for that. In Texas, [minimum wage is] still $7.25 an hour,” Clark said.

Dental, eye and 401K-matching benefits are offered too. And at 90 days, employees can start taking paid time off, which is accrued from day one.

“It’s a change from when you had to be with the company six months or a year to get benefits,” she said.

The company introduced shift differentials or shift premiums, which is a self-funding benefit: Employees who clock in on time earn a higher rate for the rest of the day.

If the job entails working inside coolers for a long time, the panelists said they extended the interview or orientation to be in that cold atmosphere longer so candidates have a realistic expectation what the job will feel like and not quit after the first day.

At Saint Cloud, Minn.-based Coborn’s Inc. supermarkets, part-time employees are eligible for vacation pay if they work 20 hours a week, said Austin Vogler, manager of talent, culture and human resources.

Coborn’s has an employee recognition app called Kudos, an employee grocery-item discount and tuition reimbursement.

“If you can retain them, then you have to do less hiring,” Vogler said.

Both Quandee and Clark said their companies have either instituted or will institute in a couple of weeks quicker access to pay, or on-demand pay so that employees don’t have to wait for weekly or biweekly paychecks.

“It enables us to recruit from our temp pool. One of the reasons they don’t want to go to full-time work is the access to daily pay versus weekly pay,” Clark said.

Another benefit is flexible shift scheduling, allowing employees with more seniority to pick or swap shifts with some new technology.

“This young work force wants to work when they want to work, right? So having set schedules/shifts becomes an issue,” she said.

That flexibility applies to salaried office positions too, when it comes to extending work-from-home situations or hybrid office-and-home schedules, which will continue for certain roles at US Foods and Fresh from Texas.

“I’m a big believer if folks get their jobs done, I don’t really care when or where or how many hours it takes. They have a deliverable to get done,” Clark said. “We’ll try to be as flexible of an employer as we can, especially with some of our young new parents. It makes a big difference for them.”

All the panelists said they have streamlined their onboarding process, trying to make it as easy and friendly as possible. US Foods is focusing on more trainers, and Coborn’s has made several YouTube orientation videos to view on cell phones.

“But it doesn’t matter how good your onboarding is if you don’t pay market pay,” Quandee said. “You still have to be flexible with people with schedules and employees with families. So, all of it works together.”