Recruiting Strategies for the “Graveyard Shift”

Recruiting Strategies for the “Graveyard Shift”

Don't provide short-term incentives if you are looking for a long-term commitment.

Recruiting for the graveyard shift – normally ranging anywhere between 3 pm to 6 am – is a major cause of headache for companies in general and recruiters in particular. Most commonly, this is cited as the cause of high turnover the world over.

Recruiters are always evolving strategies to attract and retain talent in these shifts but 80% of them always find it difficult it do so. Stylus Inc HR experts have been closely monitoring the trends in global arena and have collected their recommendations in this article.

What to AVOID

However, before going into what-to-dos we found it imperative to discuss what strategies should NOT be employed to attract talent for night shifts.

Many companies, after long deliberations, think of providing a sign-on bonus for hiring employees. This is a mistake as the sign-on bonus not only risks portraying your company in a desperation mode but provides only short-term motivation for the new hires. Once the sign-on bonus money is spent the new hires do not have sufficient motivation to work for you.

Another strategy is to have people rotating from day to evening shifts. This is generally not a good idea from a health or safety standpoint in that it disrupts sleep cycles constantly, leading to fatigue and the inevitable injuries, material loss, errors, etc. If you start requiring this, you will undoubtedly lose a lot of your desirable day people.

Therefore, don’t provide short-term incentives if you are looking for a long-term commitment.

Attracting and Hiring Talent

Attraction and retention of employees for the graveyard shift are two different tasks and strategy evolution should be approached in two different ways. Let’s take talent attraction first. Here are 3 strategies to ensure optimum talent attraction:

1. Assuming the second shift begins at 3pm, you have some thinking to do. People looking for second jobs generally can't get to work until after 5pm. You can consider breaking the shift into two, say 3-7, for which you can try and attract students or moms, and 7-11 shift for permanent part time. Of course, this means screening and hiring more candidates but is a sure shot way to ensure business productivity.

2. You can also include a meal or McDonald's gift certificate so that they don't have to stop and eat on the way. This is not a short term incentive as the sign-on bonus but a long-term motivating factor for employees to consider working for your company.

3. Some companies offer a shift premium plus a four day workweek at 10 hours per day. The three-day weekend is a great incentive if you can work it into your schedule. This is a good strategy as many employees often site this as a major incentive to stay on second shift even when offered first shift.

Last, but in no ways the least, be sure, to include your incentives and benefits in your ads and other recruitment endeavors to ensure high apply rate.

Employee Retention Strategies

Taking this from an employee perspective, the people who have already worked in the “graveyard shifts” know what it means to be there. Here are a set of common grouses of the employees (they reflect the concerns of employees of all parts of the world):

1. They believe that graveyard shifts are managerial "stepchild" in most places. They feel management does not show as much interest in these employees as they do in the day shift.
2. People know that they’d have to give up a lot of social life in this shift.

Best ways to tackle these concerns are to address them directly. Ensure that these employees get the same training opportunities and motivation as their counterparts in the day. Have the same physical visits from management to show interest in the employees and their growth.

In addition, make it the "fun" shift to work. Have lots of social events, potlucks, and other events to promote bonding among the employees. Have a TV/VCR to tape their favorite shows while they work. Morale is a special issue with this shift, so work hard to make it good.

Address other issues as well

These are not the only ways to retain the employees. Address issues that don’t fall into the ambit of the shift-grouse but still matter to the employee. Child care is big issue on this shift. Arrange for extended-hours child care with a local provider, or on-site and see if that improves the quality of the employees.

Consider offering special tuition reimbursement for this shift only. This will entice students to your jobs, entice employees to start school and simultaneously upgrade the quality of this workforce. A word of caution: don't make the requirement that the courses be directly work-related or you’ll only alienate the employees from the management.

Conclusion

Recruiters and companies have lots of options open to them while attracting and retaining employees for graveyard shifts. Your working environment and corporate constraints will dictate what is best.

Then again, it is also clear that there are people who are prefer second or third shifts but finding them demands great amount of effort and time spend. We suggest you do not rely only on finding these people but also have a Plan B i.e. use a mix and match of the above strategies to attract and retain quality talent to work on the proverbial graveyard shifts.