How Are You Reacting to the Skilled Labor Shortage?

CFO.com’s top 10 list of concerns of CFOs dealt with cost of labor and the skilled labor shortage. Interesting in that Europe and Asia list these as number one and two with “average importance scores” averaging in the 90s (see chart from article) while the US CFOs rank “skilled labor” at a lower impact level of “48″. I personally think that the skilled labor shortage is as serious a problem in the US, in different ways, but it simply not recognized as much.

Reaction to the skilled labor shortage is interesting:

“Kevan Blair, finance chief at Ralph Wadsworth Construction, a highway construction contractor based in Utah, says finding workers is his number-one worry. “We’re trying to steal qualified employees from other companies by luring them away with good benefits and salaries,” he says. Of course, that leads to another problem — the high cost of health care, which CFOs placed fifth on their list of concerns.”

Note how “stealing” of employees with the lure of higher health benefits exacerbates the problems. I wonder how beefing up current employee training along with excellent hires who could be mentors could assist the situation? I would think that older workers in the job market could also be targeted to bring not only skills but maturity into the mentoring process.

Do you have similar issues in your company? How are you dealing with it? Is what your company is doing to solve the skilled labor shortage making the problem worse?

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