Question

What does it mean to have a labor shortages? Compare and contrast the following methods of dealing with a labor shortage: overtime, temporary employees, turnover reduction.

Answer 1

Labor shortages in simple terms can be understood as the presence of any number of factors which can create a scenario where there is the absence of capable of being able to handle the given tasks as well as possible, the reasons can be considered as being less than required workforce, insufficient skills etc.

We can consider the following methods of dealing with labor shortage:

1. OVERTIME

Overtime is the process where an employee provides their services for more time than that is required from them. They are compensated for their work and the management gets to fulfill their requirements as far as the aspect of productivity is considered, We can say that over time allows a manager to select the employees from the current workforce and therefore, with proper management of their resources, can provide the company with the necessary work output by rearranging the work schedule as well as utilizing overtime processes.

2. TEMPORARY EMPLOYEES
Temporary employees are utilized by a company to be able to make better use of their processes by hiring temporary workers such as contractors in order to meet the specific demand for their processes. The contract is temporary and finishes once the required amount of work has been completed in their part. This allows a company to actively seek labor whenever required and minimize cost when they need extra labor for their processes since they would not have the need of the labor after their work has been completed, saving on recruitment and the factors of having excess labor with no net requirement.

3. TURNOVER REDUCTION

A turnover reduction can be considered as a necessity more than a viable option in itself. We can't say that the fact that employee turnover is the biggest cost implication over the factor of the working of the company can be considered as being one of the main reasons we need to consider turnover reduction as a process. When we consider the shortage of labor, we can also say that the company does not have enough employees to be able to perform the task efficiently. Employee turnover means to minimize the process of employees finding other places of employment by creating specific factors such as benefits, appraisal process as well as monetary and nonmonetary gains in order to rescue their turnover. The management can also reduce turnover by providing job satisfaction, encouragement, and enrichment in order to reduce the chances of turnover and therefore retain their employees crying the necessary factors for preventing shortage in the first place.