With the COVID-19 pandemic upending Rhode Island’s job market, employers are desperate to fill positions, utilizing creative tactics to draw new employees.
Due to high demand for products and services, companies are offering a host of incentives, including signing bonuses, child care assistance and food – yes, food – to bring workers through their doors.
Fall River-based Blount Fine Foods Corp. said it has started offering a year’s worth of free chowder and clam cakes to its new hires at its plant in Warren, where it has had trouble filling 30 positions. Blount is also seeking to hire 200 workers in Fall River. The company’s top executive said it is bulking up its workforce to meet demand for its food products during its peak season in September.
“This is definitely the most unusual thing we have done,” said CEO Todd Blount, who noted that the inability to find workers is a serious issue. “If we don’t solve this problem by September, we will be in trouble.”
Blount said his company has been struggling, like other local businesses, to find job applicants. “We’ve been trying to recruit by highlighting our differences of being a local, small company,” he said, adding that the free clam cakes and chowder are to illustrate the company’s uniqueness.
The company also offers employees a $1,000 bonus for referring people who are eventually hired and $500 to the person who was referred to the company. The intention is to develop a workforce for long-term employee retention and growth.
Blount said he has never seen anything like this labor shortage. “We are working on this on a daily basis,” he said. “It’s taking 100% of our focus and our suppliers’ focus.”
The need for workers is evident in data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS said there were a record 9.2 million job openings at the end of May. Job openings had been on an upward trajectory since 2011, peaking at over 7 million in 2019, and then dropped precipitously to under 5 million in 2020 before reaching new heights this year.
AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at the job search website Indeed.com, said that through the week ending June 18, 4.1% of Indeed job postings featured hiring incentives. That is more than double the 1.8% offering incentives in the week ending July 1, 2020.
Konkel said the dollar amounts of hiring incentives vary widely within an industry. “In the month ending June 18, nursing jobs offered incentives ranging from $100 to $30,000,” she said. “In food preparation and service, incentives ranged from $100 up to $2,500. Of course, geography and job type influence how much an employer is willing to offer.”
Cole DeSanty, director of client development at The Hire LLC, a Providence placement and recruitment firm, sees companies bending over backward like never before. DeSanty, who has worked in the recruiting business for 14 years, said some companies are paying large signing bonuses upfront, offering remote work, schedule flexibility, free lunches and transportation passes.
“I don’t think I have ever seen such an aggressive candidate market – where candidates are just dictating what is happening,” he said.
Among his clients, DeSanty said, companies that are quick to hire help are not having as much of an issue compared with companies that move slower through the hiring process.
“I’ve had to make [employers] understand that it’s not their world and everyone is living in it,” he said, noting that companies that take their time are sometimes missing out on candidates. “After two or three weeks when they say they are ready to interview a candidate, I am like, ‘No, they’re gone.’ ”
Have any of his clients offered job candidates free chowder and clam cakes? “I would say that is pretty unique,” DeSanty said.
Cassius Shuman is a PBN staff writer. Contact him at Shuman@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter @CassiusShuman.