{"id":46115,"date":"2018-12-23T14:00:11","date_gmt":"2018-12-23T14:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smallbiztrends.com\/?p=523186"},"modified":"2018-12-23T14:00:11","modified_gmt":"2018-12-23T14:00:11","slug":"82-of-small-businesses-struggle-to-find-qualified-talent-report-reveals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/?p=46115","title":{"rendered":"82% of Small Businesses Struggle to Find Qualified Talent, Report Reveals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fall<\/p>\n

The economic confidence of small business owners remains high, but finding qualified talent still remains a challenge in a tight labor market.<\/p>\n

The fall 2018 Bank Of America Small Business Owner Report<\/a> (PDF) has revealed entrepreneurs are happy with the direction of the economy<\/a>. According to the report, owners are anticipating revenue growth and they are looking to hire and expand in the coming year.<\/p>\n

Fall 2018 Small Business Owner Report<\/h3>\n

In the report, more than half of business owners who wanted to hire in the past year couldn’t find qualified candidates<\/a>. This has been responsible for hindering the growth of these businesses. And if the trend continues, the difficulty in finding the right talent will further hamper their desire to grow.<\/p>\n

In the report and press release<\/a>, Sharon Miller, head of small business, Bank of America, said the hiring plans of small businesses are on the rise, peaking to the highest level in three years.<\/p>\n

So it is only natural that businesses start taking advantage of a healthy economy. Miller added, “While we are seeing an increase in hiring plans and loan applications, today’s competitive job market has created a challenging environment to attract and retain small business talent.”<\/p>\n

The Fall of 2018 Bank of America Small Business Owner Report Survey was carried out online between August 30 and September 13, 2018 using pre-recruited online small business owners.<\/p>\n

A sample of 1,067 business owners in the US with two to 99 employees and annual revenues between $100,000 and $4,999,999 took part in the survey.<\/p>\n

Competition for Talent<\/h3>\n

The Bank of America report says this is one of the tightest job markets in a half-century, and more entrepreneurs are looking to hire in the year ahead.<\/p>\n

Close to a third or 27% of businesses said they are planning to hire over the next 12 months. This comes as 58% of business owners in the survey said they are finding it difficult to find qualified candidates for open positions.<\/p>\n

One in four of business owners also said it took more time to fill an open position in 2018 than it did in 2017, with 50% attributing this problem to the tightening labor market.<\/p>\n

In addition to finding the right talent, businesses are also losing their staff. Twenty-four percent said they lost at least one employee over the last year and 11% said they lost at least 10% of their workforce.<\/p>\n

The reasons for leaving include everything from accepting a higher salary offer to starting their own business, accepting a position at a large company.<\/p>\n

New Hiring Strategies<\/h3>\n

With fewer talent to go around, business owners are adopting new strategies to attract qualified and higher quality candidates.<\/p>\n

All of these efforts come at a time when the vast majority or 82% of business owners say less than half of the job applicants are qualified.<\/p>\n

Some of the measures small business owners have taken include shifting to a more flexible culture (25%), using social media to attract talent (23%), offering higher salaries (17%), emphasizing community impact or charity work (12%), using an outside recruiter (9%), and offering a referral fee (8%).<\/p>\n

Business owners are also using word-of-mouth, print advertisements, job fairs and websites postings to bring in new talent.<\/p>\n

This doesn’t always deliver though and owners are having to offer more perks to attract candidates. The perks include offering flexible hours (57%), professional development (39%), flexible work location (33%), discretionary bonuses (31%), healthcare (26%), and retirement benefits (50%).<\/p>\n

Photo via Shutterstock<\/a><\/small><\/em><\/p>\n

This article, “82% of Small Businesses Struggle to Find Qualified Talent, Report Reveals<\/a>” was first published on Small Business Trends<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Small businesses are happy with the economy, but finding talent is still a problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-employment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}