Rethink Shift Work to Recruit, Retain Better | 2-Minute Video

It’s time to rethink how you hire, retain and manage employees for shift work.

Shift work tends to be structured, full-time and rigid. But now there are ways to add flexibility to that around-the-clock job workforce.

A Shift in How We Handle Shift Work

Just ask the HR pros at Land O’Lakes, where they pioneered a Flex Work Program for roles that had always been full-time shift assignments such as 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 11 p.m.

With changes to hours and how they handle job roles, the company has been able to recruit and retain employees on a part-time basis. Now they’ve opened doors for students, working parents, partial retirees and beyond.

Those employees, who either can’t or don’t want to work full time, are engaged and loyal to the organization.

What’s Up in This Episode

In this episode of HRMorning’s 3-Point, Land O’Lakes’ Senior Talent Marketing Specialist Laura Schmidt explains their Flex Work Program and how it has improved their talent acquisition and retention.

Click, watch and listen for more details on how you can successfully turn shift work on its head, and recruit and retain employees better.

Transcript (edited for clarity):

It’s time to rethink shift work. That’s especially true if you struggle to fill positions.

Traditional shift work doesn’t offer much flexibility, right?

Now, there’s a way to create some flexibility so it’s easier to recruit and retain employees – and make them happier.

Land O’Lakes pioneered a flex work program in its cheese-making facility — a round-the-clock operation where teams had only ever worked 12-hour shifts.

The idea was to attract job candidates who wouldn’t or couldn’t do that traditional shift work — such as people caring for kids or parents.

Laura Schmidt: “Coming out of COVID, there was this understanding that the manufacturing landscape, the hours and the schedule were going to have to keep up with what people’s life demands are right now. And that offering those typical 8-hour shifts isn’t going to work for everybody.” 

So they did it: They offered part-time hours for traditional full-time shift positions. The key was to ensure no knowledge or continuity was lost between the growing change of hands throughout the day.

Schmidt: “We piloted this at one site first just to understand, how can we make this work? How can we try to schedule people in a different way than we’ve ever done before? How do we roll out that part-time benefits package? And all these different things that have to be in place for this to happen?” 

And guess what. It worked. It worked so well, they were overwhelmed with applicants. And then they rolled it out to dozens more of their facilities.

Schmidt: “One of the really cool things that we’ve seen is that we’ll have folks who come in and start as flex and they’ll want to move into more hours, and they’ll end up taking on a full shift or they might take a full-time role. And then we’ll have people who want that flexibility who have worked there, who have worked with us, and we’re able to keep them by moving them to flex because that’s going to work better for them.” 

So to create more flexibility in shift work:

• Rethink it. Look at how flexibility works in other areas of your company and how you can expand those best practices.
• Pilot it. Roll out flex work in one area to fully figure out how you can make it successful.
• Expand it. Offer flexibility in areas where people might want fewer — or more — hours.

With flex work in shift work, success is only limited by a reluctance to try something new.