Companies need to remain competitive while also achieving high productivity and efficiency. For this to happen, businesses need to hire employees who walk the talk – these are folks who are loyal to the company, carry out their duties with utmost ownership, and go beyond their mandate to take up new initiatives and contribute to the company’s success.

Companies need employees across verticals, but the majority of them also include hourly wage and frontline workforce. The frontline employees are those that are most susceptible to socioeconomic challenges and the insecurities that come with it directly affect their families. As a result, slow hiring and attrition among these frontline workers often result in loss of productivity, reduced quality of work, lower morale, and high turnover rates – all of which in turn result in revenue loss.

To address this, talent acquisition and onboarding teams must prioritize cost-effective strategies for hiring frontline employees, spanning entry-level blue-collar, grey-collar, and white-collar positions.

Here are 7 ways in which recruitment teams can optimize hiring costs while looking for frontline workers:

1. Hire in Bulk

Unlike high-cognitive tasks that need specialized education, frontline workers need basic hygiene checks. This is why all the frontline needs of a company need to be predetermined before each quarter, and the right folks need to be hired in record time, and hired in bulk to save recurring hiring costs and efforts.

2. Focus on Free Job Posting Sites

While there are both paid and free job posting sites, the frontline staff can be hired effectively from various channels. Free channels that allow you to get a large volume of candidates are ideal for recruitment and talent acquisition teams that need to hire blue-collar staff in bulk.

3. Find Relevant Candidates

Globally, hiring teams spend 1/3rd of their time talking to candidates with low intent, lack of requisite qualifications, logistical barriers, or lack of required skills, particularly when hiring employees. This affects metrics such as Time to Hire and hiring cost among loss of employee productivity and efficiency. To mitigate this, recruitment teams must identify the ideal candidate profile and customize their search strategies to efficiently find frontline employees to hire.

4. Create a Candidate Funnel

Think ahead, and create a healthy funnel to fight any possible churn while hiring employees. This will ensure that you do not have to spend time, energy, and hiring costs again on recruitment efforts. A healthy funnel is not just limited to sales and marketing leads but also applies to potential candidates who can join your company as a frontline employee.

5. Employ a Referral Strategy

An attractive incentive and referral policy in place can ensure a large volume of inbound applicants year-round, particularly for frontline employees. This way, employees themselves are motivated to scout relevant candidates so that they can reap the benefits. In turn, you will save on the hefty hiring costs, mitigating expenses that you may otherwise have to pay to staff and recruitment agencies.

6. Screen Applicants Effectively

Imagine interviewing a candidate for 20 minutes only to find out that he cannot service the location you intend for him to be stationed or that he doesn’t have a two-wheeler and cannot drive (for delivery personnel). Although silly, this is a far too common occurrence in the recruitment space, especially for frontline workers. To avoid this, be 100% sure of all the checks and balances you need to complete a successful hire, and then allow your team to execute effectively; saving hiring costs, time, and effort associated with recruitment.

7. Conduct virtual interviews

Covid-19 has upended the traditional ways of professional and personal lives. Hour-long boardroom meetings have been replaced by Zoom meetings and Offline tradeshows and conferences have been superseded by virtual showcases. Keeping up with this trend, recruitment teams can double down on the number of interviews they can conduct in a day by simply switching to a virtual medium by hiring frontline employees online. No more waiting for candidates to reach your office, which is the least expensive method for recruitment, thus saving you costs and time.

If you wish to have an interactive employer dashboard with real-time insights, post a job in under 2 minutes, and ensure that both relevancy and volume of candidates are maintained, head over to our portal for smart hiring!