In researching timely topics for this month’s column, I Googled current top business concerns for mid-market companies in the U.S. In perusing a few articles, something jumped out at me: Mid-market leaders are citing workforce challenges among their top issues. Recruitment and retention are among their top priorities, and they expect workforce challenges to directly impact business growth over the next three to five years, according to Citizens Financial Group, Inc. The same study reports, “Hiring and keeping talent is a multi-front battle. Leaders say competition from other companies (32 percent), a lack of qualified/skilled candidates (31 percent), rising labor costs (31 percent) and a lack of candidates with necessary soft skills (30 percent) are the top challenges they’re facing. Once talent is in the door, skills gaps (31 percent), compensation pressures (30 percent) and limited training resources (27 percent) are making retention difficult.”
Consider this
So, here is my question for middle-market leaders: “Is it time to look at outsourcing to fill the gaps?” And why not? Consider the time and cost to hire, train, manage and retain talent on top of salary costs. What would your world look like if you could alleviate that hassle in certain challenging departments of your business caused in part by lack of needed talent?
A shift in strategy
Mind you, my company offers outsourced CMO services managing marketing, advertising, PR and digital marketing services, so I have a bit of a vested interest here. Regardless, I feel it is a valid question to ask whether the talent weakness is on the IT, HR, accounting or marketing front, among others.
As a business owner for 35 years, I understand the diversity of talent and skills needed to employ the team we have to deliver the full set of services my firm offers. I also intimately know the cost of that talent, the benefits package it requires and the investment in skills training to keep our team top-notch. I am sure the same is true for other categories of outsourced providers.
Some business owner discussions I have been a part of have shared frustration in not knowing if the talent they have hired have the right skills to do what they need because they are not seeing the results they expected. They want help from outside experts who can provide their internal teams with a play-by-play of what needs to be done and right-course what is not working well. OK, but not necessarily a quick or sustainable solution to achieve the desired results. Putting an experienced team in place may make more sense.
I know with marketing, there are myriad skills needed to manage the entire marketing function. It requires a team. If there is a CMO who is like a Swiss Army Knife and can perform all facets of marketing, I would like to meet them. I doubt one exists. It takes a team. So, why not consider outsourcing (augmenting or fractionalizing — however you want to reference it) what your team is missing?
Explore new horizons
In an agency owners’ peer group I belong to, we had a discussion about the book, “Burn the Boats,” by Matt Higgins, which is now on my reading list. If what you are doing is not working or the problem is not getting resolved, perhaps it is time to move on to a new strategy. Burn the boat so that you cannot retreat to the past, and open your thinking to new ways to achieve the growth you desire. ●
Kelly Borth is CEO and chief strategy officer at GREENCREST
