Why You Shouldn't Treat Human Resources as an Afterthought

By Toni McQuilken

The following article was originally published by Printing Impressions. To read more of their content, subscribe to their newsletter, Today on PI.

At PRINTING United Expo in Las Vegas Sept 23-25, a group of experts came together to discuss some of the biggest trends, truths, and takeaways the print industry is facing right now. The packed panel, moderated by Ashley Roberts, content director of Printing Impressions, covered everything from economics, to OSHA, to HR — and beyond.

For Adriane Harrison, VP of HR consulting at PRINTING United Alliance, human resources is no longer something companies can afford to treat as an afterthought. For many, when business gets leaner, the tendency is to shrink the workforce to save on costs, but the problem is that once those people are gone, they might never come back.

Layoffs, she stressed, can cost more than what is saved in the form of lost institutional knowledge, plus those workers will then move on to other industries, especially higher-paying roles in places like data centers and construction that are often competing for the same talent.

“What happens when there's economic uncertainty or the perception of economic uncertainty is that there's two things,” she explained. “One, real economic uncertainty means that people will reduce their number of employees either through attrition or through layoffs because they just can't meet the margins. … And it's a really tough thing to deal with because you lose institutional knowledge and you lose the opportunity perhaps of rehiring those same people later. So that's a real catch 22.”

In particular, she noted that in periods of uncertainty like this, people are looking to stay in their jobs, where they know they have the income and security. But just like businesses will look to expanding options once things start to improve, so too will individuals take opportunities to change jobs once the economy starts to improve.

“I would say is that if you were thinking of doing layoffs, I would not do them because it's a double whammy,” she noted. “You're going to lay people off to make your margins, but then what's going to happen is when the instability is improving, people are going to leave to jump to go to other jobs, and they've been holding off doing that. So you're going to have a bigger wave of people leaving, and all of a sudden now you're going to be stuck with not enough people in your workforce, and we are competing now.

“When we compete for people who are interested, perhaps in our industry, those same people are contemplating working in other industries," she said. "Right now, AI data centers are paying a staggering amount of money to the trades. That is life-changing money for people who would normally have to work 50 years to increase their savings to a point where they could retire. So don't kid yourself — all those high school kids and community college kids and skilled workers are saying ‘Oh, I see that money. I'm going to go learn those trades,’ and they are not coming into manufacturing anymore. They're going into HVAC, they're going into plumbing, they're going into electrical because they can make a killing at those trades. We are in a real pinch. So I would say, hold off on layoffs if you can. Find other ways to turn your costs to be able to meet your margins because it is going to be a bear of a time filling your workforce up once it's depleted.”

To read insights from the rest of the panel, check out the series below: