It’s the busy time of the year and you need to add more people so you start to advertise. What few people apply have poor skills, attitudes and habits so you keep looking. Over time desperation sets in and you need to add people fast so you lower your standards. You hire warm bodies and hope for the best. After you get them in place you find their attitudes, and habits are making your life a living hell but what else can you do?
This scenario is played out year after year. You used to be able to put an ad in the paper and get plenty of qualified applicants, so what happened? In the 1970s the various trades were adding about 1,000,000 new workers every year. It sounds like a big number but the same number of people were leaving the trade as those coming in. In the nearly 40 years that have passed, the trades are adding about the same number of new people, but with a population that has increased by over 51% the trades are now experiencing a yearly labor shortage of more than 500,000 people.
Why is this happening? After all, being in a trade is honorable work. You protect the public’s health and well being. Modern life as we know it could not exist without the things you provide. So why are people not going into the trades? More importantly, why are we not promoting our trades to potential new workers?
It’s time to take control of our workforce! It’s time to stop hoping qualified workers will magically show up at our door and it’s time to stop trying to reform everyone else’s rejects.
If you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, get a puppy! You have to go out and find someone who doesn’t have a bad attitude and everyone else’s bad habits and train them.
Sound too good to be true – it’s not. It takes a lot of effort but in the end you will have better employees that provide superior service with fewer headaches.
Getting Started
Step 1: You have to find people. You can advertise at job fairs or under “general employment” in the local paper. This works well at bringing in a lot of people, so you will have to weed through applications to find those with good attitudes. Many companies do this with great success. Others like the one-on-one contacts. Always be on the lookout for potential employees.
When you do meet someone with potential, get their name and give them your card. Say something like, “I’m always looking for people with great attitudes like yours to add to my team. Why don’t you give a call tomorrow at 10:00 and let’s talk.” Always set aside time for people you meet to call you. Also make yourself a note of the person’s name and where you met them so you will know who you are talking with when they call.
Step 2: Get them involved with your company. You really have to “sell” them on the idea of working for your company. Tell them about the great benefits and potential income. Let them know what your standards are and get the drug screens and background checks completed. Be real and don’t sugar coat things, otherwise you will be wasting your time and theirs.
Step 3: Make sure they are going to stay. For the first two weeks of employment have them ride with an experienced worker as their helper. During this period you should meet with them every morning and see how they are doing. Encourage them and let them know how excited you are to have them on board. Then send them out on the nastiest, dirtiest, hottest, coldest, tightest, and most uncomfortable jobs you have. They need to get into every type of crawlspace, attic, and basement. Then tomorrow repeat the process again.
The purpose of this is to weed out the people who are not going to like your company. Better to let them know what it’s really like than to invest a lot of time and money in someone who will quit over the first attic they have to crawl through.
Step 4: As the new person improves their skills they should be given an opportunity to run more trouble-type calls. This will increase their confidence and allow them to generate more revenue.
Using a structure like this will allow you to take control of your workforce and provide better service to your clients.