Paul Riddle
Contributing Writer
Success Group International
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 use to be able to put an ad in the paper and get plenty of qualified applicants, so what happened? In the 1970’s the various trades were adding about 1,000,000 new workers every year. It sounds like a big number but the same numbers of people were leaving the trades 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{938cd9e8dae860e800efc538277d4f7684e6f6981618ba70d1c34357a53c2e1f} 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. Before you start thinking I can’t afford to keep a person on payroll for two years before they make me any money! Consider this, you can hire a person with absolutely no experience, buy all their tools, pay their wages while they learn the skills they need and break even in just 22 weeks. Best of all they can be producing revenue in about six weeks.
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. Here’s how you can get started.
Step 1: You have to find people. You can advertise job fairs under “general employment” in the local paper. This works well at bringing in a lot of people that you will have to weed through to find those people 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 go to a store or restaurant, look for people who went out of their way to help their customers. These were the people that didn’t say, “I think it’s on isle 3;” they were the people that took you to isle 3 and helped you find what you were looking for.
When you meet these people, 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 in your industry and specifically 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 experience 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 that you ever run into. Then tomorrow repeat the process again.
The purpose of this is to weed out the people who are not going to like your kind of work. Better to let them know what it’s really like than to invest a lot of time and money in someone who will quit at the first attic they have to crawl through.
Step 4: If they survive the first two weeks, you need to begin training them. Use a boot camp method that consists of a one-week crash course that will give them the ability to do one aspect of the trade. These boot camps are available from a number of sources. You can do your own in-house if you choose. Help them register for trade school if they’re completely green.
Step 5: The week following training they ride with an experienced worker. Anytime they are faced with a task that was covered in the previous weeks training the experienced worker is instructed to let the new person perform that task. This will reinforces the training and helps the new worker gain confidence.
Step 6: The following week is another boot camp type training that covers the next phase of the job.
Step 7: For the next week the new hire is allowed to run maintenance/light service calls and is shadowed by an experienced technician. After this week the new person is running calls by themselves and is producing revenue.
Step 8: When you feel the new person is ready they need to attend the next phase of boot camp type training. This would complete their basic training in the industry. IT DOES NOT MEAN THEIR TRAINING IS OVER. These are the basics they need to get started; they will need to continue to improve their skills.
Step 9: The week following this training they are shadowed by an experienced technician to provide support and make sure they are ready. After this they should be able to do any type tune-up or maintenance.
Step 10: 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.
While this focuses on the technical side of bringing people into your industry, they need to understand the communication side as well. They should be attending all of your weekly in-house communications and sales trainings. Using a structure like I’ve outlined will allow you to take control of your workforce and provide better service to your clients. Within 22 weeks you will have a great new employee and given them a great career in the process.
About the Author: Paul Riddle, Vice President, Success Group International
Paul Riddle has over 25 years of hands‐on experience as GM, COO, CEO, and owner of service companies specifically in the mechanical and restoration segments. Throughout his career, he has personally trained the owners and employees of hundreds of businesses, including several turnaround situations. His hands‐on training for owners and their employees has been in the areas of business planning, sales & marketing, and company culture. Paul enjoys applying his knowledge and experience working directly with business owners and their employees to increase profits, improve the company’s present value, and unlock the intrinsic value of the business when sold. Paul joined SGI in 2009 as the VP of Operations.