Roundtable panelists search for labor shortage solutions

By |  August 24, 2021

P&Q: What jobs is the industry hardest pressed to fill right now?

Pat Jacomet

Jacomet

JACOMET: Our members are telling us it’s all of the above. Part of the beauty of the MACC Tech program is it touches all the aspects of our industry, from permitting, design and environmental restrictions to safety and production. We’re hitting all those points and providing students with a basic knowledge of what we do. Then, we talk about the job opportunities associated with each one of those.

We’re early in the program, but one of the successes to date is we have been successful in certifying 20 students at one school as Ohio Aggregate Level I technicians. When it comes to one of our members in Ohio, I would think that young man or lady is going to move to the top of stack.

But, to answer your question: The day I know this thing is really working is the day we get a classroom out to one of our plants and somebody says: ‘What’s it take to drive a concrete truck?’ Well, that’s a CDL (commercial driver’s license). We’ll help you get it.

Those are the things we need to expose young people to. I’m in the industry because I had family in the industry and I knew people. As we consolidate, we have less family-owned businesses and we don’t have that hierarchy anymore. So we need to create a pathway to expose young people to the opportunities we have. We’ve got great pay and great benefits. We just have to get out there and beat our own chests.

P&Q: Karen, where are your major pain points as a smaller producer?

HUBACZ-KILEY: It’s across the board. It’s everything from DOT drivers, equipment operators, plant managers, someone who will shuffle. It’s exceptionally difficult.

This is not a new problem. This is a major discussion we have at any convention you go to. The average miner right now is like in their mid-40s. That’s a problem. What’s it going to be in another five or 10 years? Everybody’s aging out. The younger people either aren’t interested or don’t want to work the hours.

There’s different things we’ve put into place. We go to the local vocational schools. Those guys are blue collar. Those girls are blue collar. They’re going to give you a day’s pay every single time.

I want farm kids. I was a farm kid. You already know how to run equipment when you’re 10 or 12 years old. To go from raking hay with a John Deere tractor up to an L180 loader is not a big jump. But there’s not a whole lot of farm kids anymore.

The pool we’re truly pulling from is really dry. How we refill that is where we all are.

Scott Dickson

Dickson

DICKSON: I went back and purposely asked our HR folks to give me our retention numbers over the last three years to see if the trend, in fact, was getting worse. For us, in 2019, it was right at 14.7 percent. Surprisingly, it’s actually gone down over the last two years. It was better in 2020. And, if I take our year to date, it would be below 13 percent for this year. So it’s a little bit of a positive trend for us right now.

That said, that’s still one in six or one in seven people who leave each year. That’s a lot of time and energy tied up to replacing them.

We have to change the job descriptions of what we ask our people to do. We have to ask them to be owners of their own business and go out and find people.

We are starting to offer a retention payment program, as well as a referral bonus program. Bring a son, daughter, cousin or relative and here’s $1,000 if they stay for six months. We’re going to have to be more creative, even as a large company, to get the people to come and stay with us.


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