Finding and Keeping Great Restoration Technicians

Hiring and Retention

Source: Center for American Progress’ analysis of 30 case studies on the cost of turnover from 1992 through 2007.

According to a study by the Center for American Progress (CAPS), based on 30 case studies, the typical (median) cost of turnover is 21 percent of an employee’s annual salary.

FIGURE 1

Replacing employees is costly for companies’ bottom lineThe cost of turnover is remarkably consistent across jobs at different

pay levels, except the very highest-paid jobs, 1992 to 2007

25%

21.4% 20.7%

16.1%

19.7% 20.4%20%

15%

10%

5%

0%All cases All cases excluding

physicians and executives

Jobs paying$30k or less

Jobs paying$50k or less

Jobs paying$75k or less

With these statistics, it is no wonder there have been multiple studies to root out the causes of employee turnover, and then find a way to curb it. Instead of random hiring, there is now a focus on recruitment. Instead of a hands-off approach once an employee is hired, there is secondary consideration given to retaining them. As the American workforce becomes more experienced, more educated and more skilled, employee prospects no longer look to stay with one employer for the length of their career. It is because employees may always be looking for the next best thing, that an employer must look to the life of the position, and make sure a key, talented and well-performing employee will want to stay for the long haul.

Recruitment: 4 Ways to Find the Keepers

1 Take a Look Around You.According to Robert Tunmire, Executive Vice President of the homes services franchise giant, Dwyer Group®, good prospects are everywhere. He believes one key way to find the right associates is simply by being observant. It’s called Observation Prospecting, and it is the habit of looking at everyone you meet as a prospect. “We literally come in contact with 20-50 people a day from the time we walk out of our house to the time we walk back into our house at the end of the day,” Tunmire says. “The problem we have as business people, is we don’t see them as potential associates. Unless something really jumps out at you, you don’t think about it. If you will develop the habit of looking at everyone you meet as a prospect, you will find incredible people everywhere.” (7 Keys to Recruitment)

2 Know What You Are Looking For.In the restoration industry, the task of recruiting technicians may be even more daunting, depending on the kind of business you are running and the needs you have. Make sure you know exactly the type of skillset you are soliciting for. Do you need a tech who is already skilled and can perform the work with their eyes closed? Or will someone who can follow a process from a guide be fine as long as they can build customer relationships and upsell?

A visit to the topics page of Adecco, a staffing solutions company, gives some advice. They caution not to think you can change your hire. “He or she might be a perfect cultural fit for your company, but if they don’t have the right skills coming in, the time and money you spend training and getting them up to speed will outweigh what you spend in a slightly longer search that yields the right hire.” (adeccousa.com)

An employer must have a keen sense of which type of technician will work best for their business. Companies that look ahead know to implement the proper tools and resources needed that only bring in applicants who meet their criteria. Efficiency during the hiring process saves the company time and money.

3 Bring Awareness to Young People.Tunmire suggests getting in touch with local high school work programs. “There are a great many young people out there who are not going to college,” he says. “That doesn’t mean they aren’t great people, just means they aren’t going to college.”

It Really is about Who You KnowSince the beginnings of the workplace, hiring referrals has been a solid and reliable way of doing business, and for good reason. According to ERE Recruiting Intelligence (10 Compelling Numbers that Reveal the Power of Employee Referrals):

• Referrals are the #1 source for hiring volume

• Referrals are the #1 source for new hire quality

• Candidates are a better fit

• Faster time to initial productivity

Tunmire agrees referrals are highly effective. “Most of the time if you just let people know you are always in need of good people, and if you are the type of person people want to work with, and your business is a place of choice to work in your industry and your community, people will send you people.” Tunmire has also been a driving force behind a Dwyer Group® franchisee referral program called People Like You.

4

Times have changed when it comes to hiring the right people for your business. Nowadays, the prospective employee is interviewing you as much as you are interviewing them. Employees know what they want, and aren’t afraid to shop around to find the right fit. According to Tunmire, there is a common misconception of the interview process. Employers are “interviewing” when they should be “recruiting.”

This means investing more time and resources into your prospective employee. If this is the case for your business, you may want to get to know them a little better before you actually hire them. Here are some quick ways to do just that.

Interviewing in the 21st Century

• Create an experience for the candidate during the interview that makes them want to be on your team.

• Meet where there are no distractions. If it is in your office, sit on the same side of the desk as the interviewee or at a table—so it feels equal.

• Tell them your story. Tell them about the company. Ask them to share their story, get to know them a little.

• Let them shadow one of your techs for a half-day and then get feedback from both the candidate and the tech.

• The more time you spend up front with the candidate, the easier and more informed your decision will be to make.

As mentioned above, more often than not, employees choose where they want to work as much as a company chooses them as an employee. A great prospective employee can easily turn down a job offer if it doesn’t meet their own, personal requirements. So how do you keep a good employee? What will drive a technician to be the best that he can be? Multiple studies suggest the answer comes down to one word. Employees want to be engaged.

Keeping the Good People

At Deloitte University Press, a new workforce and workplace survey and its results are revealed in a report titled, Global Human Capital Trends 2016. In this report, C-Suite and HR firms learn what key characteristics are important to the workforce. Employees want to be engaged by being included on strategic projects and having their ideas heard. They want to matter, and they want good leadership.

-30% -20% -10% 0% 10% 20%

Percentage of total responses

Organizational design

Leadership

Culture

Engagement

Learning

Design thinking

Changing skills of the HR organization

People analytics

Digital HR

Workforce management

Somewhat/not important Very important/important

Graphic: Deloitte University Press | DUPress.com

30% 40% 50%

71%

74%

77%

78%

79%

84%

85%

86%

89%

92%

60% 70% 80% 90%

8%

11%

14%

15%

16%

29%

21%

22%

23%

26%

Creating an engaging environment means investing more time and resources into your employee if you want to hold on to them. Forbes reports that 75% of employees from their study sent out resumes or contacted recruiters to move to other companies when they didn’t receive the type of engagement they were expecting. A whopping 95% were involved in networking activities and eventually left their companies an average 28 months after being hired.

Gallup has been measuring employee engagement since 2000. Less than one-third of those polled have been engaged in their jobs over the last 15 years.

According to Adecco and the Center for American Progress, 18% [of employees] are actively disengaged: dissatisfied, unmotivated workers with attitudes that can be contagious to coworkers, and 52% are disengaged: doing the bare minimum required to keep their job, but without any real connection to their work.

75%

95%

<33%

18%

52%

The good news is that means there is an equally whopping opportunity to change the attitudes and productivity of the work force by offering a few inroads for employee engagement.

Keep training. Employees want to learn, be challenged, and get better at what they do.

Offer perks and incentives for a job well done.

Keep lines of communication open between management and employee/technician. If you value their feedback then you value them as people too.

Develop an employee’s strengths. If they are a people-person, put them in front of the customer. If they enjoy data, make sure they are included in business analysis or marketing projects.

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A second and essential piece of the engagement puzzle, and why companies like Rainbow International® Restoration are seeing success, is because they’ve understood the importance of culture in the workplace for decades. As noted by Deloitte’s research earlier, 86% of employees consider culture an important reason to remain working for a company.

Rainbow International Restoration operates with excellent customer service, delivered by expert technicians, all rooted in their Code of Values. The Code of Values focuses on respect, integrity, customer service and having fun in the process. This kind of culture is just another way Rainbow employees and techs are invited to be engaged within the company, and enjoy their workplace.

Culture

86%

What is it that makes your company a desirable place to work? What type of person fits well with your culture? Which skills are best suited to meet job requirements, and who can you afford to employ? It’s a lot of information to consider. Wouldn’t it be helpful if most of the sorting was done before the interviewee even sat down at your desk? Discovering the profiles of potential employees is arduous work and will slow down the hiring process every time. Once you attract candidates with an enticing place to work, you still must weed through the particulars to bring in the most qualified. Some companies are implementing powerful hiring and recruitment tools to make this process much more efficient.

In 2016, Rainbow International Restoration® franchisees, along with other Dwyer Group® brand franchisees, took part in a brand management study and improvement initiative for their hiring and recruitment practices. Dwyer Group COO Mary Kennedy Thompson spearheaded an effort to find ways to help franchisees, like those at Rainbow International Restoration, close the gap and find success in recruiting and retaining excellent employees. Franchisees across all brands reported a lack of qualified personnel as the number one throttle to growth.

The Right Tools

After compiling survey results, it was apparent that recruitment was a reactive effort, and that there was limited knowledge of tools available to acquire and onboard talent. That simply wouldn’t do for Rainbow International Restoration®, or any of the other service brands under Dwyer Group®. The leadership team went to work to seek out state-of-the art recruitment and retention tools and resources that were easy to navigate and would ultimately be effective for brand management. Thompson and the leadership team understood that it was imperative for franchisees to become their industry’s employer of choice. They found services and software that pre-screened their applicants for them, gave them an enticing benefits package to attract the right people, and offered it to their franchisees at a low cost rate.

56% 61% 75%of franchisees would hire more or a lot more, if recruiting were easier or more cost effective.

say they are not receiving enough applicants to do the work coming in.

are unhappy with the overall quality of applicants.

100

80

60

40

20

0

Response from franchisees was swift…

“I’m not an HR guy, so this is going to help me, especially.”

“Finding good people is my biggest challenge, now I can just look for those in ‘green’.”

“I think it’s going to be instrumental.”

“Once I learn it, I think it’s going to make the process so much easier.”

“Well, I need help with that, so I was happy to see it.”

Understanding the weight of an employee’s perspective is key when it comes to recruiting and retaining them within your business or organization. Why wouldn’t you want a technician who is driven to succeed because he/she feels valued? The statistics and data are new, but the ideals behind it are not.

It’s human nature. People want to be appreciated and treated with respect for a job well done. They want to learn and grow and be helpful. They want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, and make a difference.

If you have reached a point in your business that has you feeling stuck when it comes to hiring, recruiting and retaining good employees to grow your business, we would be happy to discuss if Rainbow International Restoration could help your growth objectives.

It’s Not Really a New Concept

Resources:

7 Keys to Recruitment (Dwyer Group)https://www.adeccousa.com/employers/resources/employee-recruitment-and-retention-strategies/

http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/188033/worldwide-employee-engagement-crisis.aspx

http://www.halogensoftware.com/blog/does-your-organization-have-healthy-employee-turnover

http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/316/truth-about-turnover.aspx

https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/human-capital/articles/introduction-human-capital-trends.html

gx-dup-global-human-capital-trends-2016.pdf

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/jolts.pdf

https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/CostofTurnover.pdf

No Joint Employer This document contains optional best practices presented for brand management purposes only. As a franchisor, Rainbow International Restoration LLC (“RBW”) has no indirect or direct control over the franchisee’s workers. RBW has no role in the hiring, firing, disciplining or supervising anyone working for the franchisee. RBW is not responsible for determining wages, raises or benefits of those workers. And RBW is not involved in scheduling or setting work hours. RBW plays no role in labor relations or day-to-day working conditions of its franchisee’s workers.