What are you doing today to ensure you have the crew you need tomorrow? Or next year? Or 10 years from now?
You may think, “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” but the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) offers three strategies you can use today to ensure your company’s survival tomorrow.
First, they recommend adjusting your own attitude.
“The onus is on companies now to actively engage employees,” said Ethan Martin, consultant and executive coach at Integrated Leadership Systems. “If employees don’t like it somewhere, they’ll just leave.”
That’s why it’s important to make workforce engagement a key part of your strategy to retain employees.
Secondly, it’s important to realize that tomorrow is too late. Citing lack of time and resources as an excuse to avoid employee engagement may actually cost more in the long-run.
“Too many companies fear investment in current employees or future employees, even to the point where they actually end up losing them,” Martin said. “The investment, as it turns out, would have cost them less than replacing the employee.”
The third strategy AEM offers is to hire for character first.
“You can teach anyone to do anything if he or she has good character,” Martin said. “And if the good-character employee actually moves on at some point, you won’t be left in the lurch because the person won’t just up and leave in the middle of a big project.”
It’s also important to convey the significance of the work your crew is doing.
“It puts the focus back on the mission, and Millennials want to make a difference,” Martin said.
And our industry does make a difference–one you can see with each and every lane mile paved.
That’s a mission worth remembering.