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The trade service industry is heavily impacted by contractor turnover. In Australia, 10.1% of construction workers changed employers in the year prior to February 2020. With the national turnover average across all industries being 8.2%, this significantly higher figure should cause countless business owners considerable concern.
However, you don’t have to accept these statistics as a matter of fact. With the right approach, you can ensure your team feels valued in their positions, ensuring they stick around for longer and keep your training costs to a minimum.
You might think losing an unhappy employee isn’t a big deal. But the reality is that tradies who pack their bags and head for greener pastures can negatively impact your company’s long-term viability.
This is because there’s an array of costs associated with finding, recruiting and training new team members. You have to spend considerable time getting them up to speed on procedures, supply new equipment and pay for uniforms, among many other things.
In fact, the cost of replacing an employee might cost as much as 25% of the average worker’s salary. Considering this cash might have been spent on your marketing budget, upgrading your tools or gone into your pocket, the incentive to minimise turnover is crystal-clear.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out employees will be tempted to leave your business if they can earn a substantially higher salary somewhere else. This is why keeping your pay packets in line with industry standards is so important. However, if your business isn’t in a position to offer big money, developing other benefits might be a clever way to add extra value. For instance, a bonus scheme or additional paid time off might serve as a suitable inducement.
Establishing a thriving workplace culture is an awesome way to avoid turnover. Yet, this won’t happen overnight. You’ll have to have the right people in place across your company’s hierarchy, all working towards the same goals with similar ideals.
For example, you might decide that your field service business will be a work hard, play hard kind of environment. This might mean setting aside a budget to organise weekly social events where your team can blow off steam. Alternatively, you might want to be known as a place for top-quality workers, where tradies know they can learn new skills and level up their careers.
With this goal in mind, you can set about hiring people who fit into this culture and help take it to even greater heights. This way, you won’t find people willing to run out the door as soon as they get a better offer.
Fostering a positive attitude around your workforce and highlighting those who stand out is a great way to encourage your team to stick with you. This is because positive encouragement has been shown to mitigate workplace turnover, with up to 20% of workers quitting jobs over a lack of recognition from employers.
Fortunately, there’s no shortage of ways to praise your team. You might decide to hold a weekly meeting that showcases each worker’s accomplishments or even hand out annual awards for those who go above and beyond. Get creative with how you encourage your team and you might find they decide to stay through thick and thin.
Everyone wants to know they can move up within a business once they’ve spent enough time putting in a good performance. As you can probably understand, your workers will feel disappointed if they never receive a promotion or fail to be given any new opportunities.
To avoid this, you need to determine ways to guarantee growth – even if your business is small. Although you’ll likely always be the boss, you could give solid workers a new job title and a pay bump to show your appreciation.
If you’re not in a position to promote regularly, there are other ways to provide growth. This might mean paying your tradies to attend a beneficial training course, where they can expand their talents and experience personal development.
Once you’ve come up with a range of strategies to show your tradies how much you appreciate them, you can grow the rest of your business with FieldPulse. Our handy business management app helps you organise client information, generate invoices, schedule new jobs and monitor employee tasks, both in the office and on the move. Ready to get started? Schedule your free demo with FieldPulse today.
