Tools For Building A Workforce

by Greg Sitek

Is there really a shortage of skilled labor for the concrete pumping industry? Go online to Google and type in “concrete pumping jobs.” In approximately 0.30 seconds my computer pulled up about 344,000 listings. The first listing states “Jobs 1 - 10 of 338 - 338 Concrete Pump Operator Jobs available;” the next listing contains the line “4210 Concrete Pump Operator jobs.”

Change your search criteria and Google “concrete pump operator jobs,” and in 0.30 seconds you’ll get about 104,000 listings, many a repeat of the first search. The point is there really is a shortage of skilled pump operators.

The problem is real—but you are not alone in trying to solve the problem and build a workforce to meet today’s demands and the ever-increasing needs that tomorrow’s continued population growth will put on the industry.

ASSOCIATIONS

ACPA offers extensive safety and training programs. The ACPA National Office, along with professional industry experts in the concrete pumping industry, have developed a variety of safety publications and materials to provide you with a wide array of information for creating a safe working environment around concrete pumps on the job site. You are invited to download any of the FREE safety materials offered on the website: http://www.concretepumpers.com/content/safety.

The ACPA offers the only nationally recognized safety certification program for concrete pump operators. We’ve certified over 5,000 concrete pump operators nationwide, helping them to achieve the highest degree of professionalism and to maintain the strictest standards for safety: http://www.concretepumpers.com/content/certification.

INTERNET

There are other resources that can help you with growing a work force. For example, MyMajors, http://www.mymajors.com/career/concrete-pump-operator/, is an online website with a focus to assist students in identifying majors that fit them best.

MyMajors provides student-friendly assessment technology and access to information about a variety of majors at a broad range of institutions. Users can research more than 1,600 college majors and 40,000 pages of detailed career information. Students can find colleges and universities by the majors offered, as well as location, school size and other criteria they find important in making college choices.

The site does offer “concrete pump operator” as a career and provides the following job description: Tend, control, or operate power-driven, stationary, or portable pumps and manifold systems to transfer gases, oil, other liquids, slurries, or powdered materials to and from various vessels and processes.

A job as a concrete pump operator falls under the broader career category of pump operators, except wellhead pumpers. The information on this page will generally apply to all careers in this category. However, the website offers an option to take a career-defining quiz in response to the question, “Is concrete pump operator the right career path for you?”

The site also answers the question, “What do concrete pump operators do?” with a detailed bullet point listing of the types of things pump operators are expected and trained to do as part of the job. There is also a listing of 35 various job-related activities in response to the question, “What work activities are most important?”

If nothing else, visiting sites like this can help you develop ideas for your own workforce-building program.

AGENCIES

Don’t forget, there is another valuable tool that can help with this challenge—search and recruitment agencies. For example ConcreteCareers.com, Inc. is a full service, executive, industryspecific search and recruiting firm that has established ties with ACPA: http://concretecareers.com/company.html.

Since 1976, Concrete Careers has been a contributor to the concrete industry’s human resource expertise by identifying and matching individual talents, abilities and experiences for specific staffing requirements with the ability to focus on specific market segments, e.g., concrete pumping.

Sid Stansell has been in the construction business for over 30 years, having built a successful general contracting firm that he has since turned over to his associates. When his long time friend, Gene Vineyard, offered him a position with ConcreteCareers.com in a newly formed cast-in-place division, which includes concrete pumping, he enthusiastically joined the team. “Helping client companies meet personnel needs—while helping candidates find fulfilling positions—is gratifying work,” Stansell says. “We are sort of like cupid, neither client nor candidate is an adversary; it’s a win-win. We put quality individuals in touch with quality companies and eventually a ‘right’ match emerges.”

“Through a continually updated recruiting database and resume system,” Stansell adds, “we provide organizations a wealth of professional level applicants.”

Vineyard likes the work, saying, “This is what I would do even if I were retired!”

Stansell answered a few questions about working with an agency.

Q: How can contractors best work with you/your company to get employees? What should they know about working with you?

A: Integrity, that is our goal. We deal with companies with excellent reputations and we recruit candidates cut from the same cloth. Our reputation is on the line with every placement.

Q: Why should contractors work with you?

A: We have been building a proprietary database of nearly 60,000 concrete professionals since 1976. Many of our candidates cannot be found in the job boards. We try our best to recruit those quality employees who are already performing at a high level.

Q: What can contractors do to make working for them appealing and attractive to prospective employees?

A: Providing detailed and accurate job descriptions help us to identify the right fit. The more detail, the better. Accuracy is important because once a candidate is placed, he is expecting to do a defined job. If it’s not “as advertised,” the employer-employee relationship could be off to a bad start. Integrity! An allimportant ingredient for us, the employer and the employee.

Q: What are the important things to offer a candidate?

A: As I just noted, matching the job to the description is the first step, then add a great work environment that is encouraging and challenging. Of course, offer high-level compensation to attract the best.

Q: What kind of training should contractors offer/make available?

A: As much training as they can give will always pay handsome dividends. It’s important to encourage employees to grow and improve on all levels—skills, interpersonal relationships and management—anything that will make them better at their jobs professionally and personally.

Shirley Ramos, a training consultant with FMI Corporation (http://www.fminet.com/mc/professionals/shirleyramos.html), specializes in evaluation, instructional design and delivery of industry specific training programs, points out in her article, Hiring and Retaining the Right People, “The current reality for the construction industry is the challenge of not only an insufficient quantity of craft workers, supervisors, managers and staff for available positions, but also an industry that may not appear ‘sexy’ enough to attract and retain the younger millennials or the upcoming generation Z. A recent article on insulation.org referenced polling high school students on their career choice options. The role ‘construction worker’ ranked 247 out of the 250 options presented. Interesting as well, craft workers were asked if they would encourage their children to follow in their footsteps and become craft workers themselves—surprisingly (or not?), 70 percent said no.”

Obviously, for the construction industry, our work is cut out for us. Ramos continues in her article, “There is little debate that the construction industry appears to have its challenges as it competes against other industries for new talent. Couple that with the Construction Industry Institute (CII) research findings that “contractors with an employee retention rate of 80 percent or higher realize increased job profits, complete more projects on time or ahead of schedule, and have better project safety performance. "There a strong argument for how important retaining employees is for the building and construction industry. Many companies address this issue by treating the symptoms of the turnovers, which often show up as employee complaints, unresolved disputes and the overall malaise that appears before an employee decides to give notice, but it is questionable if they realize the increased employee retention they are looking for.”

Ramos goes on to say, “Hiring and getting the right employees on board is an essential first step to creating a strong workforce. Retaining that workforce requires keeping this talent by using a variety of strategies, including onboarding and training, opportunities for increased work challenges, purposeful engagement and appropriate compensation.”

Why is it so important to retain employees? “A Cornell University study estimates the cost of losing a single employee to turnover is 30 percent of an hourly employee’s yearly salary and 150 percent of a manager’s salary. The total cost of terminating an employee includes a number of administrative separation costs, the cost of replacing the employee, onboarding and training costs for the new employee and, specifically challenging for the construction industry, the time costs of having open positions (downtime) during a project or a number of projects. It only makes sense then to focus our efforts and resources on retaining, rather than constantly replacing, our employee workforce,” Ramos concludes.

It’s in our collective best interest to develop programs that will grow and retain a workforce for this industry. Domestic construction is not going to decrease, it is going to continue to increase—and at an accelerating rate—as population growth continues to put demands on all construction markets.

Use all the tools you can to attract, hire and retain the best for your operation. Modern, sophisticated, technically superior equipment is great, but without people to operate it, it sits waiting for an operator.