Is Enough, Enough?

While many snow professionals point their fingers at outside influences and obstacles as reasons for why they’re having difficulty hiring and retaining labor, recent research data indicates snow professionals may be partially to blame as well.

Slightly more than half of snow professionals (53%) recently surveyed indicated they do not have employee recruitment and retention strategies in place to deal with the management of their labor resources. In addition, a third of respondents (36%) rate their recruiting practices as below average, more than a third (39%) say their on-boarding procedures are lagging, and a third (33%) would rate their training as substandard. A very low percentage of contractors ranked themselves as “excellent” for any of these categories.

Once on board, though, most snow contractors (90%) believed they do a good or better job at reinforcing with employees their importance to the success of the overall snow and ice management operation. Broken down further, more than half of respondents ranked their organization’s focus on key employee satisfaction areas as “average” or lower. For example, 60% of respondents ranked their benefits package as average or worse, 52% considered both their culture and opportunities for advancement as fair or worse. However, more than half of snow contractors (52%) considered their work environments to be “above average” or better.