“I’m looking for people who want a career, not a job.”
I’ve had many clients, especially car dealerships, say that to me. I get the point. They want someone who is investing in their future. Looking at the big picture. Not just punching the clock and going through the motions.
And while they look for those types of employees. …
Our nation is wrestling with a labor shortage that has come on top of a migration away from skilled trades. We are in desperate need of young people who see jobs not requiring college degrees as aspirational and honorable.
Enter Mike Rowe, former host of the TV show Dirty Jobs. His mikeroweWORKS organization has been fighting this battle for years now. See this interview for a summary of the work before us. He says for every five tradespeople who retire, only two replace them.
My clients, I think, concur that the skilled trades labor shortage is as dire as Mike Rowe says it is.
So let me encourage your organization to flip it around: Does your firm offer a career, a calling? Do you treat employees as such?
In our podcast, we covered the idea of honoring the dignity of workers (see part 1 here). If you really believed that the skilled trades are a high calling, there are 10 principles you can embrace to treat employees like they count.
And let me add one other modern twist: It’s just possible that the people you have who are willing to embrace a “dirty job” … have never been taught HOW to work. You can honor their dignity while teaching them good habits.
Maybe training up skilled tradespeople doesn’t sound like fun to you. But it may just be the dirty job that you’ve been called to embrace. Contact me if I can help you think it through.