Getting and keeping good help remains the top concern and challenge for most pool/spa company owners and managers.
For decades, studies have shown that it takes more than competitive pay to keep valued staffers, and the younger generations are showing an even stronger bent toward prioritizing personal fulfillment over financial compensation.
One way to attract good help is to make clear the opportunities for promotion and growth that they could enjoy if they are willing to put in the time and effort.
DesRochers Backyard Pools & Spas in Shorewood, Ill., saw firsthand how much employees value this when its retail operations manager, Mallory Bjekich-Wachowski,recently took a survey of past staffers to see how they would rank the company as an employer. Almost all of them made a point to note how the company owners and managers took the time to learn about their employees’ interests and tried to encourage them to grow in those areas.
“It was really heart-warming for us,” Bjekich-Wachowski says.
Such career paths also help prime some of your best staffers to work as future leaders when the time comes to transition leadership and/or ownership.
In fact, as more professionals talk about the importance of career paths within a company, some even see it as a way to attract more qualified people to the industry as a whole, thus improving it.
“What I’m trying to create is an environment where the swimming pool service industry is a career path, not a job,” says David Hawes, CEO of H&H Pool Services in Dublin, Calif., and president of the Independent Pool and Spa Service Association. “I think it’s incumbent upon all of us to show the possibility of this being a career — it’s not a job that you just do until you find something else.”
Here, service professionals offer tips for presenting career paths that attract promising job candidates and keep proven employees.
Adopt the right mindset
The days for hesitating to train or invest in professional development have passed, these professionals say.
At one time, company owners may have feared that their employees would just take the knowledge they gained and start a company of their own. But today that fear is outweighed by the urgency of finding and keeping good employees in a tight labor market.
Besides, many find that fear to be outdated and, more importantly, disproportionate. Realistically, not everyone is cut out to run a business. And the more an employee learns about what’s involved, the more likely they are to realize when owning a company is not for them.
“I think that’s an old-fashioned way of thinking about something you can’t control anyway,” says John Antilla, vice president and general manager of Seattle-based retailer, service firm and builder Aqua Quip. “A lot of times we don’t have high turnover. I think that the more you worry about that, the less you invest in your people, then you’re not going to end up keeping them. I believe that’s the world.”
And, as he sees it,smaller companies should not let themselves off the hook. With a smaller staff, you need individuals to wear multiple hats. So why not make the effort to align their duties with their long-term interests and aspirations?
Develop a clear step-by-step plan for promotion
Write up a definitive flow chart showing the positions available within a company. This should also make clear every requirement the staffer must meet to move up each new step.
If you can delineate a clear progression showing the tenure, training and experience needed to move from one tier to the next, employees can better envision their own future with your company.
All Seasons Pools & Spas in Orland Park, Ill., combines this with its pay structure to create a multi-functional document. The company explains it to job candidates so they see the opportunities available. New hires receive the form as an employee agreement. During annual reviews, the staffer and his or her manager reference the document to discuss what training and education they need to help move up a rung.
“So when we’re hiring new people, we can utilize that document and show them the different levels to it,” says Dan Lenz, vice president of the company.
Create flexible transitional positions that facilitate training
At Aqua Quip, service professionals start as maintenance specialists, going out and cleaning pools and spas weekly.
If they’re interested, maintenance techs who have proven themselves will gain the opportunity to become flex techs. This post serves as a stepping stone from the maintenance tech post to a service/repair position by straddling the worker between the two roles. They sometimes even serve as second person on an electrical job. So they gain exposure to a much wider variety of jobs, equipment and technologies, and processes.
From the flex-tech position, they could move on to become full-time service technicians or even electricians. The company had its first maintenance tech become a certified electrician last year.
“The opportunities are structured,” Antilla says. “Not everyone can get there because it’s challenging, but I think that’s the kind of people you want anyway — those who are willing to try and work hard.”
Service technicians must learn a lot to become proficient down the line. The flex tech position helps with the transition by allowing the individual to spend some of their time continuing to maintain pools, performing familiar tasks on pools they know, and the remainder visiting unfamiliar pools and learning about how to repair new brands and technologies.
“In this industry, there’s a lot [to learn], because it’s not very standardized,” Antilla says. “So it takes a while. There are not a bunch of those guys around to hire, so getting a flex tech, getting experience and being prepared to get a chance in that department is critical.”
Create Internships
Those who enlist seasonal help every year know that some of your best employees will likely move on, especially if they are working at your company to put themselves through college.
However, by taking an interest in the long-term interests of these employees, you can increase the chances that they’ll return every summer until they’ve graduated — or even take a permanent post after they’ve received their degree.
DesRochers sometimes does this by offering internships to employees in pursuit of degrees. When the staffer’s interests or areas of study overlap in some way with the company’s work, they will create an internship whereby they perform their regular job — say, at the store — for a portion of the time, then work their internship for the remaining hours.
For instance, one former employee was studying industrial design. So the company developed an internship where he’d create 3D models for the pool construction division, as well as videos chronicling the construction process and showcasing projects. But for a certain number of hours, he’d also work his original position in the store.
“His internship was built for him, because we wanted him to feel really inspired, because you could tell he had such inspiration for what he was doing,” Bjekich-Wachowski says. “And we wanted him to return.”
This can work especially well for those studying business. Another former employee was studying human resources, so DesRochers opened up its books to her and had her perform managerial work part of the time as an internship.
Use Incentives to Create Buy-in Among Senior Staffers
At All Seasons Pools & Spas, service techs are compensated based on how much revenue they generate for the company.
Because of this, senior technicians may hesitate to devote time to mentoring junior techs rather than earning revenue on the route. After all, not only must they provide the initial training for a matter of weeks, but they serve as the first contact when the junior tech goes out on his or her own and needs help and advice in the field.
Additionally, senior staff may feel threatened by new recruits and not see a benefit to fostering their success.
However, training new hires can present a growth opportunity to those senior techs who may have grown as much as they can in their craft.
To gain the buy-in of senior service techs, All Seasons provides a financial incentive to those who train newbies.
“When that apprentice tech begins working on their own and generating revenue, that senior technician who trained him or her gets some benefit of the revenue that that junior tech generates for the next year,” Lenz says. “So it gives them an incentive to train the techs well during that first year that the junior tech is on their own.” This also helps offset any revenue the senior tech loses when they are training others rather than maintaining pools.
With junior techs training for a few months before they go out on their own, that means a senior tech can mentor two to three a year, and reap the financial benefits.
