Difficulties in recruiting teens to construction industry

As construction projects begin to pick up many construction businesses are having problems with finding skilled workers. As the workforce retires, or with the recent recession is let go maybe to find other work elsewhere, a vacuum has been created that many are struggling to fill. The best action now is to look to young people from school and college to bring them into the construction industry to fill the roles that skilled workers have left behind.

However construction industry can struggle to appeal to these new young workers, and it’s here that construction businesses will need to focus future efforts in marketing themselves as solid and rewarding work or face a shortfall in staff and from there a struggle to fulfil construction contracts regardless of what tools and equipment they may have to hand.

Lisa Alexander of Salon discusses this problem saying that this lack of young people taking up construction as a trade is mainly an issue with good intentions from parents and teachers, looking to get their children into white collar roles at the expense of painting a career in manual labour as a sign of failure. She also remarks that on top of getting teens into construction you also have to make sure your business is able to accommodate for these new workers with their new expectations of a role. Innovating your business to better train them and retain them in the job, showing that the pay can be rewarding, and that a career in construction is not a sign of failure but a sign of success. It’s not an impossible job but will be hard, but for both the business and future employees it can be a rewarding task.

With advances in plant equipment from heated cabins, a welcome addition in the years, and even now with companies like Bobcat innovating in the area of control allowing remote operators, the modern plant is matching a modern workforce, can your business follow suit?