Ryan Englin on The Build Zone Podcast: Why the Trades Have a Retention Problem Disguised as a Hiring Problem

I sat down with Michael Maloney on The Build Zone Podcast to talk about why the trades have a marketing problem, not a labor problem, and what contractors need to do about it.

Michael runs the podcast for ABC Massachusetts and the Gould Construction Institute, so his audience lives this every day. Hiring skilled craft workers. Retaining them. Trying to figure out why good people keep walking out the door. We covered a lot of ground.

I started where I always start. If you're not attracting good people, it's because you're not attractive to good people. That's the truth nobody wants to hear. When a skilled electrician or plumber looks at your company online, they see something that looks exactly like the place they already work. Nothing stands out. Nothing compels them to make a move. And that's a problem because the best people aren't on job boards. They're employed. They're reasonably happy. You have to give them a reason to pay attention to you.

We talked about the two sides of the pipeline. On one side, you have experienced craft workers who already know what they're doing. To attract them, you have to become the employer of choice in your market. On the other side, you have the next generation. And here's where the industry keeps getting it wrong. Everyone runs to the high schools and tries to get kids excited about the trades. That's fine. But we're completely ignoring the people who influence those kids. Mom and dad. They're the ones steering their children toward college and knowledge work. We need marketing campaigns aimed at parents that show them the trades are a legitimate, lucrative, proud career path. Not just a backup plan.

Michael asked me what makes a company attractive, and I gave him the answer that makes contractors uncomfortable. People don't leave jobs. They leave people. We all know this. I've never been in a room where somebody disagrees. Yet 99 out of 100 job ads sell pay and benefits and say nothing about the leaders, the team, the culture, or how the company invests in people. That disconnect is the problem.

I told him the construction industry had a newspaper mentality. Back in the 90s, newspapers said the internet would never put them out of business. Construction did the same thing. "Knowledge work won't hurt us. Amazon won't take us down." Except people are leaving the trades to make $27 an hour in a climate-controlled warehouse. If we don't start thinking like marketers, we lose.

Recruiting is a marketing activity. Period. And the absolute best way to market your company as a great place to work is to let your employees talk about it. We have client testimonials everywhere. Case studies on projects. But we never give our own people a platform to brag about what it's like to work there. Hand them a phone. Let them record for 90 seconds. Litter the internet with those testimonials. That's how you win.

We also dug into retention, which is where the real conversation lives. I told Michael that most companies don't have a hiring problem. They have a retention problem. Do the W2 test. Compare how many people are on your payroll December 31st to how many W2s you issued that year. The gap tells you the truth.

Retaining people starts with understanding what they actually want. And it's different by generation. Your Gen X workers want stability and assurance they can ride into retirement without chaos. Your millennials and Gen Z workers want someone who will invest in them, train them, mentor them, coach them. Study after study says the number one thing Gen Z wants from an employer is training. Not pay. Not perks. Training.

And training doesn't stop at the craft. I shared something that always gets a reaction. A lot of trade companies pay weekly because their workers can't survive on a biweekly paycheck. Imagine bringing in experts to teach personal budgeting, savings, retirement planning. That's training. And if you invest in their personal goals, they'll be way more loyal than if you invest only in their career goals. We call that the Growth Accelerator Program.

We also talked about performance measurement in construction. It doesn't have to be complicated. You bid every job knowing how many man-hours it takes. Divide by the crew. There's your baseline. Add attendance, near misses, waste, quality. These are all measurable. We just don't measure them.

Michael asked about second-generation companies, which is a huge topic. When the kids take over, the first thing they need to do is start bringing in their own generation. All of mom and dad's people are ready to retire too. And all the tribal knowledge, the secret sauce, lives in their heads. Download it before they walk out the door. Put it into a format the next generation can consume.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on all of these frameworks, from the Core Fit Hiring System to the four-stage interview process, on Titans of the Trades. Subscribe for more conversations like this.