In part five of this series, Mark Jones, Founder of ELV Training, delves into the topic of employee retention in the vehicle recycling community. He explores the challenges faced by treatment and dismantling facilities in retaining depollution operatives and the impact it has on businesses.
Long-serving employees have always been the most effective at reaching objectives and providing consistently high-quality work. It has long been accepted that the best employment strategy is to recruit and retain a workforce of dedicated people who know exactly what is required of them because they have been working for you for a long time and because they feel valued. From my findings, the vehicle recycling sector has a hit-and-miss reputation when it comes to employee retention, with treatment and dismantling facilities historically struggling to hold on to depollution operatives. This attrition is often overlooked, but the reality is that it is expensive for those who experience it.
Thankfully, it’s not all doom and gloom, with many examples across the sector of organisations getting things right and reaping the benefits as a result. But we do still have a long way to go; as for every company that gets employment right, there are likely to be two others getting things wrong, and it’s those who have the most to gain from addressing this fundamental problem.
So how can we face the challenge, turn things around quickly, and transform new recruits into high-performing and long-serving employees? Let’s start by taking a closer look at what motivates people to remain in a job, as well as what influences people to explore opportunities elsewhere.
Online job site, Indeed, released its latest UK insight data in March 2023, providing feedback from workers across all sectors. Here are the top six most common reasons for people finding new employment:
- Recognition
- Resources
- Higher pay
- Career advancement
- Job satisfaction
- Working conditions
It might surprise some to learn that pay is not the number one motivator for moving roles, with salary occupying third position. The biggest takeaway from the data is that investment in any of these areas provides tangible value back to the employer. Loyalty, dedication, improved workforce skills and knowledge, performance, future leadership, improved efficiency and productivity, higher work standards; the list goes on.
Consider this; for a company that is struggling with staff retention, training and ongoing professional development has the ability to positively affect five of the top six motivators listed.
- Recognition – We all need to feel valued. There is no greater motivator than someone who knows that their contribution is making a difference. If individuals feel there is no appreciation for their work, job satisfaction falls away. Defined qualification or training routes demonstrate that an organisation recognises the importance of their employees and want to ensure their competence. Offering further professional development to experienced workers is also an effective way for a business to reward hard work, maximise workplace potential, and strengthen employee loyalty.
- Resources – Employees are more likely to stay with a company with the necessary resources to develop them in their chosen career path. Advancement doesn’t always mean progression up the career ladder. 31% of people change jobs simply because of a lack of access to resources and opportunities. Providing development opportunities across all roles rather than limiting advancement to specific positions prevents employee stagnation and keeps workers motivated.
- Career Advancement – This doesn’t necessarily involve promotion or role change. Employees will always want to improve their talents, and therefore businesses need to make opportunities available. Nurturing career aspirations sends a clear message to workers that their personal development is as important as overall business objectives. Organisations should not hold people back; rather, they should actively encourage individuals to be the best versions of themselves. No business can ever boast that they have successfully retained employees long-term by holding back on their development.
- Job Satisfaction – This is the feeling of fulfilment, that positive emotional response that a person derives from their job. There’s no single metric for job satisfaction, as many factors will contribute to why a person feels content in their role. There are, however, common drivers that can influence it, including job security, peer respect and equality, cohesive teamwork, strong relationships with supervisors or managers, a two-way feedback culture, respect for creative ideas, etc. Workplace training provides so much more than a basic induction. It ensures that workers are performing to an agreed standard, providing a consistent work quality, and promoting teamwork to drive efficiencies whilst helping to reinforce work relationships and equality. With people trained and delivering to an identified standard, a business can more easily measure performance, implement change, and encourage employees to offer their feedback to enhance business performance.
- Working conditions – Poor working conditions are never acceptable. An employer should invest in the workplace as well as its people. Just as standardised work practices create efficiencies, which in turn, drive productivity, so does providing and maintaining the right equipment to do the job. Poor equipment or unsafe work areas are beneficial to no one, not even profit margins. Employees who are trained correctly understand the importance of looking after their workplace and equipment, and how to get the very best out of them by maximising the operational life of equipment whilst minimising accidents and downtime. Formalised training encourages safe and efficient work practices and clean and tidy working environments, guaranteeing workers are operating safely, compliantly and maximising productivity.
So why is it that the vehicle recycling industry seems so reluctant to implement these incentives? Well, employee training and development require investment. Businesses can often be hesitant to incur unnecessary front-end training costs early in a new employee’s tenure before their reliability has been established. Could this be, however, the very reason that staff turnover remains high? Business owners must carefully consider what is necessary and proportionate when it comes to training, but with recognition, growth and advancement opportunities all scoring high in UK job satisfaction surveys, delaying or neglecting investment in these people could cause your employees to walk, along with any investment made to date, and the chance of ever recuperating it.
Thankfully, investing in a technical training programme doesn’t have to cost the earth. In fact, training will never be as expensive as having to manage the costs associated with high staff turnover. A partnership with ELV Training ensures your organisation will be in the best position to anticipate future challenges and promote business growth. By helping you build capability and competence in your workplace, we can incentivise, motivate, inspire and, most importantly, upskill your people.
Having listened to the industry, our programmes are fully online, allowing your employees to learn at a pace that suits them, and at a time that suits you, minimising operational downtime, and eliminating costly travel and overnight expenses.
Your employees can study one of our predefined training pathways and earn a qualification or select any of our 28 modular courses, covering a wide spectrum of ELV disciplines, to meet specific needs. Our syllabus is built around National Occupational Standards, so you can be confident that your technicians will operate at the same exceptional level, replicating industry-agreed safe and compliant best practice.
As a further incentive, students who successfully complete a qualification with us will be enrolled on the UK’s Vehicle Depollution Technician Register, recognising their achievement and dedication. Employers can take the costly guesswork out of recruitment by guaranteeing that future talent and potential employees already possess the necessary skills to be successful; by insisting they too are enrolled on our Depollution Register.
With the UK economy shrinking and the risk of a recession still looming, long-term employees are now, more than ever, a company’s best friend. According to Professor Gratton of the London Business School, “the power pendulum has been, subtly but perceptibly, swinging toward employees”. As the labour market continues to recover from the disruption of COVID-19, resignations are rolling in at record rates, fuelled by a significant change in worker attitudes post-pandemic. Having had an opportunity to re-evaluate life and work choices, people are rejecting bad jobs and paying close attention to what other companies are offering their workforces. When unemployment is high, workers are often forced to endure unsociable hours, low pay, lack of training and poor prospects, but right now, this isn’t the case. If a business is not willing to invest in someone or make a quality offer, the chances are, they will lose them to a company that will.
Whether your business is looking for assistance in resolving staff turnover, you want to formalise company depollution training, or you simply wish to enhance your current benefits to remain competitive within today’s labour market, ELV Training is on-hand to help. We provide the only vehicle depollution and dismantling qualification built from the ground up; by the industry, for the industry.
Visit us at www.elvtraining.com and find out how we could support you.
To read Mark’s other articles in this series, go to:
Article One – The Importance of Workplace Training in the Vehicle Recycling Industry
Article Two – Incorporating Technological Change Through Workplace Training
Article Three – Adapt or Die: The Importance of Upskilling in the ELV Industry
Article Four – The Importance of applying standards to vehicle dismantling training
