Employers need to test new approaches now before their workforce ages out.

For years, the trades have relied on word of mouth, referrals, union apprenticeships, and traditional job postings to fill their ranks. I say this with over 25 years of experience, having watched firsthand how these methods are no longer enough. With the average age of skilled tradesmen increasing to 55, the skilled labor shortage is accelerating, with fewer young people entering the trades. As a result, many businesses struggle to fill essential roles and maintain productivity.

Contractors need to rethink their approach, and digital marketing could be the key to attracting the next generation of skilled workers.

Bracing for Impact: The Building Trades’ Tech Turnover Crisis

Before exploring potential solutions, contractors must face reality: Construction employee turnover is killing them. While the industry is known for its huge seasonality, it’s not the sole reason why yearly turnover, at 66.1%, is multiples higher than the US average.

What’s likely causing it?

• Lack of career advancement
• Poor benefits
• The need for continued training on electrification
• Other new technologies
• The inability to earn long-term

This is especially true when other industries, such as security, government agencies, and technology, compete for talent in addition to your direct competitors.

So what do you need to change?

Employees need to be viewed as a “must-have” and not a “nice-to-have”

The first step to unconventional hiring is reducing turnover. We have to increase morale and ensure that techs know they are recognized as a valuable part of the company.

Nowadays, skilled labor trades technicians have options, and contractors must rethink how they retain them. It’s not just about better communication—it’s about job security.

Too often, when a big job ends or a contract is lost, contractors cut hours or furlough technicians, calling it “the nature of the industry.” Before COVID, this was standard practice. However, the mass layoffs that followed showed the flaw in this approach, with newer techs often the first to go.

Now, the construction industry is paying the bill

The result is that many of those less experienced technicians left the industry, never to return. A significant number of techs who stayed now act like mercenaries, jumping from one contractor to another in a never-ending bidding war.

Technicians who remained loyal throughout see new hires getting paid more than them (in non-union environments), breeding resentment. Resentment means employee exodus.

The bottom line is that owners must acknowledge that their industry has fundamentally changed.

Technicians are essential, not optional.

How do we fix the skilled labor shortage and lack of employee morale?

The solution is to invest in your technicians as you invest in your other strategic assets. Most contractors maintain a fleet of trucks and equipment. These are needed to do commercial and residential construction jobs. If the trucks aren’t there or broken down, the contractor cannot complete the job and get paid. Therefore, contractors carefully maintain and invest in their capital assets.

Their technicians now need to be viewed the same way. That means:

• Pay for technician continuing education and certifications.

• Getting them the best tools to do the job – and not making them pay for them.

• Switching top performers from hourly to salary and showing a clear path to getting there.

• Minimizing overtime, especially long stretches of overtime.

• Invest in people management skills for your foremen and job site managers.

• Implementing stock ownership plans

Because the employer-employee relationship has suffered so much over the past five years, owners now have to work twice as hard and invest significantly more in their staff.

To get a benchmark of just how much contractors will need to pay in training alone, the average amount of money US employers, including the construction industry, pay for employee training and development was $1,207 in 2023. Construction industry owners must view this number as a floor going forward.

Happy building trades technicians make new technician recruitment easier

By implementing improvements like those listed, contractors can improve employee morale and reduce turnover, taking some pressure off new staff hiring. It also opens the door to the first unconventional hiring approach: implementing a formal employee referral program.

An employee referral program built for the long-term

A formal employee referral program is much more than hitting up existing staff for people they know. It’s about putting in place a program that brings the best technicians to your door and keeps them.

Before implementing a program, owners need to benchmark the cost of recruiting and onboarding each new technician. At an industry level, the average cost to recruit a new employee is nearly $4,700. Onboarding them is nearly just as costly, at around $4,100.

That’s a lot of money, especially considering the industry’s average annual turnover rate. Those costs represent pure operating profit walking out the door.

Allocating half that amount toward an employee referral program and technician training means more profits.

Here’s a sample formal employee program:

Each candidate that an employee refers, who is hired by their employer, will receive up to $2,500 in referral bonuses.

• $1,000 is paid when the new employee starts.

• $500 is paid at their 6-month anniversary.

• The final $1,000 is paid at their 1-year anniversary.

Most employees will view $2,500 as meaningful. It will give them a real incentive to approach industry peers and sell the merits of working at the company.

Tying the payments to time milestones reduces upfront contractor cash outlays and encourages longevity for new employees.

Because the referring employee has a financial stake in the new hire’s success, they are more likely to provide coaching and guidance to new hires.

If a formal employee referral process is insufficient, it’s time to implement the second unconventional hiring approach: treating hiring like marketing.

Treating hiring like marketing

When marketers develop a marketing campaign, they do so with a clear, quantifiable objective in mind. They devise a thoughtful strategy, execute a tactical plan, and use tight reporting and continuous optimization throughout.

Contractors need to be as focused on their hiring needs as marketers on their marketing programs.

Here are a couple of tactics marketers take that contractors can mimic:

Set specific KPIs (key performance indicators) and stick to them

Contractors, especially ones with annual revenue over $1 million, must always be recruiting talent for their company. Before doing anything, set clear and measurable goals that you want to achieve. Examples include 1,000 non-customers following you on Facebook, having an open job posted and running continuously throughout the year, and a weekly social post about “life” at your company.

Proactive social networking

Have your company proactively connect with your target hires on Facebook and LinkedIn. If prospective employees get to know you, they’re more likely to respond to your job advertisement.

Building a following on your company page

Most contractors believe their website, Facebook, and other social media pages should be exclusively used to attract prospective customers. This is short-sighted.

By showing that your company is a living, breathing entity where technicians are happy to work, you’ll attract followers who may later become job seekers. If they are following your online presence, when you post a job opening, they’ll be the first to know about it. Even better, they will likely not be actively job hunting at the time, but your job gets them to think about making a switch.

Leverage your customer newsletter

Include a little about life at your company and your open job posts in your customer newsletter. Doing so helps to humanize your company with your customers and improve brand loyalty. Just as important, your customers have personal networks, too. If they see a job opening that applies to someone they know, they’ll refer them to you.

Use an employee advocacy tool

Employee advocacy tools, like Tempesta Media’s Simple Social Share, help spread the word. Often, employees don’t even know about job openings in their company. This is especially true for technicians in the field working on jobs.

An employee advocacy tool not only informs them about new job openings but also makes it very easy for employees to share the job opening (or blog) with their social media network accounts, dramatically increasing the visibility of the job post.

When combined with the employee referral program, results can increase geometrically.

Marketing can be an extension of your recruitment function

When applied to recruitment, these marketing tactics can help contractors fill their candidate pipelines and reduce hiring, onboarding, and retention costs.

Now, who is going to get all this work done? Hire a human administrator or recruiter? Or, use your marketing firm and have them do double duty?

Tempesta Media’s Bullseye Effect managed service has the technology platform and expertise to run marketing and recruitment campaigns for contractors across multiple platforms, including your website, social media networks, and more.

By consolidating the work with one vendor, they can reduce cost redundancies, leverage synergies between programs, and provide the scale necessary to achieve your hiring and lead generation objectives. Best of all, contractors only have to work with one person instead of two or more, improving owners’ return-on-time (ROT).

Whether doing the work internally or using a firm like Tempesta Media, the reality is that a technician and other employee recruitment can no longer be an afterthought. If done right, it can become a strategic differentiator and growth engine for contractors.