Today on Elevating Brick and Mortar, we bring you a bonus episode with the top answers from our range of expert guests that have been on this season's show. They focus on how they've addressed labor shortages and supply chain challenges.
On this season of the podcast, we’ve talked to some of the brightest minds and key voices in facilities management. One theme that ran through almost every episode was the supply chain disruption and labor shortages faced in a post-pandemic world. On this episode, we wanted to revisit this topic and recap insights on how our guests are handling these challenges.
Time Stamps
*(01:09) - Garrick Brown
*(03:31) - Chris Lampien
*(05:34) - RJ Zanes
*(07:02) - Roger Goldstein
*(10:00) - Tom Sansoucy
*(12:22) - Jaclyn Frenzel
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SID:
Welcome to Elevating Brick and Mortar.
A podcast about how operations and facilities drive brand performance.
On this season of the podcast we’ve talked to some of the brightest minds and key voices in facilities management. One theme that ran through almost every episode was the supply chain disruption and labor shortages we’re facing in a post-pandemic world. On this episode, we wanted to revisit this topic and recap some insights on how our guests are handling these challenges.
Let’s start with Garrick Brown, Director of Advisory Services and Business Development at Lockehouse Retail Group, who believes technology is advancing rapidly and will be a key to solving these challenges.
Garrick Brown
If you just look at what's been invested in robotics in the last five years, it's over a hundred billion dollars. And if you look at what's happened with our labor issues during the pandemic, of course we had, you know, just all sorts of people, horribly, impacted, but those who could work from home were okay.
Unemployment is almost back to pre-pandemic levels. At this point, it's back in the mid threes. We have 11.9 million available jobs as of the last reporting from the labor department, which is a record. And we had about 4 million people drop out of the workforce during the pandemic that haven't come back.
We have a worker shortage and 3 million took early retirement, 3 million, just people 62 or older that said, that's it I'm done. So we have this really intense worker shortage. Remember that our birth rates have been declining each decade, going back, well, we had a little bit of a surge with the millennial generation…
Before that you have to go back to the baby boomers and immigration, which accounts for about the other half of our usual population growth has fallen off a cliff in recent years. So even if we had a recession, let's say in a year from now, and we saw unemployment go from the threes to the, uh, say sevens, we're still going to be short workers.
That's why, especially in the fast food arena you are seeing, like, I believe Jack in the box announced the other day that they're testing robots and you know, you're going to see more and more of these things impacting the way the facilities are run, whether it's flippy, the robot burger flipper, or robot waiters, and then the restaurant arena, or, um, you know, you're going to see, you know, the facilities needs of these self checkout aisles are completely different than the standard. So you've got this huge amount of capital that's creating new tools, new robotics, and then you had this real need in the marketplace. So this is going to really impact the way people operate facilities going forward. That I think facilities managers really need to pay attention.
SID:
Chris Lampien, Operations Mgt at Lampian Mechanical believes it’s time to train a new generation of employees to help bring in fresh talent and solve for the labor and skills gap in our space…
Chris Lampien
I scour through all these different applications. I don't have a shortage of applications. I have a shortage of finding people that are actually qualified, or have the mindset for this type of work. So you have to be mechanically inclined.
You don't have to know what you're doing yet, but you have to be mechanically inclined and be a problem solver. So what we've started doing is trying to hire newer people that are just out of school, but trying to give them the proper training because they really don't learn enough in the trade schools.
It doesn't prepare them for what we do. There's nothing that can prepare a new technician for the physical portion of it. So when you get on top of a roof, it may be 95 outside, but on the roof, it's about 145 and you're hot. You're then having to troubleshoot, you have a customer that's piece of equipment is down and they could be losing product and that guy's having to figure it out while he's also in a very uncomfortable situation. We've had plenty of younger people come on board before and it deters them pretty quick and there can be long hours. It can be a tough job, but it's a rewarding job. It's hard to get the younger generation to stick it out, to get to a point where they really know what they're doing and they're trained to be a good technician.
SID:
But what about some other limiting factors that have a huge impact your facilities program and your business? RJ Zanes, Senior Director, Facilities Maintenance at Sam's Club, walks us through it…
RJ Zanes
I'm seeing the same challenges as everyone else, right? In this day and age with the way the economy swings are happening and how rapidly they're happening from a supply chain issue, standpoint to an inflation standpoint, fuel costs, right? Things are, you know, they're not getting cheaper, right?
And they're continuing to become more expensive. So you get a lot of pressure from a cost perspective. There's delay in supply chain, which is limiting our ability to maintain spare parts levels at the levels that we'd like them to be, or even build spare parts programs for specific pieces of equipment.
Cause you can't hardly get the parts there to build a supply internally. And so I think those are some of the bigger, broader challenges. If you think about internally and not so broad, you know, we continue to run into resource challenges, right. And that's natural. It'll happen within any organization, but we're challenged with it just as well.
The operating from a lean perspective, you know, you want to move things very fast. You want to get things accomplished. You've got these big broad goals, but you got to sit back and be realistic. What can we actually accomplish? And in what timeframe, and then work to prioritize each of the actions.
That you want to take to get to that north star, right. It's important to get that north star out there, keep that north star out there, plan to get to that north star with specific key actions and then work to prioritize those actions based on the resources that you do have. And that's what we do here.
SID:
RJ makes a great point. Listen to what Roger Goldstein, Executive Director of Facilities and Energy at Panda Restaurant Group, has to say about the importance of finding the right provider partners, especially during these challenging times.
Roger Goldstein
We've had the supply chain issues that are the result of the pandemic. But even before that, just the challenge of maintaining good vendor partners for every aspect that needs to be handled or taken care of at the store at all times, and getting that at a value, getting that at the best cost, it's not at the expense of those vendors.
Right. It's getting to know them too, so that you're, you're working off a win/win, and they're making a good living, you're getting value. So overcoming that challenge, it's just constant, right? You have to work for that. That doesn't happen automatically. You can easily find someone who doesn't really care or is not invested in your brand for service, but then you don't know what you're getting and you don't know at what price.
SID:
Let’s hear from Tom Sansoucy, VP of Facilities at EG America, as he shares what his organization is doing to tackle these challenges head on.
Tom Sansoucy
The cost, the hourly costs for the technicians had been going up and there were projections that were telling us it was going to get harder and harder to hire skilled labor. So before the pandemic, we had those challenges that we were facing. And then, during, and I guess, as the pandemic winds down, the labor pool is a little smaller.
We're trying to find people who want to start, and we're in a position where we can help some young people that want to start a new career in the technical trades, that's a good place to work. And it is challenging to do that, and we are actually aggressively building our in-house teams now because it's a hedge against the increased costs of hiring the outside vendors.
The service is a lot faster. Our in-house team is geared towards maintaining a select group of equipment. Let's say, you know, like coffee brewers that are typically, as our stores are built, they're fairly consistent. So our technicians are trained on our coffee brewers and our ice makers and our fountain soda machine and the types of refrigeration equipment and air conditioning, that we use. So, when one of our technicians shows up, he's got the parts on his truck. It's, like I say, a select group of equipment, so we can get things done very fast. When you hire outside vendors, they're more, generalists and, a lot of times they don't have the parts they have to order them.
But getting back to your original question, the challenge has gotten bigger now with the, with the internal team hiring and retaining. And so we'll see where time takes us. It's not all just about the hourly rate and what you're going to pay for.
It's the organization and how we treat our people. And what we can offer folks that want to join the team that make the difference, so we're working on all those fronts to build that team. We think that's the way to do it, is to, get to somewhere between, 70 and 80% of the repairs, being done by our own internal teams, so that we can get the repairs done faster and cost-effectively and have that customer service that we’re looking.
SID:
To wrap things up, we bring you insight from Jaclyn Frenzel, President at OnSite on how we should encourage new talent to enter the trades and how it can be a fulfilling career.
Jaclyn Frenzel
I'm seeing it on both the skilled and unskilled trades. We talk about just skilled trades most of the time, but a lot of our industry is also supported by. By mom and pop, you know, local companies and you're not having the same amount of young driven talent out there. Come out and say, Hey, I wanna own a window cleaning company, or I wanna do handyman work.
And so it's really challenging. And we're putting a lot of strain on the existing resources that we have. So as an industry, we need to take a look at this and say, okay, How do we put our money where our mouth is? How do we foster new development of businesses? How do we encourage folks to get into these trades?
How do we educate them that this is a good field for them to go into and with skilled trades, it's really important that we get behind training programs. There are a lot of, lot of unions' even out there that provide. Free training. You can become certified without having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, like you would going to college.
And I remember listening to, um, a speaker a long time ago who said, and it really resonated that we cannot all be doctors and lawyers. You know, if we all go to college and become doctors and lawyers, our economy is going to fail. So we need to elevate and, and goes back to that PR program about our industry and say, it is not a bad thing to become an electrician.
In fact, you're likely gonna make. Six figures have a phenomenal pension, have great benefits and be able to work locally. Right. And have a great job. Same goes with being a plumber or an HVAC technician, same goes with being window cleaning or handyman and the flexibility around this. And so really.
Putting it out there that these industries are valued, that they have a purpose and a place, and that it's not somehow lower or less looked upon if you go that route. And so if our industry can really get behind that and do national campaigns and maybe even work with education lobbying to start to implement this education, you know, during middle school years, Because that's when it's formative, that's when people and children can learn, Hey, I don't have to go.
Maybe I'm not the best student. Maybe, you know, I'm good at math, but I'm not good at test taking. And I'd like to go into the workforce. And so getting it at a national scale is great. Individual organizations can have incubator programs where they help small businesses where they really educate and can teach their community about these things.
But ultimately we all have to come together and start promoting it as, as necessary and valued.
SID:
We hope you enjoyed listening to this Bonus episode where we collected some key moments from our first season that touch upon the challenges within supply chain and shortage of talent within our space. If you would like to listen to the full conversations we’ve sampled in this episode, we encourage you to listen back through Season 1 of the podcast. Head to our shownotes for the links.
Thank you again for listening, I’m Sid Shetty, and we’ll see you on the next episode of Elevating Brick and Mortar.