4 Ways to Attract Skilled Trade & Construction Workers to Your Business

One part of how to fill your company's staffing needs is making sure you attract the right talent!

Skilled trades are the most difficult jobs to fill in the market today. 70% of construction companies are having difficulty finding workers for their jobs. You can learn more about the current workforce shortage by downloading our whitepaper HERE. Because quality, fully trained workers are getting harder to find, It's important to use all the tools you can when you're trying to hire top talent for your business. Here are some expert tips on how to fill skilled trade jobs without expending all your resources.

Improve your Company Culture

One of the most attractive job benefits to millennials is a positive company culture, and with millennials making up 75% of the workforce in the next ten years, it’s (past!) time to make sure you’re appealing to them.

To help build this appeal so that you can fill your skilled trades jobs, it’s important to advertise how and why your company is a great place to work. One starting place could be surveying your current employees about their favourite aspects of the job. That may be anything from the flexibility you allow your employees with scheduling to the free muffins you provide on Fridays—whatever the reasons are, use them to appeal to new staff.

Improving your company’s culture helps ensure your company’s reputation will speak for itself among prospective employees in your field, and if the applicants are lining up to get in, you won’t have to spend as much time searching for the perfect recruit. By advertising what a great company culture you have, skilled professionals will find their way to you.

Training Current Staff

You may already have some employees on staff who are able to learn the skills you’re looking for. Offering them the chance to develop those skills is going to show that you’re invested in your team members and their professional development (as well as benefiting the future of your organization).

Investing in current employees makes sure you’re taking advantage of the resources you already have and is likely to save you money on new staff. Plus, it gives your employees a chance to advance in their career and improve their skills, both things that help with your company culture.

To learn more about how to retain your current workforce, check out this blog post: 5 Ways to Keep Your Skilled Workers Without Increasing Your Payroll

Bring on Contract Workers

More companies in the skilled trades have come to rely on contract workers to meet their short-term hiring needs. Skilled trades workers can be costly to keep on a full-time basis, and it’s often more cost-effective to only bring in such employees on a project-by-project basis. It saves money not just on payroll, but training and benefits, too, making it a great option.

Bringing in contract workers can also work as a trial period for both you and the prospective employee; it’s an opportunity for both of you to "try before you buy”. If the situation works for both parties, you may be able to convince your contract workers to stay permanently, making this option a win-win for you both.

Provide a Modern Workplace

When attracting new employees, it’s important for many people that they get the impression that they’re becoming part of an already established team. They’ll want the feeling that the workplace has a well-organized flow, allowing them to trust in your existing infrastructure. It can be easier for a more up to date workplace to bring in new workers, get them up to speed quickly, and demonstrate the kind of dependability that most seek from their long-term employment.

Locating and bringing on new skilled workers is often a challenge that requires a little ingenuity and a lot of time – or work – to solve. We’ve presented a few strategies to help in those efforts, but there’s undoubtedly more we haven’t gotten into. What strategies have you used to bring more skilled workers into your business? What’s going to be your strategy going forward? We’d love to hear what you are doing!

SnapSuite is a Toronto based software company that helps businesses in the construction and skilled trade industries increase their operational efficiency