Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/641412
22 commercial carrier journal | february 2016 schools' career days? Are you an easy phone call for all of the diesel instructors within a 100-mile radius? Fostering these kinds of relationships can do a lot to wreck the age curve of your tech- nician force. The responsibility for educating today's workforce about the industry doesn't lie solely in the classroom. If you asked 50 17- to 20-year-olds within 30 miles of your office what they think of when they hear the name of your fleet, I would bet 47 of them would say "truck driving." It probably never dawns on most of them that you have entire staffs of people who do other things. As technology continues to infiltrate D epending on which source you use, the trucking indus- try needs between roughly 50,000 and 100,000 more trained technicians by 2020 to meet anticipated demands. Exact numbers aren't all that import- ant. It's like trying to figure out the mini- mum requirement of oxygen you need to get through a day. It doesn't really matter until you don't have enough. And there aren't enough. Finding the right fit for your service department is a recipe of hiring, training and retaining good people. For years, a tried-and-true method for filling vacancies has been to steal them with fatter paychecks from a competitor – a solution that becomes its own self-ful- filling prophecy. These for-hire mercenar- ies are tougher to integrate into the ways of your shop, and they are perpetually on the lookout for the next big spender. If the average age of your technician force is hovering in the 50s and you rarely celebrate anyone's fifth anniversary, there are problems for you on the horizon that can't be solved with free spending. What are you doing to invest in the education of the technicians you need? A $5,000 sign-on bonus is great, but there's a lot more at your disposal than that. Invest that $5,000 in a recent graduate's tooling and into training and career development programs. You'll hang on to that person a lot longer than the period that triggers the sign-on bonus payout. Do you have a table at your local PRODUCT REVIEWS, OEM & SUPPLIER NEWS AND EQUIPMENT MANAGEMENT TRENDS BY JASON CANNON Finding tomorrow's techs today Learn how to hire, train and retain newcomers PROBLEMS DOWN THE ROAD: Is the average age of your technician force hovering in the 50s? THE RIGHT FIT: Finding today's technicians is a recipe of hiring, training and retaining good people. ATTRACTIVE OPTION: Generation Z doesn't realize the technology it takes to run today's shops.