Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/807903
April 2017 | Boating Industry | 25 [ The Workforce Crisis ] www.BoatingIndustry.com "Most [manufacturers] are challenged, no question, to find employees," said NMMA Presi- dent Thom Dammrich. "They can find people to interview, but they can't find people who have skills – even basic skills – that they can train." Discussions with manufacturers and dealers provide numerous horror stories about inter- views with applicants who eat their lunch or re- spond to texts during interviews. Others share anecdotes of employees that disappear after the first day – or even after the first break on the first day. "We've got unemployment under 5 per- cent," Dammrich said. "Most economists would say we're at full employment. The only people looking are people that are having a hard time finding a job." The struggle is not limited to the boating industry. When a large group of manufacturing CEOs met with President Trump in February, they said the problem is not one of jobs, but of training, saying students aren't coming out of school prepared for technical jobs. Government figures showed there were more than 324,000 open manufacturing jobs in February, which is three times what there was in 2009. As Dammrich notes, many of these boating industry manufacturing jobs are good paying jobs, well above the proposed $15 minimum wage many have advocated for, with good benefits. "Manufacturing in general still doesn't have a good image," Dammrich said. "Kids don't think about going into manufacturing." Dealer challenges The Marine Retailers Association of the Ameri- cas recently completed a Workforce Assess- ment survey of dealers in the United States and Canada. The association received responses from 517 businesses representing 1,300 locations across North America. The respondents featured a wide cross sec- tion of the dealer population when it came to lo- cation and revenue. Dealers were from a variety of settings from metro areas to small towns to rural locations. More than half of the dealers surveyed had annual revenue of less than $3 million. The average dealership reported 15.3 full-time and 2.1 part-time employees. MRAA conducted the study in response to an increasing number of its members saying they were having trouble finding qualified employees. "Anecdotally, we had all kinds of examples of the issue," said MRAA President Matt Gruhn. "We needed to define it and we needed to be able to understand a little better what the problems really are." The results show a stark set of challenges for dealers looking to grow their businesses. According to the survey, 21.6 percent of the full-time positions dealers had budgeted for in 2016 went unfilled. The average dealer needed an additional 3.8 employees. The majority of those employees (59 percent) were from the service department, while 86.6 percent of those open service department positions were for ser- vice technicians. Overall, 86 percent of respon- dents had multiple positions unfilled. Even more significantly, the average dealer- ship said it will need an additional 6.1 employees by 2019 beyond current openings. "Take that 9.9 employees needed over 3,100 dealerships and we're looking at needing 31,000 employees by 2019," Gruhn said. "That's a huge number and potentially an even bigger problem than we're faced with today." Many respondents to the MRAA and Boating Industry surveys were quick to point to what they saw as the poor work ethic of Millennials. "There's a generation gap, but there's always a generation gap," Gruhn said. "When I came into the work- force, we were known as the lazy generation, we didn't want to work hard and we didn't want to do anything. Today it's the same, but it's the Millennials that they're talking about. Say- ing they don't want to get their hands dirty, they don't want to work hard, they want manage- ment level pay structures, but don't want to work the hours." Flawed solutions Clearly, there is a skilled labor shortage in the marine industry, especially in the service and manufacturing sectors. The reasons are varied, from lack of interest to insufficient training programs. In many cases, government programs set up to develop manufacturing skills are lacking in real-life experience, notes Dammrich. "There are hundreds of government training programs, but they're not structured in a way for small businesses to take advantage of," he said. "They train them in a school, but we need to train them in the factory. Why don't you subsi- dize their employment for six months? We need to take our government training programs and look at that them a different way." Dealers encounter similar problems with many of the technical school programs the currently exist. First of all, there's a shortage of students coming out of the programs, and most students are hired before they even finish their training. Secondly, even those graduates still fall short of what dealers are expecting. In the MRAA survey, 96.5 percent of those who had hired technical school graduates said they are "poorly or partially prepared" for the job. "The expectation from both the employer and the employee are off," Gruhn said. "The employer expects the student to know and be able to do a lot more than they should be able to do. They expect them to … just walk in the door and know how to operate within the structure of their business and be able to do all of the impor- tant tasks that they need technicians to do and 9.9 » Additional employees the average dealer says it will need by 2019 66% » Of new dealer hires lack necessary technical knowledge "Manufacturing in general still doesn't have a good image. Kids don't think about going into manufacturing." — Thom Dammrich, president, NMMA