103. The Labour Shortage With Russ, Sky & Andy

There's this housing shortage and now we've got this massive labor shortage that, like you say, is, is only getting worse.

Welcome to Professional Builders Secrets, the podcast for building company owners wanting to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt, and today I'm joined by Russ, sky and Andy, the leadership team at apb. Welcome to the show, everyone.

Hey, Will, how are you doing? Very well.

Thanks for coming on again, everyone. Really enjoying, enjoyable to have you on.

Always. Thanks.

Thanks for having us.

Today we're talking about staffing and labor in the construction industry. Andy, do you want to kickstart things by talking through any trends you're currently seeing in that space?

Well, yeah, I think the biggest negative trend that we seeing is the fact that we are having, having a net, a significant net outflow of particularly the, the important people, the, the trades people. So, you know, we're talking carpenters and plumbers and brockers and painters, those kind of guys at the moment. There's a significant net outflow if you look at the fact that for every 10 people that are retiring, there's only one new person coming into the industry as an average. And we just not seeing the younger people coming into the industry in the way that we need them to. If we look at the reality that Australia is currently talking, and this applies, I know Canada has a similar situation with, with housing. The United States has a similar. In fact, most of the, the countries that will be listening to this, there is a serious shortage of housing in every one of those countries. And the reality is if we don't have enough trades people qualified and coming into the industry, we're going to run into major problems down the road. There simply aren't going to be enough bodies to get the number of houses that need to be built done in time to solve the problem. So in terms of. That is the biggest worrying trend in terms of what we're seeing in this space.

It's yet another perfect storm, isn't it? We've got a shortage of houses that need to be built a year in each of those countries that you mentioned. It's the same in Australia, Canada, the U.S. new Zealand. So there's this housing shortage and now we've got this massive labor shortage that like you say, is, is only getting worse. But I think it's, it's even more extreme, isn't it, in the, the less glamorous trades, maybe for want of a better word, so external plastering, bricklayers, for instance, those guys are having an even tougher job. And that's Simply, you know, the perception, isn't it, people coming in, they, they don't want to get into these mucky, messy, like trades. So it's even more difficult for those.

Or if they're not joining, they're leaving. They're leaving this industry a lot quicker than their predecessors, the boomers that are all going into retirement pretty soon. That's a huge part of the problem. It's just not being able to hold them.

To add to what sky was saying, we're also losing all of that experience and it's not being passed back into the new guys coming in. So, you know, that's. And Russ, to your point, I mean, there is a natural kind of attrition rate in terms of as the boomers get older and they get closer to retirement, we tend to find that in the more physical trades, people retire earlier simply because it's difficult for them to keep doing the same kind of work that they were doing earlier. So that just makes the process even worse. You know, that in that space, as sky says, people either leaving the industry or retiring to because they just can't do the work anymore.

Yeah. Reminds me of a post I saw on Facebook and I think this was more in line with what's been happening in France, for instance, where they're raising the age of retirement, and understandably so, because, you know, there's only so much money to go around, so this has to happen. But obviously there's a lot of frustration and anger coming from the workforce when that happens. And I remember seeing this post where someone was holding up like a placard saying, only a person that has worked in an office all their life would think, you can keep going, you can keep working beyond 65 and you can understand where they're coming from because it's, it's very physical, it's very demanding. And I mean, if you look at Tyler's, for instance, what those guys have to do, their knees are shot. That's not, you know, that's not a pleasant way to enter retirement at all, is it? So, yeah, they're going through a lot, these guys.

I think it's, it's not a direct comparison. Very aware of the difference. But think of professional athletes like that career path has a shelf life. But, you know, not, not every athlete, like, forget the 1% of the 1% who can make it and retire nice and early. Think of most athletes, you hit an age where you do retire because you're just not in your prime. There are younger, fitter, faster people coming through before you but you actually have to reinvent your career to live out the rest. Like you've got several more decades of work left in you. But like you say on these, a lot less or a lot less glamorous trades or part of the industry, if it, you know, it's that back breaking labor, that's when you have to reinvent your career. And that's when, like you've mentioned, Andy, you need these skills transferred into the younger generation. You need to move into that mentoring, supervising management kind of role and really bring through, and prioritize bringing through this younger generation so they can see a pathway as well. The pathway isn't just, you know, your body is shot, you retire and you know, it's not a good time. Like you want to be able to showcase what a journey can look like in this industry and you know, romanticize it, glamorize it a little bit. So people have that desire, they actually want to move into this industry and can see a future long term, not short term, which I think so many people do.

Yeah, I think we have to look at how we treat people coming into this industry as well because it's got a notorious history of bullying now. I don't think it's as bad in Australia as other places around the world, like the UK for instance, where I still think it's quite bad, you know, the way apprentices are treated. But it can still be improved. I think that's, yeah, there's no question about that. And maybe, yeah, we need better education, I think, as to what's acceptable because I think a lot of the time maybe people don't realize the impact of their actions, what they're saying, what they're doing and even what, you know, bullying really is, you know, it's, it can be psychological, it's not just like physical harassment, but you know, it's. And again, you look at the traditions of this interest, this industry, sending, sending kids down for a long wait and a left handed screwdriver. It's a bit of fun, but it is all, you know, it builds up into psychological bullying. So I think we've got to take a good hard look at ourselves and, and really move with the times and bring this industry forward and be more professional.

What's different now than 20, 30 years ago that makes you think less people want to work in the industry?

I think the Internet, to be honest, I think the Internet has given people a different perception of what life can be about. In some ways that's good, but it can unrealistically raise expectations I think we have a different attitude maybe in the, the younger generations coming through as well. There's. Yeah, I don't want to say like in entitled, but maybe there's just different expectations around, you know, what they want to commit to in terms of work and you know, a lot of talk about work, life balance. So I think that's had a. Yeah, that's had a big impact really. You know, especially in the construction industry.

I think what's also had a huge impact is if you look at this industry compared to many others, look at the leaps and bounds and progress you can see with technology, with marketing and social media and, and like any other industry you were to go into, if you compare what it is now to what it was like 20, 30 years ago, that's exciting. That's a huge leap and bound of like difference. But what's happened a lot in this industry, it's not progressed as maybe like it's not as outwardly sexy immediately. It's still very much. It's, it is labor. It's, it's still building. It's, it seems like it's not progressing or it's in. In the same vein, unless you can really showcase that, you can showcase how you are innovative and you're doing this and you're doing that and that takes a lot of marketing and responsibility on your front. Not like the industry as a whole. I do think this industry compared to others, others have a way better marketing campaign behind it.

I think I, the, the, the responsibility almost moves from the industry to individual companies making themselves attractive and through that, making the industry attractive again. That's, that's probably the way it's going to get. You know, I mean, we're not necessarily talking about solutions yet, but I think that's one way. Going back to what Russ said about education, you know, people have misconceptions about this industry. Let's at least balance the books and, you know, tell people what is going on so that they can, they can make a balanced decision reality.

Yeah, because there's not a great amount of status associated with working in this industry, is there? I mean, we can, I know we're talking about trade people here, but even if we, we look at builders who are construction engineers and highly talented, they don't get anywhere near the respect they deserve for the level of expertise they bring to the table. And it's the same with trades people, you know, to a large extent as well. There's, there's not enough respect for, for the skill set and the work ethic. That, that they bring.

Yeah, until, until we try and do it ourselves. And then, then all of a sudden that respect level goes up. I, in fact, saw a, I saw a, a truck driving down the road the other day from a handyman company. And, and the slogan was, we'll come and fix what your husband fixed. And I just thought to myself, yeah, there, there it is. There's. There's the truth, you know, and I think it's only when you.

Perfect husband.

Yeah, exactly. It, it's only when you kind of, you know, ah, I'll build a deck. Oh, really? Yeah. I'll just go down to the local, you know, Bunnings or the local Home Depot or whatever and buy some timber and make a deck. And, you know, six hours in, when your hands are blistered and you're, you know, you, you sunburnt and your back is killing you, you're kind of going, okay, I have a newfound respect for, you know, a guy that can do this.

So that's the problem in the industry. How is that impacting residential construction companies? Maybe I'll throw this one to you, Sky.

Well, it's a huge impact because if you don't have the labor to build the homes that you're selling, like, let's, let's remember we've done a lot of episodes on sales, on marketing, on, you know, the systems. Really a lot, a lot more of, let's be honest, the sexier side of running a building company. If you don't have the team to back it up and actually deliver, like, you're, you're nothing. You don't have a company. You can't deliver the product you're selling. So it is a huge impact even right now where there's still a labor force and you can see the cracks forming. Like, this is why this is a problem. Everyone can see what's going to happen in this avalanche that's coming for us. So there's already cracks starting to appear because this is where you hear all the complaints of, like, oh, it's so hard finding good people or skilled trades and good people. And that's just the beginning. The big problem is soon there'll be no one. Soon it's going to be a lot harder to grow and scale because that's when you have to scale up your supply. Well, who's going to be doing everything? Like, that's going to become very, very difficult. And not only that, if you do start getting, like, tradespeople, it's the lack of skill and quality there. So that's that's gonna be a lot harder to maintain really high standards. Keep your great reputation, not even a good reputation, keep an above standard, like an excellent reputation. And you are just going to hear it first from your customers. And that's never a good sign. Like, even if you, your team there are happy, they're building because they're employed and they're working, if that's not up to scratch or up to par, you will hear it from your customers. And then that's a very, very slippery slope on the way down.

And I think the problem is when it gets harder to recruit good people, it impacts product productivity. And we can look at this at a macro level during COVID where governments were highly focused on driving unemployment down to ridiculous levels. Really. I always feel that once employment goes below 5%, it's counterproductive because now we're having to employ people that are generally unemployable a lot of the time. And it has a massive effect on productivity. And yeah, we saw that at a macro level. But if we now think in terms of the construction industry, this isn't an issue that's going to go away. This low unemployment for construction workers is going to stick around for a long, long time. It was there before COVID it was certainly there during, it's going to be there after. And that has an effect on productivity, pushes out timelines. It, it affects quality as well. It's just not a good thing.

How can builders think differently about this, these challenges they're facing? Andy?

Well, I think there's, there's two ways of doing it. Russ is talking at the macro level. I think if you bring it closer to home, we have to accept that we're not quite yet at the place that there's nobody available. And what that means is we need to be looking after good people and attracting good people to our building companies. So, you know, I believe there is a responsibility on the industry, whatever that means, so on, on industry bodies to be doing what they can to, as sky said, to be doing the marketing and the advertising and showing people that this is a career. But I think that also comes back to the individual building company. But keeping in mind that very few builders these days actually employ all the trades they use within their business. So the difficulty you've got is most builders will, will probably have a carpentry crew, but that's usually where it stops. And what then happens, unfortunately, is the builder has very little impact or effect on who his plumber employs and who his electrician employees and those kind of things. So it's, it's really making sure that throughout everything we do, we are presenting as encouraging, enticing, inviting and professional environment possible so that the best subcontractors want to work with us. The best subcontractors are going to be employing the best available people and therefore we will get the cream on the top, are then working on, on our jobs. That's probably the short term solution which obviously we can dive into in a bit more detail.

You said something so important though, like. Yeah, it is. You know, we want the industries to do their advertising. Universities do it all the time. You know, the army does it like whatever it is, they do advertising campaigns to want or to get people to want to go into those fields. So yeah, that is required. But I do think it's a myth that it is other people's responsibility to solve the issue because, sorry, if it affects your business, it's become your problem and professionals solve their own problems. So I think it really is like to, to make a difference between now where the cracks are and what we can see happening. If you don't want it to affect your business and your building company, well, you are going to have to do something different and not wait for licensing authorities, associations, whatever it might be, to actually go out and make something happen. That can be a bonus that can help the greater industry. But how are you going to get it to solve your problem in front of you? That's when you need to look at your local market and make some serious plans and we can go into those solutions. But I think it's about taking that personal responsibility for your building company because it does directly impact you, your livelihood and the rest of your business throughout your career. It's too big a problem to see what happens, see what the industry is going to do about it.

Yeah, I think that's a very good comparison actually with the military and I think we can learn a lot from the military because if you, if you're in an industry with zero workplace health and safety effectively where you're going to put your life on the line and, and if it doesn't end well, you don't even get an apology, you get a thank you then. I mean, if they can actually turn around their image to attract people in with all the positives and the benefits, there's a lot of hope for the construction industry, isn't there? There's, there's so much blue sky, you know, there's so much that can be done. But we can certainly look at the military and learn lessons from Them sky.

You mentioned that the onus is on the individuals that run the construction companies to take back control and solve this problem themselves. How can they go about doing that?

Well, I think number one building companies, the majority of, and certainly the ones listening to this podcast, you operate in a local area. You know, we're not talking to huge volume production builders that are national. You're operating in your local area and we've talked about this so many times. But think of your marketing strategy. It's about, about local domination, right. You're on Facebook, ads, Instagram, at like all your social media, you're on Google, you're doing search engine optimization, but then you're bringing your marketing dollars and bringing it locally as well. We've talked about builders who were sponsoring their local sporting teams and are in the school and you have that local presence. But that's just from a marketing perspective. What are you doing in your local community to entice the future of your building company and the future of that community to want to work for your building company? I think that's a huge opportunity, a missed opportunity, if you're not doing it, to get into the schools and talk about careers and what apprenticeships look like at your building company and what it can look like in this industry. Show the desirability and the need, but also how good it could be to be a respected craftsman and the desirability of good craftsmanship. I think if we can make an effort and you know, like you're saying take personal responsibility to go and do that. Yeah, like you're not going to keep everyone. It's not as if everyone you talk to about it is going to join your building company and stay for life. You know, you might think, why would I do all that work if someone's going to join me, do an apprenticeship, maybe they go work for my competitor or this or that. If you have that kind of attitude or mindset, you're not going to go far at all in business because anyone can leave. That's when you talk about treating people so well that they do not want to leave, training them so well. They do not want to leave because you're treating them so well. But that really can plug a gap for yourself. You are in with those local communities. Not to talk about, you know, the unmentioned bonus. If you're in the schools, you potentially can still get like more leads and sales and clients and all that. But this is a phenomenal opportunity for you to start working in your local community and bring back that desirability. That status that we've just been talking about, that working in a professional industry, a professional building company can have, like bring that back, have people look up to you as a leader in the community. Huge opportunity and a missed opportunity.

Too often, Andy, that is somewhat of a long term solution. I'm imagining like you're building up that credibility in the local community. Is there anything builders can do to have a more immediate fix to finding the right kind of staff?

Well, yeah, I mean, short term, we're going to the C word, aren't we? We're going to culture, making sure that as sky has said, your building company is the place that people want to work and don't leave. And you know, I often in, in, in dealing with our business coaching clients or our elite clients, when it comes to the subject of staff and the quality of their team, I'll often challenge them with a simple question that goes like this. If we were to close down your building company this Friday with everything, you know, you reopen a new building company on Monday, who would you not re employ? And what you see is, you kind of see them, you see that deer in the headlight look. And then I can follow it immediately by saying, and those two guys that you thinking about now are the two guys that you probably need to be replacing on your team. Because the truth is you, if you've got somebody on the team that is not as good as they could be, is taking up space, requires additional work, et cetera, et cetera, they are keeping two good people off the team that could make a big difference on that side of things. So if we bring it back to us, taking personal responsibility and doing stuff now, it's making sure first of all that the team we have are the right raw material. And that raw material, from our perspective is always going to be that they are a cultural fit. I'm just making the assumption here that they meet the technical requirements of whatever role they're going to, they're going to fulfill. But you know, culture is one of these fluffy things that we often, you know, we throw the word around. And then I think in the building industry as a whole, we tend to sort of say, oh yeah, it's over there. But the reality is if you are able to get everybody in your team on the same page with the same common goal, sharing the same core values, you are going to find that people are looking forward to coming to work for you. As we said, we're not, we're not trying to resolve the problem 10 years down the road. We're trying to make sure that builders have good people to be able to deliver quality work timelessly in the foreseeable future. I think culture is going to be the cornerstone of solving the problem short term.

Just jumping onto what Andy was saying about identifying the people that you probably wouldn't re. Engage. The longer you tolerate subpar performance on your team, you're actually going to bring down the performance of the rest of your team as well. So it's not just those two people. You're going to negatively impact the, the entire team. And then, you know, there's a saying, you get what you tolerate. So it's very important, I think, that, that you do move those people to other roles or, or even out of the company. Yeah. Quickly. And replace them with, you know, people that are a better culture fit. A better fit for your team. Because if you focus on looking after your team, they are going to look after your clients and your clients are going to look after your shareholders. So it's, it gets this, this beautiful circle going. So, yeah, you need to, you need to really focus on your team now.

And, and just thinking back as you were talking, Russ, we took a bunch of our builders away to Hamilton Island 18 months ago. 18 months ago. Yeah. Odd. And we had a young lady with us who's involved in a building business, and she was particularly taken by the discussions that we had around culture and went away from that retreat really wanting to have a look at their company culture very closely. And she did a quick analysis of the two people that had most recently left the company. And she was able to show very clearly that that was a pure cultural misfit. They didn't share the same values. They didn't adhere to the same mission statement. And just to back up what Russ is saying, bottom line is they weren't happy in their jobs. So, you know, as much as we're talking about, we, they. They weren't delivering what we wanted them to deliver. They also hated coming to work every day. And then as Russ is saying that that little bit of leaven very quickly starts to spread through other people because they dissatisfied and they're moaning and complaining and blah, blah, blah. So it's, you know, in some cases, it's, it's really good for both parties if there are those cultural misfits and you resolve them quickly and professionally, obviously both parties end up in a better scenario at the end of that process.

Sky, there's a lot of talk about culture. What does a great culture look like to you?

Well, as Andy mentioned, like, it's such a fluffy word. I feel like it's so overused at this point as well. In just the world, everyone talks about culture and we love our culture and it's about great culture, blah, blah, blah. I think the biggest thing to remember about culture and your company culture is that it's, it's not static and it's also not passive. It's. It needs to be constantly worked on. It needs to be constantly evolving because your building company is also evolving. So it's like anything, right? What worked 20 years ago doesn't mean it's going to work today. You need to be able to keep it current, keep it in line with your values, but actively work on it. Just because people share the same values as you does not like, by definition mean they're adhering to the company culture and they're a great fit and we can move forward. It is so much more than that. Yes, the values are important. The direction we're all paddling is the same direction. We have the same mission. We're following a core purp. But the culture. What's just as important with the culture is what are you investing in it? What are you doing for your team members? Are we investing in our people? Are we showing appreciation? Are we treating people with respect? Are we leading from the front? There's so much more to it than just a couple core values. And you know, we read a book on it and we're okay, we need to actively be investing and not leave it as static. We set these values and people just have to adhere by them. We need to live and breathe them and we need to invest back into our, our people, check in with our people, communicate with them in order to move forward. Otherwise, you know, you're going down this path of being a dusty old company once again and you're not really living and breathing a company culture people want to be a part of long term because they can actually witness its growth.

And it needs to be authentic. I mean, Sky's just encapsulated beautifully. You're no longer going to get away with do what I say, you know, in other words, having a fluffy mission statement on your website and so on isn't going to cut it anymore. And I'm talking internally. First of all, that might fool your customers or your clients for a while, but the guys that literally work within the business on a day by day basis, they are very quickly going to see through something that's not authentic. So I mean, it is critically important that, that if you are going to go down this Culture road that you don't go down the, you know, let's just, let's buy a book and come up with something that sounds good. It, it literally needs to be an expression of what you believe and what you live as the leader every day at the office, on site in the business, so that the rest of the team actually sees the authenticity of it.

It's like the heartbeat of your whole organization, your whole building company. And that heartbeat needs to be felt not just by your team in the office or your clients, like you've mentioned, Andy, but so importantly by those people on site, building those homes, delivering your work like they, they. That culture needs to be so strong that it ripples out from within, all the way out to not only your contractors or your employees on site, but also your suppliers as well. They understand why being punctual is important. Staying true to their word is important because it matters to do business with you. And that's, that's the culture for, forgive me for using the word too often, that's what you want as your reputation for your building company.

And it's a lot of that is relational externally. So for example, I'm just thinking as Sky's talking of two particular builders in our. One in our business coaching program and one in our elite mentoring program where they intentionally interact with their subcontractors, let's call it, professionally, socially, regularly. So the owner of the, of the building company and his construction manager take their sub trade owners and supervisors out for lunch once a month, the guys that they work with, and they use that time to talk about how the work has been going, the quality of the work, and, and really to make sure that those guys become an extended part of, of the family, of that, of that business. The other guy has given his project managers almost an open checkbook on rewarding above average performance on site. It's not quite an open checkbook, but within reason. If a project manager sees a carpenter doing something amazing or sees a plumber or an electrician doing something amazing, they literally have the freedom to take that person out for a drink or a lunch or to give them a voucher from a local restaurant, whatever, to, to literally catch people doing things right rather than catching them doing them wrong. So it's, it's those kind of practical things that I think would help as well.

I love that because I could tell everyone just sort of like clenched when you said open checkbook, oh my God, what do I do? But like, it's, it's just as simple as a drink. Like a six Pack of beers, a thank you, like a movie ticket or whatever. It's those little tokens of appreciation. It's not a hundred thousand dollar check.

Yeah, yeah, and you're right. I mean, let's, let's not give people the impression it's got to be money. One of the other guys I know makes a point in every team meeting of highlighting things during the month that individual team members did that demonstrate the core values of that business. It's just peer recognition in front of the rest of the team in most cases. That's enough.

Devil's Advocate for a moment. Culture is great and hiring based on all these values and culture sounds great, but it could take months to find the right person to be working in your building company.

So what do you do?

And Russ, maybe I'll throw this one to you. What do you do when you really need staff and you can't find the right person?

Yeah, I think when you get to that stage, you've already left it too late. And normally the reason you can't find staff at that stage is because you don't have a company culture, which effectively means you most likely have a toxic company culture. So you really got to address that and set the tone. And like it's been mentioned, that has to come, you know, from the front, really, you know, from the leadership. You know, you've got to live and breathe your own core values. And I think as well, you've got to be open and honest enough and encouraging enough to allow your team to call you out when you're not adhering to the core values of the company because it's not something for the rest of the team to abide by. It's for the leadership to abide by and demonstrate. So that will help with fixing a toxic company culture. And once you do that, your positive company culture will attract the right type of people to your company because it becomes a very important component of your whole recruitment process. And sharing your core values will, will, you know, excite people that are looking for work, because people looking for jobs, you know, they, they might have a salary expectation, but that is not going to be the pure driver behind who they decide they want to work for. They'll be attracted by the values and culture of a particular company and that's going to help you attract the right people. But yeah, when you do find yourself in that situation, you unfortunately have already left it too late. So it can be fixed. But I don't think there's a quick fix.

The quickest short term fix for that really the only way you can fix it is if you have high margins, you have the ability to pay and I should say overpay for what you actually need because the second you need someone, you're desperate. And yeah, it, while it can fix a short term solution, maybe because you have the cash, you have the ability to waive a bit of money in front of someone to come as you need them. Right now, it's not a long term fix because as Russ said, money's just one part of it for people. It's not going to make anyone stay for any prolonged period of time. Doesn't matter how much you're paying. I don't think anyone's making that big a margins that they can pay people enough money to stay in a very toxic, awful environment. People don't stay if they don't want to. But if you have the margins or big enough margins, it gives you options. At least you have a few more options to go down before giving up and calling it quits.

What do you think's the best way to find good talent? Is it by having someone internally who's running that process or is it outsourcing to a third party?

Can I give you a solid yes answer? Sure.

It wasn't a yes no, but go for it.

Yeah. Yes. I mean, look, not a lot of building companies have an internal recruiting arm. So you know, the truth is there are specialists out there and maybe this goes some way towards answering the question that you asked Russ. There are specialists out there who recruit specifically for the construction industry. So all of the trades that we're talking about that are in short supply at the moment, there are specialists who, who work in those areas. And obviously from our perspective, we have a number of, of APB rewards partners that our members can access who will give them those kind of services. And of course they have, I say this respectfully, they have stock on their books. So they have carpenters and plumbers and electricians and tilers who are looking for work. And obviously they can then be the connection between the two. So. So outsourcing I think would be. Outsourcing the recruitment process I think would be something that a lot of builders would probably do. For those builders that don't go down that road, they probably still in that place where they doing everything themselves, you know, as in they, they are the sales guy and they're on the tools all day and they're doing the books at night and the quotes at night and so on. This is going to become another thing they do at night, you know, they will be posting things on Seek and indeed and wherever else on bulletin boards and so on. We've seen a lot of people get some quite interesting responses out of things like their Facebook page where, you know, they've, they've gone out on Facebook and said, we are hiring and if you know somebody, you know, put, put them onto us. So there's a variety of ways to do it, but it's going to end up being probably those people that can afford it. There would be those specialists and those people that are doing it themselves. It's just going to be part of, as sky said right at the beginning of this discussion, getting the word out enough to attract the right kind of people.

Thanks, Andy. So obviously the rewards partners is a great place to go for any app members out there. But sky, is there somewhere else that people can go right now to start learning more about company culture and running a better building company when it comes to this?

Yeah, definitely. We've got heaps of resources on this topic actually. We've, we've even done a, I think a couple different podcast episodes on company culture and even recruitment that would be really beneficial if you're not a member, if you are a member. We also have detailed step by step trainings on recruitment, on company culture, onboarding training, everything like that. And I think if you can put those systems in place and have an idea of where you're going, that would absolutely be the best place to start. Even just those episodes. Nice and easy listens just to map out that plan for you.

Perfect. Well, I'll, I'll try my best to include the best ones in the show notes then.

Perfect.

If I can just add and go back a bit to something that sky said earlier. You know, we, we're talking about there's a macro problem and then there's a micro problem. Talking about the, the physical realities of some of these jobs and the fact that there is an expiry date. There's a point at which your knees just say, I can't tile anymore. What a lot of people are finding is really helpful is having a career path internally for the people that are part of their team so that they come in as an apprentice, they, let's say, become a qualified carpenter after their three or four years, they work as a carpenter for five, six, seven years getting experience. They move into a leading hand carpentry role, they move into a supervisory role, they move into a project management role. And as they moving through those stages, they are not forced to be as physically involved as they obviously are. At let's call it the basic trade level. And I mean we have builders that are literally creating a career path for people that as their company grows, they only fill up from the bottom. So they are putting apprentices and carpenters in at the bottom and then growing them into leading hand carpenter supervisors, project managers, construction managers, in order to help that client scale. So it's, it's those kind of people where there's a career path rather than a job is going to be a lot more attractive than somebody where it's just, you're a carpenter, you'll always be a carpenter, you'll never be anything else. That's obviously nowhere near as attractive.

And it's the expectation of, of people who have grown into those roles to share all of their knowledge. This like perfect segue all the way back to the beginning of this episode. Sharing that knowledge, that experience and expertise to that younger generation, the new people coming into the building company so that you can keep that standard, that high standard of quality, all of that insider knowledge that's been gained over decades of experience. It is literally their job to share it. Which is huge. Huge.

Yeah, I mean I, I was talking to a client this morning who, while we're on the subject of carpenters, identified that structural carpentry was a failing in his team. He went out and got a professional video crew. He recorded himself framing the structural portions of a standard build. He's now made that the required watching of all new employees. And guess what? It is part of his library of his standard operating procedures. In his company manual, that knowledge and expertise is captured forever after the cockroaches and the LED globes are gone. That video will still be available for the aliens to watch.

Nothing. We have a couple of rewards partners as well, don't we, that provide a platform dedicated to actually providing this service where you can actually video best practice. And they've even got pre recorded videos as well that you can add to that library with best practice, you know, for the trades, so that this knowledge and skill set is not lost.

Really helpful. Well, thanks everyone. That was a really fun episode. Is there anything else you wanted to add before we wrap up?

Probably the only thing I would add is I think Andy might have touched on this earlier, but as builders, the vast majority of the workforce is not employed directly. It's subcontracted through other companies. So you might feel, well, what can I do? I'm a little detached, I've got my own carpentry team, I can control that and I can influence that, that. But what can I do about the plumbers, the electricians, etc, and you still can. Yeah. There's solutions for everything. And this is where I think you need to think of yourself as a coach and a mentor to the owners of those trades and influence them and guide those guys on how they can establish a better culture in their own team. Because this is your extended network. This is all part of your building company indirectly. So, yeah, don't. Don't let things like that block you. Just think how you can overcome that and have a greater influence on the people connected to your building company.

Very well said. You need them to succeed. You want to see them succeed. Yeah.

Thanks, Russ. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing everything about handling the current staffing crisis in the construction industry. My biggest takeaway is that it all comes back to culture. But culture is quite a complex topic in itself, so there's quite a bit to unpack there. But a big thank you to our listeners out there, wherever you are in the world. If you like the show today, please subscribe to Professional Builder Secrets on your platform of choice. And if you're feeling generous, leave us a review. But until next time, have a great day.