Staff woes, getting ready to chuck it all in

[Rough Hewn]

Where abouts are you based Scott?
And I deeply sympathise about college leaver divas.
[emoji12][emoji106]

[Pete Mctree]

I can only sympathise about your staffing problems, but people rattle on about poor wages too much. The money paid should reflect the aptitude, ability & qualifications - without all three your never going to have much of a living from tree work. I have two subbies, both with limited earning abilities because they refuse to invest in themselves - both can graft & have excellent work ethics, however neither can climb ( be a rescuer), one has first aid & neither have medium/large trees. So what do I do? I am very limited on tasks that they can undertake & be insured doing them.

I also have a couple of well trained inexperienced, clueless work shy fools I can use - the worst thing is that I sometimes have to bring one them along just to tick boxes.

As for colleges and independent trainers, I look not at what they teach, but what they are asked to teach. The best instructors still have to follow the script.

There is no magic wand with staff & luck seems to play a huge role in finding them. The best companies seem to have a balance of ages of staff, however it never fails to amaze me how one individual can drag the entire work force down & ruin the productivity & ethic of the other staff.

[dent]

Why are these threads always bashing the young people 

Yes fair enough there are workshy out there and there may well be more like this than the last generation i think mostly as there parents support thrm when they skive off or are lazy but there plenty of enthusiastic hard working ambitios and passionate millennials about its just the enthusiastic hard working ambitious and passionate ones that want to achieve something arnt going to be happy grounding 

Everyone like this i know wants to start there own business and in relative terms tree surgery is quite a cheap industry to start up in a van or pickup and climbing kit and a few saws can be had for a couple of grand 

That leaves you with the hard working but not particularly passionate ones if they are hard working but not ambitious or overly passionate about trees then there are far more profitable jobs out there tree work pays rubbish with no real chance of advancing and you work outside with a fair chance of crippling yourself before you get anywhere near pention age not really appealing unless your passionate about the work 

And finally it may not be everyone but there are some terrible bosses out there who may have put good people off or you do things you don't realise that puts people off 

Aswell as bigger companies offering more variety better toys to play with more progression training and benefits 

It becomes apparent why minimum wage to drag brash for a one man band is never going to attract the type of people actually worth employing simply to much competition for good workers 

[Steve Bullman]

31 minutes ago, Pete Mctree said:

however it never fails to amaze me how one individual can drag the entire work force down & ruin the productivity & ethic of the other staff

Absolutely it does.  Even to the most productive members of staff

[Scott95]

4 hours ago, Mesterh said:

Can't you look towards getting staff who have been in the industry 5+ years?

 

Taking on someone from college should be seen as training them to do the job imo.

i've had a mixture of staff over the years with different amounts of experience and different age groups.  The problems persist.

[Scott95]

3 hours ago, Rough Hewn said:

A different angle...
Be a tradesman.
Start on £100+ a day,
Going up to £150-200 with experience.
Be a tree surgeon,
Start on £50-80 a day maybe up to £100-120 a day with experience.
This is the problem.
As I've pointed out before.
Pay your staff a decent wage. You might actually attract decent guys.
The arb world is full of firms who will charge top money for jobs and pay their staff the scraps.

I do pay a decent wage, certainly above the average by a long shot.  Perhaps I am just unlucky

[Scott95]

1 hour ago, Rough Hewn said:

Where abouts are you based Scott?
And I deeply sympathise about college leaver divas.

Near Blackpool but I cover quite a wide area

[Mick Dempsey]

Yeah, stuff can be a pain in the arse, but there you go, maybe look at it from a different angle, what are you doing wrong? Too many gangs, underpricing work, sending clearly inexperienced guys to tricky jobs?

 

Maybe you are the perfect boss etc. But there are two sides to every story.

[aspenarb]

Scott you need a shit filter, they are called managers. You really dont  need to be taking on board all this crap and worrying yourself. Pass the stress on.

 

Bob

[Scott95]

2 minutes ago, Mick Dempsey said:

Yeah, stuff can be a pain in the arse, but there you go, maybe look at it from a different angle, what are you doing wrong? Too many gangs, underpricing work, sending clearly inexperienced guys to tricky jobs?

 

Maybe you are the perfect boss etc. But there are two sides to every story.

I have spent a lot of time looking inwards believe me.  I don't think i'm a shitty boss.  never really fell out with staff and I always muck in without disappearing when the going gets tough.