FLASHBACK: 1992 UNQUALIFIED LABOR

THIRTY-ONE YEARS ago this month, BPD opened with an editorial by then-publisher David Cutler that reads as if were written yesterday. The lumber industry was aging quickly, with few qualified reinforcements in sight...

Poor Employees Don’t Run Great Companies

“You can’t believe the vegetables that wander in here thinking they should go to work for our company. If l hired these clowns we’d be out of business in six months,” an exasperated manager told us recently.

It’s a familiar lament. In an age when the techniques and hardware to train and educate employees have never been better, it seems our business faces a growing shortage of good people. Yet when management is quizzed about the need to spend money for recruitment and training, eyes glaze over. Their minds are elsewhere. And not just in this recession; it was like that in the good times, too.

Population trends bear upon the problem. With the graying of America, more experience and knowledge is lost to retirements. At the other end of the scale, lower birth rates following the Baby Boomer generation means fewer young people entering the workplace.

The lack of glamour and a perceived poor chance for advancement in building products retailing, wholesaling and distribution often mean we don’t get the coveted young hotshots. Few who join us live for their work. Rather they merely work for a living. And the end results demonstrate it.

This industry must recruit from a TV-watching generation raised on the lies and half truths fed them by a pro environmental media too lazy to check out the truth. Not a problem likely to vanish soon.

Everyone seems to agree that any company is only as good as its people. “People are our most important asset,” they piously intone. Yet when the time comes to do something in recruitment and training, the commitment isn‘t there. Unfortunately, it’s easier, cheaper and, yes, sometimes more practical to pirate an experienced employee than to train a new one.

We need to find and keep good people. The question is how.

Later in the issue, BPD reported on Home Depot beginning to experiment with new offerings and new formats:

Home Depot is testing a bridal registry in two Miami, Fl., stores and the Expo laboratory store in San Diego, Ca., with plans to extend the concept to nine Tampa, Fl., stores in the next 30 to 45 days...

The wedding registry was a hit and continues to this day. The upscale Expo design center concept, on the other hand, was quickly expanded before flaming out. All 34 locations were closed in 2009, resulting in 7,000 layoffs.