Keeping Your Good People

Pressure to hire employees from other PEI member companies seems to be intensifying.

A good economy brings with it more work. With more work, there's a need for more people. We can't just hire a guy off the street, though. New technology demands that our new hires possess high-level skills.

It takes years of training to become a skilled technician. We've invested probably a minimum of $25,000 in the training of a good tech with a few years of experience. The cost to train technicians as well as salespeople in our industry is high, so when another company needs a skilled employee, your company is the first logical place to start looking for one or two, or more! We all know that offering a potential new hire with the prerequisite skills a few more dollars an hour than he's making elsewhere is less expensive than paying that $25,000 up front.

It's inevitable that you will lose people from time to time. Some move away, some change careers, some think the grass is greener elsewhere. Chances are that if you employ the best, others—not only in the petroleum equipment industry but also elsewhere in the industrial, engineering and technical services industries—recognize the caliber of people you have and may, from time to time, offer them an opportunity to leave you and work for them.

So what can you do to keep your best employees, especially when everyone else knows how good they are? Don't wait until someone offers one of your top-notch employees a position before you acknowledge their importance to you. By then, it may be too late.

Here are some tips to keeping your good people:

• Treat them right to begin with. Treat them with respect and compassion. Are you the kind of person you would like to work for?
• Keep your door always open. Make sure they feel free to talk about what's not working well, what's bothering them.
• Develop a sense of the corporate team, and be sure to include them.
• Spend enough time and effort bragging about them, in front of other employees, customers, visitors, etc. This is very important.
• It's not always about the money. It's the total package. New truck or old one? Techs live in those trucks. Be creative. Would flex time work? What about a better title? You might be surprised at what some employees value.
• Be sure your supervisors share your ideas about your employees, as they are the ones who interact with them on a daily basis.

Consider the time and money you've already invested in your employee, as well as the cost to train their replacement. Keep the door open to people who left and want to return.

As a rule, my company will not hire people away from competitors, no matter how tough the market is. As long as they are working for someone else, we will not talk to them. Aggressively looking to competitors for our employees is not good for business long term. Hard feelings between competitors are never good business.

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The PEI Journal • Third Quarter 2007 • Volume 1, No. 3 • Contents are Copyright © Data Key Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved. • Nothing may be reproduced in whole or part without written permission of the publisher.