Shortage of staff in the industry?
The frustrations of recruitment problems from tree surgery business owners has been up for discussion quite a lot on arb forums and social platforms recently.
Due to recent growth here at Beechwood Trees, we too are finding it difficult to recruit experienced and qualified tree surgeons and arborists. So we decided to do a bit of investigation to find out why this is happening.
The first question is; is there a reduction in the number of available operatives, or has there has been an increase in workload?
Term contracts with Local Authorities and housing Associations remain the same, they still have a responsibility to maintain and care for their tree stock, so no change here.
Due to COVID, and the furlough scheme meant that there were more people either at home or working from home, some with disposable income. There was a large increase in home improvements, which includes gardens and tree work. Therefore there has been a noticeable increase in the residential domestic market for tree surgery work.
There is a lot of infrastructure projects in progress, specifically HS2, which has undertaken significant amount of tree and vegetation removal all requiring additional resource.
The buoyant market has attracted a number of employees to move across to self employed status, therefore unavailable is a PAYE employee and also charging increased rates as a ‘subbie climber’ when working for other companies.
We then looked at the staff numbers.
Following a conversation with Nick Pott the Managing Director at ArbJobs, he mentioned:
In 2021 we found ourselves up by 19% on site visits from August 2019 in August 2021 we had 19,881 visitor sessions
However “Recorded” applications are down 20% on 2019 figures.
In addition to this we have employee uncertainty regarding moving to new jobs and those that are moving cherry picking best salaries and benefit positions.
Companies that are struggling to recruit are the utilities, local authorities who often offer some of the lowest sector salaries . Employers seeking part time or temp staff are also struggling in this competitive market.
Although there appears to be the same amount of tree surgeon operatives available (or looking), they maybe reluctant to make the move, unless its it for a salary increase or much better prospects.
We are also aware that the training during lockdown had stopped for a period of time, meaning that there was a little or no trickle of newly trained staff becoming available after their courses.
Is this actually an industry problem?
With a combination of the two above, increased workload and reduced number of new trained staff comping through, yes it is, although potentially maybe only short term…
We spoke with Paul Elcoat, who runs Elcoat Ltd, one of the industries leading strategic arb consultancies and he agreed, stating:
I have the same conversation almost every day. The opening comments are the company telling me that they cant get staff and that their operators are all wanting to become self-employed.
At the end of every day, they inevitably say something like - if you hear of anyone looking for a job please send them in our direction.
Obviously this isn’t an ideal situation for employers trying to attract new staff, and is causing problems when trying to deliver on their workload.
It seems that only companies offering good job security good benefits and salary packages will win in applicants in a competitive market like this.
What does the future hold?
The current amount of work available to contractors is excessive and we believe is not sustainable going forward. In the 22 years Beechwood have been established, we have never experienced it like this before. We may be wrong!
We have always been proactive in developing our workforce along with taking on a batch of apprentices each year, which we have noticed other good companies adopting the same approach and bringing on new operatives and apprentice roles..
The domestic market should reduce back to normal, so this may see some start ups struggle for work, and therefore once again be available for employment.
Maybe companies need to consider making life as an employee better than being self employed to make PAYE more attractive?
These are just our opinions and we would love to hear your thoughts or discuss this topic in more depth to understand how you are dealing with the situation or how its impacted you? Get in touch, we are very social!
Thank you for the input from the following people:
Paul Elcoat
Elcoat Ltd Strategy, Governance & Operations in the Tree & Landscape Industries - Helping businesses grow to achieve their potential
Office +44 (0) 20 7193 5611 Direct +44 (0) 7800 615 900
Nick Pott
Arbsites Limited Specialising in tree care, arboriculture and tree surgery staff vacancies. We have over 3,500 job seekers registered with us.
Telephone: 01433 651121
