Keith Osborne reports on recruitment and retention challenges…
The construction industry is estimated to need around 250,000 trade skilled workers over the next four years, in multiple disciplines including wet leisure. Even if you can find candidates to invest in, there is a struggle to provide sufficient resources to train in-house teams, commercial clients and consumers in maintaining such a diverse variety of complex units.
Wayne Green, director at Oasis Outdoor Living, has seen the array of systems fitted at busy sites across the country bring to the fore the sort of problems the skills shortage causes. “They get used seven days a week, so their breakdowns are far more frequent than home tubs.
“When things go wrong,” he says, “there’s a high-percentage chance that engineers are ordering the wrong parts, or with the pressure to attend the next job, leave matters in the hands of untrained customers. “Why is that? Because there’s no training being put in practice,” he continues. “They’ve told the cleaner, ‘Right, you clean the hot tub and you refill it, and you put some chemicals in.
You write it down on that piece of paper’ and move on to the next one. The delays to repairs and servicing, through poor knowledge and time management, he adds, means a shortage of operative facilities that can lead to a reduction of repeat customers and recommendations, which is turn causes venues to lose “tens of thousands of pounds” every year.
It’s inevitable that finances are a major factor in finding and retaining knowledgeable staff. Andy Wroot, MD of MySpa UK, comments: “It’s very hard to be able to pay skilled people enough money on hot tub margins as a business as they can earn so much more in other sectors. That means that you end up bringing in people who are in need of substantial training in order to be able to operate at the level required.
“Having said that we have had success over the years and managed to train good service people. However, retaining them can be difficult, again because they are able to earn better outside of the hot tub industry.” In his 25 years of experience, David Wright of Passion4Spas has accumulated a wealth of knowledge and seen significant differences in approaches and commitments to skills in installation, maintenance and customer relations.
While he used to regularly receive in-depth training from many manufacturers around the world who were willing to invest in it, today he frequently sees something quite different. “Companies are setting up, but they haven’t got any background in engineering or anything like that,” he says. “[They] were set up online and selling tubs, but basically didn’t want to look after them.
A lot of them went bust. Now I’ve got customers that don’t have anybody to look after the product. However, all is not lost, he points out: “There are lots of good engineers out there that have done all the training courses with the manufacturers, and there are those that have done their training and got themselves all up to speed.”
The pioneering Certified Hot Tub Technician Scheme, a formal qualification covering routine servicing, fault diagnosis and reactive maintenance. This is open to newcomers to the industry and those already qualified in relevant trade skills. David Wright notes that some manufacturers lack initiative in passing technical information to suppliers and consumers: “I get phone calls from dealerships asking me, ‘Do you know where I can get a control manual for such-and-such?’. Which should be easy – just go online and find it.
“That probably means that the manufacturers haven’t given any training to the customer. “The new owners try to come back to these dealers, who don’t know what they’re doing, and then those dealers are trying to find out from people that do know.” Some companies are taking major steps to successfully grow their team.
Carol Smith, head of HR at Superior Wellness, says: “It has been a very busy time recently for recruitment as we continue our rapid growth internationally. It is really important to me that we recruit the right people that fit into our culture as well as having the right skills. “We have changed our hiring strategy this year, and now have four stages of our recruitment process.
This includes a tour of our facilities and meeting some of the team including the managing director himself. This helps to ensure we hire the right people for the role. It’s not plain sailing though, she adds: “We have had many vacancies across all departments including technicians, developers and some key senior hires for the business. It has been a challenge to recruit developers due to the nature of role and our location.”
The consensus is that there is no easy solution to the wet leisure sector’s skills shortage. Andy Wroot comments: “In order for the industry to develop further, more initiatives like the Golden Coast training academy need to be implemented in the coming years to help provide professional level training services and industry standard qualifications set and controlled by governing bodies might help.
“Our focus in the past has been on young people being brought in and trained internally. More recently our shift has been to try and attract older more experienced employees who bring more practical experience to the roles which is easier to build upon when training.” Wayne Green is using technology to help minimise the effects of gaps in skills and knowledge on site.
He often sees faults being misdiagnosed and costly delays due to the wrong replacement parts being ordered. His new bespoke, cloud-based software is accessible in the office and on mobile devices to assist his in-house team alleviate some of the problems of dealing with poorly trained customer engineers, without having to be there alongside the faulty fixture.
“It’s called Spasync and is dedicated directly to holiday parks,” he explains. “It helps the engineers or the guys on site to identify how to solve breakdowns, how to replace an older part – and how to prevent parts breaking down in the first place.” Graham Message, Superior Wellness’s business development manager, has provided chemical training in-house and weekly technical training sessions.
He also delivers training programmes to partners on sales and the customer experience, as well as product knowledge training on specific brands. He says: “It is so important that we provide relevant training to our partners. It is also really valuable at the sessions for dealers to meet each other and share best practice.
Graham adds: “I recommend everyone to take time out from their busy schedules and undertake training, even as a refresher to build additional confidence.” The skills issue is a multi-faceted problem that has no easy solution.
Some elements may involve a sustained investment in time and money across the industry, but even a quick internal review could lead any company to a more cost-effective and time-efficient use of the skilled assets they have at present. Taking advice and inspiration from successful industry peers is certainly a giant first step.
COMPANY CONTACTS
Aqua Warehouse Group
Tel. 01245 477 400
E. sales@aquawarehouse.co.uk
www.aquawarehousegroup.co.uk
MySpa Distribution
Tel. 01530 444500
E, info@myspadistribution.co.uk
Oasis Outdoor Living
Tel. 01623 354663
E. sales@oasis-odl.co.uk
Passion4Spas
Tel.07547 346542
E. passion4spas@gmail.com
Superior Wellness
Tel. 01246 559071
E. info@superiorwellness.co.uk
www.superiorwellness.co.uk
