When businesses are in a hiring mode, it’s often not very likely that they’ll easily be able to find the highly trained workforce they’re looking for. Those workers either already have jobs or, if we’re talking about careers in the trades, there just aren’t that many workers available.
What are companies in this position to do?
Learn more: At Custom Concrete, our team is our family
In many cases, the best thing companies can do when faced with a hiring shortage is to develop their own workforce from within. In fact, workforce development is always a great strategy, no matter the hiring climate at the time.
Workforce development has been a hot topic lately in Bellingham and throughout Whatcom County. YES Whatcom, which aims to help connect local companies with the workforce of the future, is an important part of the process of ensuring that Whatcom businesses have access to the employees they need, now and in the future. Its list of jobs for youth includes positions available at Custom Concrete.
Other workforce development efforts are taking place within companies themselves who are hiring for entry-level positions and giving employees on-the-job training. Birch Equipment, for example, has a robust program in which it trains employees as they advance through positions of successively higher responsibility. There are many other great examples of this model throughout Whatcom County.
Learn more: How we help people make great careers out of concrete
Workforce development through on-the-job training is an idea we’ve been implementing for years here at Custom Concrete Contracting. Through CCC’s apprentice-like programs, new hires are trained as they go, achieving various benchmarks and learning new skills as they acquire expertise, responsibility and certifications.
Just like committing to four (or more) years of college education is an investment in one’s future, committing to work at a company like Custom Concrete is an investment, too. In just four years, concrete workers at Custom Concrete can go from making $30,000 a year to making $60,000 or more.
That’s possible because of our training and career-building program, which encourages team members through increasing levels of responsibility, skills and opportunity. The workers who dedicate their minds to the task — who put in the time and effort needed to learn the concrete trade — move up quickly.
Our Bellingham company, like so many others, is committed to the people who live and work here in Whatcom County. It is our desire to see them able to earn family-wage incomes and support the community we all love and enjoy. And whether those workers spend their whole careers at Custom Concrete or simply learn the trade and move on to other positions, we’re helping to build an educated and hard-working community that supports the success of others.
CCC’s owner, Dave Johnson, said it best: “Sometimes we forget the value of work in the trades. Anything that an architect or engineer designs must be built by a laborer. And the best architects and engineers, for that matter, are the ones with some trade experience, who know how things are done in the real world and what things are possible.”
To learn more about Custom Concrete Contracting’s workforce development plan, reach out!