Jenkins Restorations: Battling the industry’s labor shortage with GuildQuality and company culture

Since the Great Recession of 2008, the home improvement industry has faced a significant labor shortage. The lack of skilled workers available has made it difficult for businesses to function as they typically would.

Understanding the Labor Shortage

The reason behind the labor shortage is two-fold: 1) the demand for home renovations, repairs, and construction work is increasing and 2) there are more qualified workers retiring than there are joining the workforce. The current population of technicians, electricians, and construction workers is aging, with the average age at 43 years old. 

There are also fewer and fewer shop classes offered to high school students across the country because they are no longer embedded in the curriculums of most schools. These classes would often spark a passion in students to enter the industry after graduation. The aging workforce coupled with this downturn in shop classes has left a gap in employment. 

With an estimated 2 million construction workers needed over the next three years to meet demand, the COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated this issue. Since hands-on learning is so vital in this industry, training programs took a significant hit with the start of quarantine and social distancing. Not only this, the pandemic slowed the distribution of materials, causing a supply chain shortage across the world. 

Even so, there are still many ways for businesses to handle the effects of this labor shortage.  

Company Culture Drives Retention & Improved Performance of Employees

In the example of Jenkins Restorations, it has managed to successfully utilize its business practices to account for the lack of available employees in the industry. 

Since 1975, Jenkins Restorations has delivered excellent service to those in need of emergency services, disaster recovery, and building restoration services. Jenkins Restorations has developed a reputation as a leader in the home repair industry, both for residential and commercial clients, and has expanded to 23 locations in 15 states.  

Jenkins Restorations prides itself on its outstanding company culture as a corporation with a small business feel. The company is structured so that everyone “follows the same processes and speaks the same language”, says Elisa Medina, Manager of Jenkins University. This ensures that employees from different locations will immediately be on the same page which helps foster a sense of unity within the company. 

Jenkins Restorations also employs other strategies to help boost its employees’ confidence. If there is one location performing well and another location that is known to be challenging, a tenured Jenkins Restorations employee can temporarily work on the successful location to gain more confidence and expertise. This approach was first proposed by an employee who volunteered to help an office that was struggling with a certain process. As an employee-owned company, Jenkins Restorations welcomes and acknowledges its employees’ ideas, looking to implement them whenever effective. 

It’s a simple concept: when employees like the company they work for, they are more likely to strive to improve and less likely to go work somewhere else. 

Jenkins Restorations’ Implementation of GuildQuality

Jenkins Restorations was specifically looking to improve employee performance and obtain more consistent reviews without putting that responsibility onto their employees’ workloads. In 2015, Jenkins Restorations became a Guildmember. 

Jenkins Restorations utilizes GuildQuality for several aspects of its business which have proven very successful. Jenkins Restorations uses GuildQuality as a training tool at project completion. By receiving comment-rich feedback specific to their performance directly from the customer, Jenkins is able to understand what’s working well, and what could use some improvement. This helps its employees build relationships with customers and understand how to follow processes correctly. 

Jenkins Restorations also utilizes GuildQuality to motivate employees to go above and beyond. Project managers are paid on commission through various GuildQuality results. Jenkins Restorations has even implemented several awards for distinguished service – for instance, GuildQuality is an influential metric for the Hydrant Award, which commends the top-performing branch at Jenkins Restorations each year. 

The GuildQuality survey also enables the viewer to search each question from branch to branch or from project manager to project manager. This feature allows Jenkins Restorations to track each question over time to see what trends they’ve experienced. Elisa comments that “data always tells a story, but in order to read the story you need to be able to sift through that data meaningfully. I can narrow my search based on quantitative data that will lead me to the qualitative data that tells me the true story.”   

GuildQuality’s ability to track employee performance also helped Jenkins Restoration shift its company culture toward an emphasis on customer service, as “encouragement, positive reinforcement, and recognition is more valued for this new generation of the workforce which is how GuildQuality helps employees feel valued and open to learn and improve performance”. 

Due to this change, Jenkins Restorations has managed to increase its overall retention and growth over the last seven years. Jenkins Restorations currently has 417 employees, while expanding to two new locations each year. 

How GuildQuality Can Combat the Industry-Wide Labor Shortage

GuildQuality’s various metrics can serve as the basis of rewards for employees to stay motivated and incentivized. The data-driven results allow for clear, actionable feedback. GuildQuality will help your business ask customers for their unbiased, comment-rich feedback, learn from your customer’s experiences, promote authentic reviews, and grow through high-quality lead generation. 

“The way that you can sort the data, the way that it’s received, and the way that it’s tracked so that you can filter things with GuildQuality is a huge benefit. You can really hone in on certain issues and you can track performance in a very data-driven way, which we highly value”,  Elisa Medina remarks. 

The labor shortage has made it difficult for companies to conduct business as usual, but with GuildQuality, companies can both keep and improve qualified workers. 

Takeaways

Your company can navigate this labor shortage with GuildQuality’s help because of its two key abilities: 

1. GuildQuality provides the kind of insights businesses need to strengthen employee performance. Their customizable reporting tools will help you identify what exactly needs refining within your teams, creating training and coaching opportunities.
2. Incorporating GuildQuality into your business processes forms a more positive company culture, reducing turnover and increasing employee retention. 

Interested in Becoming a Member? 

To learn more about GuildQuality, click here.