Unraveling the Challenges of Recruiting and Retaining Talent

Ask 800 or so PMPs what their most significant challenge is today, and you get a variety of answers. Attracting new business, health care costs, regulations and a few other areas get a nod, but one area — recruitment and retention — pulls far ahead of the pack to claim the No. 1 spot. In fact, fully one-third of the industry considers this their top challenge, and, on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being “very challenging,” recruitment averaged 3.7 and retention averaged 2.9.

This is just the start of the information NPMA and PCT collected through our 2017 Recruitment and Retention Survey. We asked you and your peers about the tools and processes you use to recruit and onboard new employees, the challenges you face recruiting and retaining, your plans for raising (or not raising) wages in the coming year, and a whole lot more. We’ll share highlights on the following pages, along with ideas and insights from expert recruiters and PMPs that might just spur some ideas of your own.

There’s a famous saying in this industry, that we’re in the people business, not the bug business. Ultimately, our people are our product: They make our companies what they are. We can’t grow without a solid foundation of good people, and so, recruiting and retaining the right talent is vital to our success.” — Burns Blackwell, President/CEO, Terminix of the Triad