Recruitment and Retention Committee Holds First Meeting

ORLANDO - In the first face-to-face meeting of the NPMA Recruitment and Retention Committee, the group’s first agenda item was the finalizing of its mission statement. Chair Shay Runion of Arrow Exterminators presented three options developed from discussions held during the committee’s previous teleconference were presented, with the final version decided as an assimilation of the three: “The mission of the Recruitment and Retention Committee is to help ensure continual industry growth and assist all NPMA members in attracting, developing and retaining top talent by sharing practices and resources to achieve success.”

With that completed, the committee went on to discuss its workforce website, http://workforce.npmapestworld.org. The site, as presented by NPMA Staff Liaison Allison Allen, has been populated with a number of resources under the headers of Recruit, Hire, Train and Retain. Discussion focused on whether additional resources needed to be added or if was ready to be linked to the NPMA site, with committee determination that it should be linked, but resources would continue to be added as well.

Committee discussion then proceeded to focus on the HR needs of the industry, with members being asked what they saw as trends in the HR world that should be brought to the pest management industry and specific needs of small companies with which NPMA could help.

With a particular focus on soft skills for which there are fewer resources than for technical skills, key areas in which challenges were seen for which the committee could provide assistance or resources were job descriptions and related onboarding screening to assist in hiring of employees best fit for the job to increase retention; how a business knows at what stage it needs to begin recruiting employees; metrics for tracking the success of new employees; sample exit interviews – and stay interviews; and particular challenges of small companies that don’t have internal HR departments. 
From the discussion the short-term action items developed were:
1. A review of job descriptions for the potential compilation of samples.
2. “Life of an Employee” infographic, with points on how a business knows when it needs to begin recruiting → recruiting → hiring → on boarding.
3. Overview of HR money-saving programs offered by NPMA.
4. Regular podcasts, videos, webinars and/or FB Live postings on recruiting, hiring, and retaining employees.
5. Updating of templates previously created by NPMA for job postings.