WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES FACING THEIR INDUSTRIES
A Q & A with Mark Langello and John Lulgjuraj by Greg Blosé
Mark Langello President , M & M Development & Construction , LLC
John Lulgjuraj Co-Owner , Oceanside Beach Bar and Grill Flagler Beach Business Bureau ( FB3 ) President
Tell us about the challenges your industry is facing with regard to workforce development .
Mark Langello : The construction industry has been suffering from a talent drain for over a dozen years . After the “ Great Recession ” of 2008 , many talented and experienced people in the construction industry , which was severely impacted , left the field and never came back . This caused a talent drain at the top .
In a double whammy , the youth of today do not look to construction for entry level jobs and they don ’ t see construction as a long-term career possibility as they did a generation ago . So there are fewer new workers coming in and there are less skilled people to train those who do come . Overall , there are less people in the trade .
Additionally , in a strange twist of fate , while people in our industry were bracing for a steep slowdown in work , the opposite happened . We have been experiencing high demand , which has led to an increase in demand for services and products . This has caused another barrier in the industry –– rising costs across the board for materials , which limits the amount you can increase wages . The end products are already too expensive in many cases , which will shut off larger and larger segments of our society from being able to expand , move , grow , etc . We were seeing wage increases in the construction industry for several years prior to COVID , but since then , we ’ ve seen slower increases in wages . This further impacts our ability to draw people into the trade and develop a new workforce .
Lastly , this industry has always had a lot of foreign workers , many with skills , both legal and illegal . That segment has been shrinking for a while due to tougher immigration policies , enforcement [ of those policies ] and COVID .
John Lulgjuraj : The most heavily considered benefit when searching for a job , according to study done by the Harvard Business Review , was quality health , dental and vision benefits . Also noted were work from home options and flexible hours . All of which are basically the opposite of what our industry is able to provide .
Quality PPO style health care benefits are simply too expensive without a government match or stimulus for almost any small business . Work from home options as a server or sous chef , for obvious reasons , don ’ t work and we are more successful when employees are more flexible rather than us being more flexible . We all can have an idea or projections but in our industry a bus full of people can show up anytime and we can perform really well when our team members are open and on call .
There are real solutions here . Covid has opened the door for real Federal help . If we only re-directed Unemployment benefits to Employment benefits giving a stimulus to the working American people .
The big idea here is any person can choose an industry or a job they think will enjoy and be able to have security and longevity to provide for his / her family . If the government gives stimulus to businesses to pay for real quality benefits , we will have a fighting chance .
How are you responding to those challenges ?
ML : Most companies in the construction industry that rely on skilled workers are unable to keep up with the demand overall . Some limit which contractors they work for or they pay their workers a lot of overtime . Both solutions have a negative long term effect . By limiting the amount of work they do , many projects either take too long to get built , which hurts the overall economy , or they don ’ t happen at all .
Companies with existing relationships and larger companies are able to keep
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