Yesterday morning, I caught a piece on the BBC Breakfast news about the struggles the probation service are currently facing when looking to recruit new staff.

The chap from their sector's trade association was speaking about the crisis they are dealing with, both bringing in new people and retaining the ones they currently have due to, amongst other factors, inadequate wages.

I followed this up, out of interest, by typing in the phrase 'recruitment crisis' into Google's news search and found a bunch of articles, all from this week, covering sectors as diverse as construction, the military and schools. These pieces all had similar themes, talking about a lack of money available to meet candidates' demands, long hours, sometimes working in uncomfortable conditions - and having to compete with the notion that the grass is somehow always greener elsewhere.

Speaking of this green grass, it certainly doesn't appear to be that appealing at the moment for the UK turf professional sector either. My colleague, Laurence Gale, who as well as contributing to Service Dealer's magazine, is the editor of our sister title for commercial end-users, TurfPro, has been voicing concerns about the hardships that sector is facing in recruiting for some time now.

In his most recent missive on the subject, Loz who is never afraid to ruffle a few feathers, had this to say about why he feels there are groundstaff and greenkeeper roles going unfilled. "One of our biggest problems is that school leavers are not aware of the scale and size of our industry and career opportunities available," is how he put it.

Laurence continued, "Groundskeeping is rarely presented as a viable or respected vocational path, despite opportunities for specialisation and advancement."

Does all of the above sound familiar, with direct parallels for our dealer readers? Not wishing to be presumptuous, but I would lay money on the answer to that being a resounding yes!

It's clearly a perennial issue for the dealer network and one discussed whenever members of the industry get together - as well as a subject we regularly return to across our magazine's output.

I do think it's fair to say though, that we are fortunate in this sector in that we have trade associations that recognise the situation and are trying to practically do something about it. BAGMA, the AEA and IAgrE, under their LE-TEC umbrella are pushing forward with their WeAreLandbased campaign. 

Their public-facing website promotes the benefits and opportunities that the sector offers new recruits and supplies plenty of material and contact points to help not only young people make up their minds on a career, but also resources for their parents and teachers. It's an admirable endeavour and one that is hopefully gaining momentum.

However, despite these best efforts, whenever we've asked you, our dealer readers for your experiences with the recruitment process for your businesses, we receive back some fairly bleak assessments.

For example last year, when we ran our survey on the subject (which were are again today), some typical comments we heard from dealers who responded, included:

• "We have been looking for a parts advisor for 6 months now."
• "It’s extremely hard to get people to work weekends."
• "There is still a lack of people knowing about our industry."

So today we'd be interested to hear has anything changed in these past 12 months? Has your business noticed any impact from industry schemes? Or have you perhaps found success with your own social media marketing of your dealership? We'd love to hear about your experiences, whatever they may be.

If you were able to take a couple of moments today to answer our brief survey, it would be greatly appreciated to give us a sense of how our dealer readers are coping with staffing requirements this year.

Thanks in advance for your help.

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