Hopefully most of you are aware, but the crew behind Service Dealer also publish another first-class title for a related, yet separate, industry.
Every Monday at noon, TurfPro is sent out to commercial practitioners whose job it is to care for and maintain green spaces - be those amenity grassed areas or sports surfaces used by everyone from kids to top-level professionals. Basically anyone who uses the specialist groundscare machinery that you, our dealer readers, recommend, sell and service, TurfPro caters for.
Edited by our friend and colleague, who many of you will know from our Conferences and his visits to dealerships around the country for profile pieces in the magazine, Laurence Gale is himself an ex-pro groundsman and a still practicing professional gardener. The title has a bit of industry news crossover with us here at Service Dealer, but it covers in detail the whole arena of commercial grass care, with a real empathy for those on the front line, maintaining natural surfaces.
Any readers interested in receiving TurfPro for free regularly, can subscribe here.
Salary front and centre
Why am I telling you all this today? Well, one area that the turf professional sphere currently has in common with the dealer network, is the difficulties it faces in recruiting fresh blood into the sector. It's a subject that Laurence has addressed in his blogs many times, pondering why there should be these hardships in finding new staff and, crucially, what can be done to rectify the situation.
On Monday this week TurfPro featured a guest writer responding to one of Loz's recent articles, with their own thoughts on one area of the recruitment process that they felt could be improved upon.
Mike Chappell, is a seasoned turf professional who spent many years on the tools, but who now runs his own specialist recruitment agency for grounds professionals in the golf, sportsturf, grounds maintenance, landscaping, arboriculture and horticulture industries. In his opinion piece that you can read in full here, he argues that in order to attract the right caliber of applicant for any vacant role, employers must be fully transparent, clearly advertising the available salary in any job advert.
He lists several reasons why he believes this salary openness to be important, including amongst others that it will attract candidates who are genuinely interested in the position; that transparency is a key component of building trust between employers and potential employees; and employers who advertise salaries can enhance their brand as fair and desirable places to work.
Mike says he has conducted his own polls and surveys and has found a real enthusiasm amongst job seekers for this up-front approach to stating the fee on offer in all job postings. And I must say he makes for a persuasive case. I can remember from personal experience, especially post-university, looking through recruitment pages in local newspapers (that's how long ago it was that I left education!), and not having a clue whether any of these jobs met my - admittedly lowly - wage expectations.
So I do think it's hard to argue with Mike in his assessment that it is relatively rare for job ads to display the salary front and centre. If I think about sits-vac ads that we've run in Service Dealer lately for example, few, if any, have done this.
The question then arises, for what reasons might a recruiter choose to not divulge the remuneration in the first instance? I guess for one, there could be the fear that putting that information out there in the public domain gives competitors an edge. A rival could see your wage offering and adjust their own, to tempt candidates away to their businesses.
Other thoughts against salary transparency could be ideas such as it may lead to internal pay discrepancies and upset among existing employees; it may create a false sense of the value of the role by not fully reflecting all that's on offer; or it could limit the scope for negotiation by both parties at interview stage.
Also, if we're being blunt, could employers be worried that the wage they are offering is so low it's going to put people off applying?! I know as a job seeker, that's certainly something that crossed my mind in the past.
But what do you, our dealer readers think? Do you agree with Mike that unequivocally promoting the salary available is a productive avenue to explore in order to increase the chance of attracting the right candidates? Or is leaving this vital detail until a face-to-face meeting, or a private interaction at least, more helpful?
As with anything, I guess there is a balance that can be struck. Promoting possible salary ranges, or focussing on all the benefits and perks that working for your company brings, would be means of not going the whole hog, whilst giving prospects something more to go on.
But let us know your thoughts . .
