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An Aging and Shrinking Workforce: How to Survive the Perfect Storm

As recruiters enter 2022, they are facing growing challenges to find qualified candidates. On the one hand, experienced workers are aging and approaching retirement. According to the National Council on Compensation Insurance, the US labor force age 65 and older is expected to grow by more than 50% in the next ten years, making it 10% of the total labor force. And on the other hand, more and more are leaving the workforce in the present Covid age. Business Insider reports that some 2.5 million workers retired during the pandemic. To further complicate matters, public sector employers bear the additional burden of finding trade technicians who can pass stringent background and drug screenings. Hiring those types of individuals is getting harder and harder in this economy. The result is that the pool of talented workers is evaporating. Without corrective action, facility managers face a future in which repairs will take longer to execute and downtimes will be extended.

Now more than ever, it is critical to have a solution that can capture existing institutional knowledge as the current workforce ages. Facility managers need to embrace technology to gather the critical information that experienced technicians have built up over the years. They have intimate knowledge and hands-on experience with assets across all facilities. They know the ins and outs of machinery and systems, from safety protocols to routine maintenance. Don’t risk losing this trove of unwritten expertise when these workers retire! You need a comprehensive solution today.

Consider the scope of the problem. According to a survey by the Aberdeen Group, 29% of a technician’s time is spent looking for information, costing more than $11k per year per technician. Why is that? Too often, your existing manuals, blueprints, and operational guides are scattered across your organization in varying formats. Many of these are out of date, and without experienced go-to-guys on staff, new hires need time to familiarize themselves with procedures.

The solution is straightforward: adoption of a technical approach to digitize and store asset information in a single platform will produce rapid results across your organization. Imagine the benefits this technology brings to the facility management space. For example:

Faster Training – Eliminate the need for months of on-the-job training and mentoring currently needed to bring new hires up to speed. With a tool that puts expert guidance into the hands of new hires, onsite technicians can directly access a database of technical knowledge that makes them faster and more effective at their jobs.
Resilient Technicians– Why continue the need to assign certain teams to certain buildings? Digitizing your manuals and guides will allow you to switch staff from building to building and from account to account, giving your greater flexibility in staffing.
Emergency Management – During a crisis, a technician may arrive at a site where they don’t have in-depth knowledge of the systems. He needs a tool in the palm of his hand that he can pull out and understand immediately what needs to be done. The result is faster repair times and decreased downtime.

QModo AI’s solution is what your facility needs to get ahead of the game and safeguard institutional knowledge. This tool helps your engineers and technicians create and operate in an environment that is both productive and safe. You will see better response times in routine maintenance and emergency management. Moreover, you experience cost savings in time saved searching for a specific manual or confirming necessary safety protocols before repair can even begin. This represents not only savings for your facility, but one you can pass on to your clients.

The aging and shrinking workforce is a reality, but not one to be feared if you have the right technology in your hands.