You can’t always be staffed for the huge snow events that can hit states like Minnesota. So what do you do when you need some extra help? We talked to Tom Hougnon, owner and chief operational officer at Reliable Property Services, which also has locations in Wisconsin and Iowa, where an 18-inch storm means bulking up the shoveling crews.
How do you find good people?
It’s the foremen that know the people. It’s really important to have those good foremen.
We tend to shy away from just going to the temp service and saying “Send us 35 guys.” If we do that we want to work with a temp service and say “We need 10 guys every event and we want the same 10 people.”
We might pay a little extra to do that. Otherwise, we don’t rely on temp services that much. They’re certainly a backup but we really rely on our team to backfill their crews with people they know to round out on those bigger storms.
We kind of have a backup group of people who are friends of acquaintances with our employees and they don’t work every storm but on the big storms, they’re able to come in. They maybe take some time off from their regular job because they know they’re going to be able to come in and make some extra money on that big storm.
How do you staff for a big storm?
We try and get the plan going 8 at night or 10 at night. If we know we have a major event coming in, we’ll pre-warn, pre-address it.
And they’re all pre-screened, they’ve gone through our hiring process, maybe they’ve worked for us in the past.
It’s not uncommon for us to be hiring the night of a storm. They’ll bring in a couple of their friends and a foreman will bring in two extra guys for his shoveling crew and we’ll run them through our e-verification and we’ll bring them on and the foreman will work with them and train them in and get them out there working with us on those heavy storms.
How do you train so quickly?
Somebody coming in at that point, they’re probably going to be running a shovel. They’re going to be pushing some snow. We’re not putting the new guy in a skid or a truck or anything like that.
You have the right clothes, the right shoes, the right gloves, you’re going to take a shovel and follow employee A around and do what he’s doing and help him out and do what’s needed.
No more results found. How do you find good people?
It’s the foremen that know the people. It’s really important to have those good foremen.
We tend to shy away from just going to the temp service and saying “Send us 35 guys.” If we do that we want to work with a temp service and say “We need 10 guys every event and we want the same 10 people.”
We might pay a little extra to do that. Otherwise, we don’t rely on temp services that much. They’re certainly a backup but we really rely on our team to backfill their crews with people they know to round out on those bigger storms.
We kind of have a backup group of people who are friends of acquaintances with our employees and they don’t work every storm but on the big storms, they’re able to come in. They maybe take some time off from their regular job because they know they’re going to be able to come in and make some extra money on that big storm.
How do you staff for a big storm?
We try and get the plan going 8 at night or 10 at night. If we know we have a major event coming in, we’ll pre-warn, pre-address it.
And they’re all pre-screened, they’ve gone through our hiring process, maybe they’ve worked for us in the past.
It’s not uncommon for us to be hiring the night of a storm. They’ll bring in a couple of their friends and a foreman will bring in two extra guys for his shoveling crew and we’ll run them through our e-verification and we’ll bring them on and the foreman will work with them and train them in and get them out there working with us on those heavy storms.
How do you train so quickly?
Somebody coming in at that point, they’re probably going to be running a shovel. They’re going to be pushing some snow. We’re not putting the new guy in a skid or a truck or anything like that.
You have the right clothes, the right shoes, the right gloves, you’re going to take a shovel and follow employee A around and do what he’s doing and help him out and do what’s needed.