Those Darn Millennials.

Its no secret in our business, people are hard to get and this has been our bottleneck for a while. It's easy to fall into the negative and say “when I worked in the field we didn’t take days off” or “These kids would rather play a video games than come out and do a real days work.” In the 70’s and 80’s, you worked in the field, and the guys/girls you worked with were your buddies and your life. You worked to have a life and life was your work. Well times are different, I hate to say it, but the younger generation is smarter than us. They want a life. Work is what you do so that you have money and time to do a hobby. Is that such a bad idea?

It was also during the 80’s; you were paid big money to go out and freeze your ass off and pretend you were tough. There was a reason people would flock out to Alberta and work like hell and, (at that time go) back to Ontario with a bunch of cash. The money hasn’t changed that much but we all know the costs have. We use to have the lure of the options or share incentives, and those are a thing of the past. I know myself I made pretty much the same in a year in the 90’s as I do now but the cost of my fully load diesel truck was 32g, not 80g?

 We recently surveyed our company, and the number one thing people wanted now was unanimously a “work life balance.” When asked if they were willing to give up some money for that it was a unanimous 'no' on that. In hind site that was a stupid question, who was going to say yes. Yes, there is such thing as stupid questions and I can say that since it was me who wrote that “stupid question” (contrary to everything we have learned), the oil patch isn’t known for work life balance, so it is up to us to figure out how to get it for these people to bring them back.

 So where did all the people go? Well what use to be the 80’s Ontario workers has shifted to the 2000’s nuffies. They have gone home and don’t want to come back. They are tired of us trying to trick them and tell them its “never going to end.” They have been told time and time again it will get better and the big money will come back. They have gone to jobs that may pay less but they know it will be there in the future. They have gone off to find this elusive work life balance. Can you blame them?

The second part we learned in our survey is people want room to grow in their careers. Our industry is flat. Since the downturn people need their corner offices and no one is starting up a new one. In the field we had an invers pay schedule. As you moved up the ladder, you would go down in pay, but you got to stay home more and work less hours. You moved up to field sup, it was less as a salary but less hours. Then possibly move up to sales which was even less but with the potential to move to Calgary. This creates the glass ceiling.

 We need to figure out a way to bust these models and get people proud to work in the field and have fun out their doing it. You don’t want to go to school? Then how about joining us at Performance University. In 4 years of scheduled work you can be managing a rig or supervising a cement crew, with room to grow.

 So in closing, we like to blame this on the length of someone’s Starbucks order, but it's not a millennial thing it’s a life thing. Until we figure out how to give people a work-life balance along with a career path of steady growth, we will continue to have high turnover.

Those are my thoughts, not yours, so have fun getting more done.