COMP NEWS – A new survey on a very specific industry – dry cleaning – reveals that employers are struggling to find and retain staff, even after nearly 50% of businesses surveyed offered raises last year.

In a tight labor market, many dry cleaners are revising their playbooks and looking for ways to fill positions and minimize turnover. For this American Drycleaner Your Views survey, we asked our respondents to describe your methods for keeping employees loyal to your business.

When we asked our audience to describe their current labor situation, one third (33%.) said that “we have all the help we need,” while another third reported that there were “constantly looking to fill positions.” While 16.7% responded that “it’s good but could be better,” the other 16.7% said that “we can’t offer some services because of staffing issues.”

Part of fighting staffing issues is to prevent the turnover of trained team members, and a little more than half of our respondents are finding success on this front, while the other half is struggling. In our survey, 41.7% reported that they had “almost no turnover,” while 16.7% said that they had “positions open, but we are able to fill them.” On the other side, a quarter (25%) of those responding said that “turnover is a major challenge,” and 12.5% said “we can’t keep people in the job.”

Part of finding and keeping people on the job is, of course, compensation. When asked how our owners have changed employee compensation in the past year, half (50%) said they have offered “raises across the board.” Tied at 16.7% each were those who offered “raises based on seniority” and “raises based on performance.” The remainder of the audience, at 12.5%, report they have “not increased wages in the past year.”

Businesses surveyed revealed additional ways that owners have been seeking to reward staff, with benefits such as increased medical care, free dry cleaning, and food parties.

Pay isn’t the only way to show appreciation, however. We also asked our respondents, besides pay, what other benefits have they put into place to keep employees? In addition to benefits such as vacation, flextime schedules, answers also included:

• A comfortable work atmosphere. We get to know our staff and help them when they need it.
• We’ve given perks at different times to great employees as needed or as deserved (free haircuts, paying for some chiropractor visits).
• Free dry cleaning, flexible hours, celebrating birthdays with a lunch, and in the summer we have the ice cream truck visit us several times.

To read more surprising facts about worker retention in dry cleaning, click here.

For more Comp News, see our recent posts.