The lack of flooring installers in the industry is apparent with the rate of churn. According to the Chief Executive Officer of the Certified Floorcovering Installers (CFI), around 30% of the floor installers depart or terminate contracts with the floor covering industries sooner or later. If that is not alarming, we don’t know what is.
Floor Covering Education Foundation (FCEF) – Mission vs. Achievement
As evident, the flooring industry is in a serious crisis. It lacks qualified skilled labor, young aspirants, incentives, and recruitment to the point of perennial disaster. If it the crisis continues to grow for another ten years, solving the problem will become twice as challenging as it is today.
Floor Covering Education Foundation (FCEF) is a newly-formed non-profit organization that birthed under the World Floor Covering Association (WFCA) as an initiative to tackle the rising pitfalls of the flooring industry. The Floor Covering Education Foundation (FCEF) is founded to bring together various industry entities to donate and invest for the future. It encourages organizations to work together in developing an army of skilled floor installers to combat the hole that has been created.
The question is; is it generating any results?
Unfortunately, no.
Seemingly, the solution to the problem at hand is as simple as it sounds; pay better to the workforce, attract skilled workers, and remove the void of installers. On the contrary, it is extremely tough to erase the root cause, which is part of why the Floor Covering Education Foundation (FCEF) is failing.
How does Floor Covering Education Foundation (FCEF) tackle the lack of new installers?
The executive director of the International Standards & Training Alliance (INSTALL) John McGrath reiterates that the only plausible solution to tackle the crisis of installing industry is “collaboration.” With that purpose, the Floor Covering Education Foundation (FCEF) is staunch in its belief that recruiting, placing and training new individuals in the craft of flooring can expand the labor pool manifolds.
A significant part of the retention rate in the workforce stems from an obscure sense of how to climb the ladder. Existing labor working as flooring installers are diverting to other vocations because they are unaware of the career-scope in the installation industry. They are oblivious to the demand and tend to churn over when work is hard to come by or when underpaid. The remaining workforce is older, tried, or are working in their businesses and are working longer into older age. Why? Lack of retirement, market unpreparedness, and professional support from industry peer channels. It is only recently, social media companies like Facebook have offered peer to peer tools for installers to defend for themselves.
The Floor Covering Education Foundation (FCEF) aims to collect industries on one platform to donate for a cause. Having invested $1 million as a seed fund by the World Floor Covering Association (WFCA), it works to develop awareness campaigns, scholarship programs to fund young trainees, and help enrolled students recruit and define their career. The Floor Covering Education Foundation (FCEF) aspires to track their workforce by a long shot in their careers, such that the trained labor does not depart anytime soon. But where does it stand in its endeavors?
As stated by Doug Chadderdon, The Chief Operating Officer at Great Floors, around 50% workforce exits the industry later in the business for various reasons. The approach of the Floor Covering Education Foundation (FCEF) can be seen as flawed – they may be able to recruit, but retaining new young installers requires more than $4,000 scholarships and continued million-dollar contributions from industry leaders.
FCEF Tracker provides well researched, up to date information, on the progress of the Floor Covering Education Foundation FCEF and the solutions it’s providing to solve the installer crisis.
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