Baking&Snack - April 2013 - 12

Hiring a veteran workforce

During the next five years, the stuff is going to hit the fan when it
comes to finding skilled labor. For bakers, the biggest challenge will
involve finding and retaining qualified maintenance workers and engineers who can keep today’s 24/7 operations up and running. For
vendors, adding skilled trainers and service technicians who provide
customer service looms as a most troublesome labor issue. Even today,
these key positions experience the highest employee turnover. For bakeries looking to minimize downtime and increase operating efficiencies, the labor situation looks like it’s heading from bad to worse.
Those are the topline observations from two parallel surveys conducted this year by BEMA and the American Bakers Association and
under the guidance of the Baking Industry Forum (BIF), a group of
volunteer bakers and allieds who work together to identify and attempt
to solve some of the industry’s most stubborn problems.
To replace skilled workers, BIF’s research showed most companies
still turn to Internet job sites and newspapers. However, many businesses are failing to tap into a potential goldmine — namely, hiring
veterans who recently finished their tours of duty. In fact, less than 15%
of those surveyed ever used a hire-a-vet program.
That’s so sad, given that only 15% of the industry’s workforce is under 35 years old, while unemployment for veterans and their spouses
under 35 hovers around 30%. Maybe there is a disconnect in our plugand-play society where companies hesitate to bring in and train candidates who don’t have the exact skills for a job. Heck, why invest in
training workers in an industry where many of them leave for other
jobs where they don’t have to work nights and weekends?
At the BIF forum, Scott Dearduff, who served 29 years in the Air
Force and is the brother of our columnist Jeff Dearduff, noted most
service veterans have the technical training (although maybe working
on aircraft rather than a mixer). They are mission-oriented and geared
to exceeding expectations. They tend to have a “call to service” engrained into their DNA. And to check their record, he said, just ask for
their DD-214 form, which outlines years of service, commendations,
whether they received an honorable discharge and more.
So why aren’t more young service veterans being hired? BIF panelists suggested many fail to effectively communicate how their military skills transfer into the civilian workforce. Several groups now
address this disconnect such as the US Chamber of Commerce,
which is training veterans on how to sell themselves and holding more than 400 Hiring Our Heroes job fairs this year.
Learn more about hiring veterans at www.uschamber.com/
hiringourheroes. Additionally, BIF plans to further explore
this labor issue and provide actionable solutions at BEMA’s
annual meeting, June 20-25 in Colorado Springs, CO. Visit
www.bema.org for more information.
Building a veteran workforce isn’t impossible. It can be as
simple as waving the flag.
— Dan Malovany, editor
dmalovany@sosland.com

/ Baking & Snack / April 2013

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Editor
Executive Editor
Managing Editor
Senior Editor

Dan Malovany
dmalovany@sosland.com
Laurie Gorton
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Joanie Spencer
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Shane Whitaker
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Charlotte Atchley
catchley@sosland.com
Contributing Editors:
Donna Berry
donnaberry@dairy-food.com
Theresa Cogswell
bakercogs@sbcglobal.net
Jeff Dearduff
jdearduff@gmail.com
Jim Kline
jkline@theensolgroup.com
Joe Stout
joestout@cf-san.com
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Baking&Snack - April 2013

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