It’s time to take advantage of your pool of resources.
February 28, 2022
One of the father-daughter activities myself and said daughter enjoy is listening to music on car rides, specifically anything in the 1970s-1980s genre. Apparently, my daughter is a teenager going on 40 years old. Her tastes range from The Carpenters to Twisted Sister and Vanilla Ice. Like father like daughter. As we were listening to a recent Motley Crue song, she indicated the band had a lot of hidden gems on B-sides of albums. Who would have known? That a today’s teenager knows what a B-side album is, now that’s impressive. “Too Young To Fall in Love” is one of my favorite underrated Crue songs, though I’m not sure if that was a B-sider or not.
Do you want the OK news first or the bad news first? How about we try to stay somewhat positive out of the gates. ASA recently released findings from its second special compensation/benefits study that it commissioned business intelligence partner Industry Insights to conduct in the latter part of 2021.
There are certain world/U.S. events that you can recall exactly where you were when they happened. The first in my upbringing was the attempted assassination of President Reagan. I was walking up to our front porch after getting off the school bus when my mom told me about it. The Space Shuttle tragedy: I was in school that day. If my memory serves correctly, we had a grainy TV on that was on one of those huge school AV carts.
The topic of labor has been front and center for quite some time now inside and outside of this industry. But it wasn’t until the recent Thanksgiving holiday break that it really hit home as to just how bad the current situation is. While waiting for my daughter to finish a recent fitness class, I decided to run a quick errand to mail a package. While driving down this road in an industrial park setting, business after business had roadside signs looking for labor — virtually every business on this busy road.
The American Supply Association’s Fred V. Keenan Lifetime Achievement Award is the highest honor that can be given to a member of our industry’s national trade association.
The topic of labor, labor shortages and replacing retiring workers isn’t going away anytime soon. Of course, ASA last year launched its PROJECT TALENT careers recruitment initiative aimed at helping our industry replace the 100,000 jobs that will become open because of retirements over the next 10 years.
Growing up, gameshows on television were a big thing. I can remember countless times eating dinner at my grandparent’s house and Wheel of Fortune being on the small television in the kitchen right in front of the table. Easy to see Pat and Vana and enjoy grandma’s cube steak at the same time.
This industry lends itself to a fair share of folks having the title of road warrior — it’s part of the deal, whether making sales calls, visiting existing customers or going to events.
After you get done reading the flurry of activity occurring at ASA as we head into the late summer/early fall part of the calendar, I want to direct your attention to two other ASA-related expertly written pieces in this issue that all companies in this supply chain should read.
ASA’s Building One Future platform provides critical free resources to member companies and their employees.
July 6, 2021
During my ASA update at lunch, I told attendees to pay close attention to the middle portion of what I had to say regarding our Building One Future initiative, which, of course, tackles the three critical issues of the labor shortage, keeping up to speed on trends and new technologies and how prepared/well-positioned a distributor might be for future growth.