More than two years since the pandemic began, the country has seen record rates of people leaving their professions in a phenomenon now known as the "great resignation."
Like companies all around the city, St. Louis-based engineering firm ABNA is reckoning with a worker shortage. Specifically, the firm is lacking enough civil engineers. KMOX checked in with its co-founder Nicole Adewale. She said employee turnover is significant.
"One of the things that we have is we compete against really large companies that have the staff and the processes to handle that kind of turnover, but also be can outpace us in terms of salary," Adwale said.
She said the company has been able to raise salaries lately, and have worked to invest in workers in other ways, too.
"We also increased our tuition reimbursement, we've doubled it," she said. "And that's $5,000 a year, which for those of our employees to go to public school, that's almost everything. And then and we made it active in this year."
ABNA is also providing mileage reimbursement. Adewale explained that while some of their workers can be remote, a significant portion have to be in person, and they want to invest in and support those employees.
Still, though, their employees are leaving — and not always saying why.
"I think a lot of people think almost every job can be done from home, which is not necessarily true, even though yes, there are some that can be done from home," Adewale said. "But I think people just in this market are just looking for that increase in salary. And so people are just moving, some people are just moving to be moving."
Adewale said that despite it all, she's hopeful and looking forward to hearing from more young people showing up to their local business.
Hear more about ABNA's search for civil engineers and more from Total Information AM:
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