FEBRUARY/MARCH 2018 3 Building and Keeping a Workforce
D
uring the darkest days of the 2008 recession I had a series of grim con-
versations with boatbuilders whose greatest immediate challenge was to
shrink their companies as quickly as possible just to survive. I remember one
young CEO wracked by guilt and worry for the futures of the workers he had
to lay o and for the company that would have to somehow get along without
them. It was the rst time he’d ever had to let go of some of the core team that
had been building boats and his company’s name for decades. His pain was
real. We shook our heads at how perverse it was that less than a year before,
we’d been talking about his urgent need for skilled employees, and now cir-
cumstances forced him to show some of his best talent the door. e brand
survived, but the company, as he had known it, did not, and many of those
laid-o workers never returned to what was le of the company.
As painful as the experience and the memories may be, they are not
unique. On page 18, Dan Spurr’s look at the rebirth of the Bertram brand
includes the following brief but brutal bit of company history from another
notable industry contraction:
“With 1,000 employees on the payroll and $90 million in sales, the brand
was sold to another investment company, G.L. Ohrstrom & Co. e Federal
Luxury Tax of 1991 cost 500 Bertram employees their jobs, and a year later
Bertram-Trojan Inc. filed for bankruptcy. Aqua Buoy bought the Trojan
assets, and the Italian rm Gruppo Varasi bought Bertram. It started over
with just 30 employees.”
It’s a reminder that whenever the industry booms, builders are pressed to
nd skilled hands at almost every level of the trade, and we grumble about it
as we make hay and make do with the team we have until the mild annoyance
of always needing new crew is replaced by more pressing and dire concerns
during the next downturn.
Workforce churn is a fact of life—a staple of market dynamics. Not only do the
fortunes of companies ebb and ood, so too do the motivations and aspirations
of the employees who power them. It’s up to us to navigate all those variables.
Turning again to the recent recession, some of the most resilient compa-
nies were those that had the resources and foresight to trim underperforming
or redundant sta , train or upgrade other employees, introduce new designs/
models, restructure the business, and diversify product lines. While many
shops experience contraction in their workforce, many of those that weath-
ered the recession best were nimble enough to do so because they could a ord
to keep their core teams who worked e ectively together to solve new prob-
lems. It’s a reminder that during comparatively booming economic times like
those of the past two years, we’d do well to think about how to position our
companies to weather the next downturn. I see a lot more builders growing
cautiously and intelligently now, relying on subcontractors and specialists,
and investing in their best employees at the same time that they make them-
selves attractive to new blood to help meet deadlines and production goals.
Melissa Wood’s portrait of the diversi ed shop at Tern Boatworks (page
60) is an example of a small company growing deliberately and shaping a
team of skilled and similarly minded builders who feel they have more skin in
the game than they might in a larger company. While it’s not the biggest and
loudest shop on the coast, judging by its workforce, it appears well positioned
to weather whatever economic turbulence might come along. As Tern
employee Neil Joyce observed in explaining his decision to work there:
“ ere’s a lifetime of work.” at’s the mindset of a stable, reliable workforce
and one we should aspire to instill in all our employees.Professional BoatBuilderFebruary, April, June, August, October, and December in Brooklin, (ISSN 1043–2035) is published bimonthly in
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