PPC119 | INDUSTRY

The pest control industry needs to replace 3,500 roles over the next decade, prompting a push to attract more diverse candidates. The EDI Committee is tackling this by addressing barriers, improving job adverts, and promoting the industry’s benefits and career potential.

We're joined by:
JP Julia Pittman, EDI Committee Chair (host)
KD Karen Dawes, BPCA
MC Mike Cook, City Facilities Management
JD John Dickson, Inbervel Ltd
EV Emily Vickers, Precision Pest Management Solutions
BF Beth French, PR for Pelsis

JP Over the next 10 years, 40% of people working in the pest control industry are going to retire. We need to broaden the pool of people 
we are recruiting from to include women and ethnic minorities.

Over the next 10 years, it is expected that we will need to replace 3500 roles as people retire and people leave the industry. 

As part of the work we’re doing within the EDI Committee, we spoke to women inside the industry and outside the industry to try and understand what we can do and what attracts people into the industry at the moment.

MC I was a civil engineer and lost my job in the big recession. I saw a job advert for Rentokil and thought it would be dealing with woodworm and dry rot. I phoned them up, went there and it was pest control. I took the job because I needed a job, and I’ve stayed in the industry ever since.

JP That’s interesting - we find that often once people are in the industry they then tend to stay.

JD I joined the industry 30 years ago, starting in bird control and went on to pest control. I used to run NBC Environment and one of the problems I saw was that there’s a type of stigma attached to pest control. We tried to do different things there to attract people. If I advertised a pest control job we couldn’t recruit anybody. We started calling the role ‘wildlife management’ and advertised for a wildlife management operative and we got more interest.

But I wasn’t convinced that the interest was from the right people. There are not many people who leave school thinking they want to be 
a pest controller. We get gamekeepers coming in, but they don’t necessarily want to do the routine technical pest control.

MC I haven’t had to do a lot of recruitment because people do tend to stay a long time. My team covers big areas and don’t tend to have overnight stays. But they are paid well and well looked after. City is a good employer to be fair.

JD I had a colleague who went to City. He knew it wasn’t necessarily better pay. He went down a role and got the same pay as a general technician as he’d had as area manager.

MC Exactly. Our technicians can be on around £36k, and they’re on call once a month.

JD That’s very much above what a lot of technicians get paid.

JP There is a very small number of people that are doing this work. We’ve got to widen out our talent pools. Would you consider recruiting women?

MC My team is pretty stable so there’s not a lot of recruitment required, but there are three or four female operatives.

JP In adverts we’re using a lot of masculine wording. There’s research that shows masculine-coded wording will put women off completely, whereas feminine-coded wording doesn’t put men off from applying in the same way.

"It’s how to get people to become aware of the job, break down the barriers, and get rid of the perception that they are just ratcatchers."

JD We tried to get innovative. We got into roadshows – we’d advertise where we were going to be in an area and attract people to come and have a look and talk to people. Come and do a presentation, see what the experience was, try to recruit. We recognised we wouldn’t always get people with qualifications. If you did get people through though, they would stay. 

There are a lot of people with zoological degrees with nowhere to go, they were excellent recruits. Quite academic, used to process, new to industry and a lot of women. I think trying to connect with universities and with people doing those degrees is a good way to go.

JP Liaising with universities has been very successful.

BF I’ve genuinely never considered pest control as a career option, it was never even floated as an opportunity when I was younger, it was never discussed. Personally, I’m a bit squeamish, but I’m here.

MC I don’t think people want to do dirty jobs. Young people just don’t want to get their hands dirty.

JD That isn’t unique to the pest control industry. Everybody is fighting for staff. You’re not just trying to recruit - you’re trying to stop people going to supermarkets or construction.

EV I feel very strongly about it. Some of the views coming across I really strongly disagree with because they go completely against my view on the position of women in the workplace and issues like maternity leave.

JD Any business that wants to succeed is going to have to embrace 50% of the population.

EV Exactly. It’s 50% of people that aren’t always considered because people think that women can’t lift as much, or are more risky for a smaller business in terms of maternity leave.

JP Are we thinking about all the barriers that prevent people coming into the industry? For example, if we’re to recruit younger people, driving lessons can be an issue. Any technician is going to need to travel to a site. Driving lessons can be really expensive.

It can be something unexpected like that, something you might not really think about, that is a very real barrier to someone who might have everything else you need, deciding they can’t apply for a job with you. 

EV We’re getting more young people who only passed on automatic licenses. Age is a factor in terms of insurance as well. We have members of staff who can only drive certain vans within our fleet.

MC The roles we advertise for are all ones with a vehicle.

"Pest management is surprisingly technical and people enjoy the problem-solving elements."

JD The job is a good job. It pays well, it’s varied. There are good opportunities. I think it’s perception. Are people going to search for opportunities in pest control? It pays a bit better than a lot of other jobs and there’s a lot of opportunity in a marketplace desperate for people, but it’s not being considered.

EV I think a framework would help to set expectations to get people into pest control – set out that these are the general company benefits you’d get. What a company car means for you in real terms. What are the benefits of the job?

JD I think it's just not being considered by the majority of people out there and it’s how to get people to become aware of the job, break down the barriers and if you can, get rid of the perception that they are just ratcatchers.

EV We’ve used recruitment agencies in the past. If you get someone that’s good at their job, it works out cheaper in the long run. We’ve had a few people through recommendations as well.

JD I used to give bonuses for recommendations. There needs to be a certain strategy. Recruitment is often reactive. The main thing is getting some people applying.

MC I’ve recently taken someone on, and the quality of the candidates was dross. This one guy shone out through the rest of the candidates – and we had about 20 or so applicants. I interviewed five and there was really only one guy who I’d even consider.

JP In one of the projects, the suggestion was a careers video similar to the fire service, to showcase what the opportunities are.

JD Pest management is surprisingly technical and I don‘t think people appreciate the science behind it. People enjoy the problem-solving elements of it. It’s getting these things across rather than the thought of ‘I’m going to be a gamekeeper.’

I see a lot of job adverts and I used to get frustrated by the people who would just post the job description. The problem with promoting it as wildlife management is people don’t necessarily realise it’s pest control.

EV We want a science background, possibly people who have already come from university, but that doesn’t mean to say they are the only good people. We have people who don’t have degrees but are in the mindset of learning.

JP What is an attractive advert? We ran some jobs through the decoder and 90% came back masculine. In one, the first line was ‘must be good with tools.’ I think that needs work. Some of these adverts could bring in more untrained people than trained - we’ve got to recruit outside the industry.

JD I think a lot of companies are reactive and need to spend time on this.

MC The South East is a nightmare, but there’s a lot of opportunity there as well.

JD Someone I spoke to recently was changing jobs - the pay difference was about £2.5k.

"Over the next 10 years, 40% of people working in the pest control industry are going to retire."

MC I was involved in recruiting a technician training to do my job in the South West. They are all on a lot more money than what we pay. Our salary in the North West is one of the best. In the South West it’s not.

JD What is the industry looking at in regards to pay rises?

KD BPCA is trying to push people up to Level 3 and we would hope that’s reflected in the wages.

EV The challenges for our part are if they’re younger than 18 we can’t get them into factories, so we can’t take them into our sites to train them.

MC One of things I’ve suggested is if you look at other trades, electricians, plumbers, they all have apprenticeship schemes.

JP BPCA has a working group that is working with universities, and I think that will be discussed in the round table about qualifications.

Following the round table, Mike Cook, Pest Supervisor at City Facilities Management said: “The discussion was really good. It gave us a few ideas about how we word our job adverts going forward.

“It’s about trying to attract the right calibre of candidate and for me, personally, it’s somebody that’s trained and ready to go, that wants to do the job and is prepared to learn.”

Emily Vickers, Training Quality Manager at Precision Pest Management Solutions added: “It was a really good session and really informative. I’m on the EDI Committee with Julia and I think it’s important that we talk about these issues that perhaps not everybody is talking about to help encourage and support young people coming into the industry.

“We don’t want there to be a block to people doing the job. A lot of pest control jobs are working solo, so for women and young people, they need to have the back up and have managers who they know will help protect and support them.”

For more information about the work of BPCA’s EDI Committee, go to: bpca.org.uk/groups

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