By Tony Nettleman

Throughout the history of land surveying, on-the-job training has been a significant portion of employee development. But is that enough? I agree with the premise that businesses must train their employees, and I encourage anyone reading this to act to ensure the future success of not only their own business but the surveying profession as a whole.

But as they say, “easier said than done.” In furtherance of this goal, let me provide some practical guidance on how to execute such plans based on my own business practices.

The team member training program

On-the-job training is not enough. Many surveying businesses claim they train their employees on the job, but I cringe every time that I hear this because then, the trainee is only as good as his mentor.

A party chief may be excellent at construction stakeout but lacks a full understanding of boundary retracement. So, is it fair for a newly hired rodman to go through years of fieldwork just to acquire the same skewed professional background as his seasoned party chief? On a more sinister level, I have myself experienced situations during summer internships where more seasoned field crews do not want to teach the “new guy” everything they know because they fear that the new hire will at some point develop better skills than them and thus become a threat.

Even at higher levels of your survey firm’s “org chart,” the professional surveyor in responsible charge is highly unlikely to have excellent knowledge of every subfield of the profession, not to mention being able to fully teach the LSIT the principles, field work, and processing of new technologies such as UAS, lidar, and bathymetric surveying.

The alternative is a comprehensive employee training system. This system will likely be a mixture of internal and external training systems. The external vendors include Trimble, Carlson, Pix4D, MyCADGirl, NGS, and other vendors. It may be a one-day training course for a new piece of equipment that was just purchased or a one-hour webinar hosted by the National Geodetic Survey. I tell my employees, “When a webinar or something interesting piques your interest, sign up immediately.”

Our training program also includes thousands of internal documents we call Unique Methods. These UMs are the internal documentation that explains “how we do it here.” From completing a weekly timesheet or preparing for, flying, and post-processing a lidar dataset, our employees have step-by-step processing for completing the most common tasks.

It may sound expensive to create such systems. But after writing many certificates of merit concerning the sub-standard conduct of survey firms “winging it” at the jobsite, I can assure you that the alternative is much more expensive.

The idea that your business can hire a seasoned survey technician, surveyor-in-training, or professional surveyor, whenever the business needs the capacity to serve more clients is a fiction. Even the engineering firms that pay top dollar find it impossible to hire talented surveyors in today’s employment market. 

So, what is the alternative? The only choice that my firm has found is to hire for attitude and train for aptitude. In such a tight job market as it exists today and will likely exist for years or decades to come, the health and success of your business depends on an employee development process that works collaboratively with each team member to continually grow their skills, talents, and certifications.

At my firm, the premise is simple: grow or go. Either the team member will actively work with management to grow, both personally and professionally, or they must leave. This philosophy encourages team members to plan their own development goals, choose their own courses, books, classes, etc., and then use those opportunities to help our business grow. 

Some team members have no desire to engage in such endeavors. For example, one team member wanted to use her personal development funds to purchase candle making materials. That attitude was the canary in the coalmine for us. It was time for her to go somewhere else. We have found this process to be an excellent bellweather concerning whether certain team members should continue to be employed by our firm. Each team member in your firm should have a personal development plan that outlines how they are going to grow in the next 12 months. That plan should be reviewed at least monthly to determine if that individual is on-track to meet their goals. Our team members will have all of those development courses paid for, but they must donate the time to complete the courses.

The team member incentive program

If you have been lucky enough to have team members who appreciate the value of personal development, it’s not over yet. It is incumbent upon your firm to support and nurture your team members. This may be done in a variety of ways, such as financial support for classes, financial benefits to team members upon achieving certain goals, and most importantly of all, giving the team members paid time to complete such activities. 

First, my firm provides a minimum of $500 per year for every team member for any type of development that may also benefit our firm. The team member may spend the money in the pursuit of any legitimate professional development activity. If the team member can justify a larger expense, it is almost always approved. Why put a limit on ambition? 

Second, we provide a $1,000 bonus for full-time employees and a $500 bonus for part-time employees upon passing the FS, PS, or becoming licensed in a new state. It takes me days and days of studying to gain another professional license, so I feel that it is only fair that our team members are rewarded for all of their hard work studying for and passing an exam. As an additional benefit to the firm, we may write a short book about how to get licensed in a particular state.

Third, we provide as much mentoring time to the team member as possible. Technicians are often invited to state society surveying conferences. I meet with the technicians at least twice a month to discuss their personal lives, ambitions, and how I can help them succeed in their careers, and my door is always open.

The implicit employer-employee agreement that a team member will get paid a decent wage for a hard day’s work is over. Employees expect to be engaged, happy, and well-compensated and, in my opinion, that is only fair. The competition to hire quality technicians and professionals will only increase in the coming years. The firms that have the best training, mentoring, and development processes will continue to thrive while the firms that only see the bottom-dollar profits will continue to shrink.

In 2025 and beyond, what choice will you make on behalf of your firm?