Staff Shortages Still a Problem According to CMM’s Annual BSC Survey

Recruiting and retaining staff remains a top challenge for building service contractors, according to respondents of CMM’s 2022 Building Service Contractor (BSC) Benchmarking Survey.

Among survey respondents, 64% said recruiting and retaining staff was challenging for its company to a large extent. They listed the second largest challenge as winning new bids/certifications (32%), followed by maintaining profitable margins (30%), retaining customers (24%), and validating cleaning results (22%).

Survey respondents reported several factors that help them differentiating their company and services from the competition to win bids and contracts:

• Experience/reputation, 89%
• Value-added services, 55%
• One-stop shopping, 41%
• Industry-recognized certifications, 39%
• Price, 37%.

Most survey respondents (90%) said they gain new accounts by replacing another BSC, followed by replacing in-house staff (5%), and replacing a portion of in-house staff as a subcontractor (1%).

Download the full survey for more insights from participating BSCs.