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THE MODERNIZATION OF BUSINESS

Driving Your Organization to Success Requires “Shifting Gears”

February, 2019

Kathleen Laney

Employees are your organization’s most important resource. In fact, they are such an important resource, that almost all organizations have an entire department devoted to finding, managing and developing them. After all, they are the face of the company and they determine the customer experience. If your employees provide a positive experience, you win. However, if they deliver a negative experience, you lose. 


Important certainly doesn’t equal easy.


Managing this crucial resource effectively is often one of the most significant challenges organizations face.


It has never been more critical for employers to realize that talent and the right talent strategy are imperative to their company’s growth and success. As record low unemployment rates continue, finding and keeping quality talent has become one of, and in many cases, the top priority, of organizations today. But the general positive economic conditions aren’t the only factors creating the challenging talent situation in the parking industry.


New skill sets are needed to drive parking into the future.


For parking industry employers, difficulty finding and keeping talent with the right skills is also being exacerbated by the many innovations in mobility, in particular, the influx of investment and activity within the parking industry. 


The increased investment and activity has not only created many new players in our industry, but has also created the need for talent with new skill sets in the industry. And they are all looking for quality talent,


Service, products and technology in our sector have all advanced significantly in the last decade. The ongoing mobility revolution is largely driven by analytics and the ability to see inefficiencies and improve upon them. 


It has combined with a wide range of substantial technological breakthroughs and an increasing emphasis on collaboration between parking and other forms of transportation. All these changes have led to a radical change in the skill sets that are in demand by parking industry employers of today and tomorrow.


According to IPI’s 2018 Emerging Trends in Parking, six of the top ten trends in parking were directly related to new or emerging technologies and the other four were related to the changing mobility ecosystem where parking integrates with various modes of transportation.


Urgent: Attention Required


As job vacancies continue to pull ahead of the skilled labor available to fill them, business leaders who want to future-proof the way they operate must take responsibility for their employee experience. In 2019, those employers who want to stand out among the crowd and attract the best talent, will make it a priority to meet the needs of their workers. 


And now is the moment to join them, because in the parking industry a perfect storm is brewing. Many of you out there will recognize the signs: highly competitive market places, workforce challenges and increasing overheads. The three combined make it an extremely challenging time. 


So, what is an employer to do?


To answer this question, I have invited four parking industry leaders to sit down with
me at this year’s PIE show to discuss the very pressing recruitment and management
issues that employers throughout our industry face today. 


Join my panel, “Shifting Gears: How Hiring and Managing Parking Talent is Evolving in Today’s Mobility Market” on Wednesday, March 13 at 9 AM Central, to find out how parking industry employers can find, manage, develop and retain talent that will drive your organization into a successful 2019 and beyond.


Representing various sectors of the parking industry, the panel will include:


Stephane Adovelande, General Manager, Chicago – LAZ Parking


Bryan Blackwell, Vice President of Business Development & Marketing – Amano McGann 


Vanessa Solesbee, CAPP – Parking & Transit Manager – Town of Estes Park


Nicole Wylie, General Manager, Central Region – SpotHero


Our focus will be how to turn the very real challenges employers face today into opportunities to create a best-in-class workforce, employee experience and overall organization poised to thrive in this increasingly competitive ecosystem we call the parking industry. 


Whether you’re planning for tomorrow, 2020 or 2030, looking at your talent needs for the short and long-term is a true differentiator for the success and longevity of your business.



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