Maintenance Retention, Staffing, and Scheduling

The United States is facing a growing crisis in the skilled trades. Currently, there are more than one million unfilled trade positions nationwide, and estimates suggest this number could triple by 2028. This shortage poses a serious risk to manufacturers, utilities, municipalities, and virtually every organization that relies on maintenance and technical expertise to operate safely and efficiently. 

Television personality and skilled-trades advocate Mike Rowe has described the problem as both a “skills gap” and a “will gap.” While many organizations struggle to find workers with the necessary technical abilities, an equally concerning issue is the declining willingness of younger workers to pursue and persist in demanding trade careers. This challenge has been fueled by a long-standing “college for all” mentality, combined with a cultural stigma that undervalues hands-on work. As a result, many applicants entering the trades lack even basic skills, work habits, or practical knowledge. To make matters worse, demand for skilled trades is only going to increase.

Certainly, the workplace is changing. For example, rapid advances in artificial intelligence and automation are likely to lead to the elimination of jobs. This is a workforce problem that will affect most organizations in America. AI is unlikely to replace plumbers, electricians, welders, mechanics, or pipefitters anytime soon, and it is not a practical remedy for the current staffing gap.

The skilled trades shortage is not just a hiring problem; it is a cost, safety, and reliability problem. When experienced maintenance workers leave, organizations often respond with forced overtime, emergency contractors, or deferred maintenance. Each of these responses increases risk. Fatigued employees make more mistakes; reactive work drives higher costs; and deferred maintenance accelerates asset degradation. Over time, this creates a vicious cycle where reliability declines, employee frustration increases, and turnover accelerates.

The desire for overtime has significantly changed within many organizations. Thirty years ago, people entered the trades for the opportunity to work overtime. With all the extra hours, electricians and mechanics were typically the highest paid people in every plant. In the past decade, that desire has decreased significantly. Heavy reliance on overtime to compensate for staffing gaps used to work, but for many companies , continuing that practice today could have severe consequences. Chronic overtime erodes morale, contributes to burnout, and ultimately pushes skilled employees out the door.

Maintenance retention is critical but also very complex. There is no single strategy that works. However, a comprehensive strategy that improves the retention of skilled workers and increases their utilization is necessary, along with a corresponding effort to improve the training cycle and better application through scheduling advances.

Retaining Senior and Skilled Employees

Retention is the most powerful tool organizations have to stabilize their maintenance workforce. Senior tradespeople carry deep expertise and institutional knowledge that cannot be replaced quickly — or sometimes at all. Becoming the employer of choice is essential for keeping these individuals engaged.

While compensation matters, tradespeople increasingly prioritize predictable schedules, respectful work environments, meaningful tasks, and work-life balance. Positive examples exist. At the Krusteaz® Hopkinsville plant, the maintenance team has remained fully staffed for years, with most turnover coming only from retirements. Mechanics often start as operators and grow into their roles. The team works shift work, overtime is not forced, and employees show up when needed because the culture strongly supports mutual commitment between the company and the workforce.

This retention imperative is amplified by demographics: from 2024 to 2032, about 18.4 million experienced workers with postsecondary training are expected to retire, while only 13.8 million comparably trained younger workers will enter the labor market, widening the skills gap unless companies improve retention and training pipelines.

Making Better Use of Existing Staff

Because skilled labor is limited, organizations must maximize the effectiveness of the staff they already have. This starts with assigning work that truly matches each employee’s capabilities. Highly trained tradespeople should not spend significant time on administrative tasks, material handling, or non-skilled activities that could be performed by others.

Reducing these barriers improves both productivity and morale. When tradespeople can focus on value-added maintenance and reliability work, the organization benefits — and employees experience more fulfilling workdays.

However, many existing practices unintentionally reduce “wrench time.” For example:

• In one nuclear facility, maintenance staff routinely waited outside the operations control center for shift turnover to finish before they could access needed work packages.
• In many packaging plants, maintenance and operations shift change at the same time, eliminating opportunities to complete quick maintenance tasks during natural downtime.

Small changes like these can significantly improve productivity without adding staff. The urgency is real: some manufacturers report only one qualified applicant for every 20 posted skilledtrade openings, highlighting the need to fully leverage existing teams.

Improving Skills and Preserving Knowledge

Even organizations that appear to be adequately staffed may still face a skills gap. Simply having tradespeople on the payroll does not guarantee they possess the depth of skills needed for complex or specialized maintenance tasks. Continuous training and development are essential.

Additionally, many organizations rely heavily on “tribal maintenance knowledge” — the undocumented experience and insights held by long-tenured employees. When these individuals retire or leave, critical knowledge often disappears with them. Capturing, sharing, and transferring this expertise through mentoring, documentation, and structured training programs is vital for long-term success.

In practice, the best training can be accomplished by pairing the best trainers, often, but not always the most senior employees, with less skilled ones. Building systems, policies, and procedures that enhance this interaction on a regular basis makes on-the-job training (OJT) part of the everyday routine as opposed to specific training sessions. While seniority should have benefits, moving all skills to Monday through Friday daywork and letting the junior new hires handle everything on the backshifts and weekends is a recipe for disaster. 

Improving Employee Desires Through Better Scheduling

Schedules have a major impact on employee satisfaction and retention, especially in maintenance roles where night, weekend, or emergency work is common. While backshift and weekend coverage may be unavoidable, organizations can make these assignments more predictable, fair, and manageable.

Key improvements include:

• Increasing schedule predictability so employees can plan their lives with confidence.
• Building flexibility where possible — especially around time off.
• Exploring innovative shift patterns. For example, some workers may accept a weekend shift in exchange for a four or fiveday break the following week.

These scheduling actions also help address macro constraints: based on US Chamber of Commerce , labor force participation has averaged about 62–63% in recent years, down from roughly 66% in 2000, leaving fewer available workers overall and making retention via better scheduling more consequential.

Practical Scheduling Strategies

Several proven approaches can help organizations improve staffing efficiency and employee satisfaction:

• Pit-stop maintenance: Performing focused, well-planned maintenance tasks during short, scheduled windows reduces disruption and overtime. Just like pitting a race car, focusing with a large team, and preparing before the event can reduce the time needed to accomplish a task, keeping critical equipment online longer. 
• Midweek major outages: Planning large maintenance outages during weekday day shifts minimizes weekend work and improves access to support resources. Maintenance evolutions are often the most difficult operations in any plant, so why should they be accomplished on the weekend, or at night when management and supporting staff are limited? Bring those evolutions front and center, allowing the entire organization to focus on these critical events. 
• Training plan for new hires: Training new employees during day shift before assigning them to coverage or rotating schedules improves learning, safety, and confidence. But once they are trained, do not banish them alone to the backshift. Training is something that needs to continue for a long time. 

These strategies not only enhance productivity but also signal to employees that the organization values their time and well-being.

Conclusion

The skilled trades shortage is real, growing, and unlikely to be solved through technology alone. Organizations that thrive in this environment will focus on:

• Retaining senior employees (especially as retirements outpace new entrants with comparable skills through 2032)
• Maximizing the effectiveness of existing staff (vital when qualified applicants per opening are scarce in many manufacturing roles)
• Continuously developing skills and capturing knowledge (addressing apprenticeship length and low program completions versus openings)
• Creating schedules that respect employees’ needs and time (critical in a tight labor market with persistently lower participation rates)

By recognizing and investing in the people who keep operations running, employers can build resilient maintenance teams and ensure long-term success despite ongoing workforce challenges.

Sources

• Coleman Consulting Group – Shiftworker and Scheduling Databases
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce – America Works Data Center
   
• McKinsey & Company – Tradespeople wanted: The need for critical trade skills in the US (Apr 9, 2024)
   
• CSIS – Can the United States Meet Skilled Trade Labor Demand Through 2030? (Oct 2, 2025)
   
• Georgetown University CEW – Falling Behind: How Skills Shortages Threaten Future Jobs (2025)
   
• New Stardom – U.S. Manufacturers Report Shortfall of 400,000 Skilled Workers (2025)