Can Millennials Make it in the Woods?

A couple of weeks ago Randy and I attended a legislative breakfast with the Professional Logging Contractors of Maine. It was held in Augusta at the Governor’s Hill Mansion. That is quite a place, I must say. I love architecture and the fine details throughout that building blew me away. The event itself was a great opportunity to talk with other woodsmen and speak with legislators about issues we face in the logging industry. We are so fortunate to have the PLC and strong representation at the State house. We discussed a lot about the shortage of workers in the state and the future of the logging industry given that much of the workforce is near retirement. There was one speaker in particular, that really touched us all. His name was Sherby. He has been working in the woods in the Fort Kent area his entire life. He told amazing stories of his upbringing with his father who was a veteran and a woodsman. He spoke of the incredible hardships they endured. He talked about the financial hardships, the long hours, and grueling work. Sherby also has a son. I am assuming Sherbey’s son is around our age. Born in the mid to late 80’s. The dreaded millennial.  His son approached him as a young man in search of a job in the woods. I am sure Sherbey didn’t want his son to endure such hardships as he, nor did he think he could even tolerate the long hours, cold mornings, and heaven forbid he could put his phone away long enough to focus. Sherby told his son he had to go work for someone else for two years. If he did well, he would hire him. To his surprise, his son had more of a work ethic than he expected. In Sherbey’s reflection, he realized he put his young son in a “box” as he described it and when he let him out of that box, he thrived. He had a perception of this millennial son and thought he was simply not capable. His son went to work for two years for someone else, did very well, and ended up being worthy of a job for his father. After listening to this actually rather sad story of hardships, and I being married to someone who likely relates to Sherby’s son, I got to wondering how we, as millennials stand a chance in this business. How can we hire these “lazy,” “entitled,” “tech obsessed” humans and actually succeed?! And even more so, are we lazy and entitled, too??

Of course we are all familiar with the struggle of what we perceive the millennial dilemma to be. We hear it all the time from our colleagues in the woods, that these millennials are not going to make it out there. But we are in this for the long haul so we’re going to have to figure out how to attract more of our generation into this workforce. Randy and I feel fortunate to have at least experienced our young childhoods without technology at the ready, but of course as we got older, most of us were complete latch key kids who babysat themselves with a Nintendo. The millennial generation, although they come across as narcissistic, and full of ego, are grossly depressed and anxious. All the trophies they received even when they were terrible, constantly being told they were great even when they weren’t, parents fighting their battles, never letting them fail…. all of that devalued their self esteem. They’ve been told that all they are capable of is playing video games and living in the basement…. so that’s what they are doing. Come to find out, self esteem is kinda important for thriving and success. So these young adults trying to get started in the world of logging are coming in with zero experience, zero self esteem, and no one to save them when they fail. Mom is not going to be able to get that skidder flipped back up on its wheels when you flip it over because you were on your phone. This generation is obsessed with their phones and social media because of a chemical called dopamine. It is also the chemical released with smoking, gabling, and alcohol. Interestingly, dopamine is also released when you spend time with your father, but not nearly in the amount that a screen addiction provides. Now many young adults in their 20’s and 30’s didn’t get to go to work with dad, they didn’t get up early and do chores with dad. I think that parents tried desperately to over compensate for lack of time with their children, by giving in to their every whim, fighting their fights for them, paying for extravagant crap, bringing their forgotten back pack, etc. There was rarely a natural consequence because mom and dad felt so guilty for being gone all the time, they just wanted their kids to be happy at all cost.

Now as adults, we are told by our parents to avoid doing what they did. Don’t miss your children’s entire lives slaving away to make ends meet. It isn’t necessary anymore. There are other ways to work smarter, not harder. Don’t go into logging, there is no way to make any money unless you work 100 hours a week. They say that in one breathe, and then the next breathe we are told that if we want to spend a weekend with our families we are a bunch of pansies afraid of hard work. So what the heck do we do?? We have watched countless numbers of our parents succumb to cancer before they can make it to retirement, before they can meet their grandchildren. Their bodies are sick, their spines are frail. Their retirement years are spent bouncing from specialist to specialist. Picking up prescriptions. We are watching. We are learning. We don’t want that to be us, and neither do our employees. Sorry, we are going to have to adapt to this new world. It is not going to be like it was in the “old days”. Why on earth would someone want to come change gelled up oil filters at 3am on a -20 degree winter day for $16 an hour when they could wake up at 7, have breakfast with their family, and work from home in their jammies for twice as much? I mean, who is the idiot here? Well, we are. And we love our work and that is why we keep going, but we have to figure out how to attract these young people into our field. In my opinion, giving them what they think they want isn’t going to work. Giving them what they need will be much more effective. I think these young people need to be allowed to lead, have some autonomy, and get out of their parent’s box that they put them in. I think that if we stop telling them they suck all the time, perhaps we will be pleasantly surprised, just like Sherby was with his son. We need to let them fall on their face trying, allow them to try and fail so they can try again and succeed. We have to honor the fact that they can and should have a work life balance. Much of the logging workforce are men, and we demand much more of men now at the home front since we sent women to work as well. Fathers need to be able to pick up their kids from daycare some times, go to sporting events, be home for dinner. Our children need their fathers so they can experience the natural, not screen induced dopamine surge and we can prevent this who cycle from repeating itself. I think if we lead these young adults, we hold them accountable, and not just pass them off as useless, we will discover that millennials will help grow this industry with their “work smarter, not harder” attitude. They will embrace technology to assist us on improving efficiency. They can work in the woods and it is up to us to make it work.