A couple of things came to my attention last week that made me again think about the staffing issue facing funeral homes across the country.  While I am no longer on the front lines in looking for licensed staff, I do hear from my colleagues that hiring and retaining professional funeral home licensed staff is a critical issue in operating their businesses.

Last Monday I chaired a meeting of a non-profit company in the Fargo, North Dakota, market that operates in the home health care and hospice business.  I’ve served on this board for four years and am in my first year serving as the Chairman.  The company was started from scratch about four years ago in the Fargo-Moorhead metropolitan area that has a population of close to 150,00 people.

As you might expect, our company relies on a staffing of high quality nurses to care for those patients on either home health care or hospice services.  We operate in an area with competition for employees, but our business model draws an employee who can somewhat manipulate their time shifts by when they see patients.  We have found this flexibility to be an excellent drawing card for employees.

Like the funeral business, however, health care operates on a 24/7 basis.  And, like many of our competitors, we are finding that hiring people for Monday thru Friday work is very easy, but workers for the weekend is much harder.  One of the nursing supervisors told us that once you have a “call schedule” that features more than 1 in 5 weekends on duty, it is difficult to find the staff.

Wow!  Times have changed.  I started in funeral service working every other night and every other weekend.  When I got to every third weekend I thought I was on easy street.

However, this new type of schedule is the reality of the business and we have to find ways to hire staff where the schedule fits their expectations — either that or go without staff.

The second item that hit me was this article about the North Carolina vote last week to add a measure for provisional funeral directors licenses.  In essence, in an attempt that will possibly allow for more funeral director applicants, state lawmakers made it easier for out-of-state licensed funeral directors and others working in the field to more easily get a state license.

The bill will expand access to a licensed occupation in North Carolina to credentialed practitioners from other states.  The bill has been controversial in that opponents of the bill contend that this will lower the standards for funeral directing and could potentially harm consumers.  However, proponents believe it will make staffing easier.

The bill in North Carolina is somewhat similar to what Arizona did earlier this year when they became the first state to recognize all out-of-state occupational licenses.  That bill was signed in October and is seen as an economic development builder for the state.  Governor Doug Ducey said when he signed the bill, “. . the law will remove barriers to employment for about 100,000 people who are expected to move to Arizona in 2019.”  You can read about the Arizona bill here.

Funeral Director Daily take:  In my opinion, neither of these bills are perfect.  However, they do try to stem the issue of a perception, by some, that there are not enough licensed personnel in the locales indicated.  And, if businesses don’t have the personnel to handle the business they have, consumers will not get what they had hoped for.

There is no simple way to resolve the issue of staffing.  Wages and work conditions can solve a big part of it, but on the other end of that spectrum – when wages and costs get so high – then the consumer talks by taking their business elsewhere or buying less services.  It will always be a balancing act by the business to find the happy medium where they can please both the employees and the consumers.

Related:  Here is a recent article about the State of Vermont and how they are easing regulations in order to draw more people into the funeral profession.