Given today’s labor market—characterized by staff shortages and new-hire weaknesses in skills ranging from the production floor to maintenance—laundry operators must focus not only on getting employees who can do the jobs they’re hired for, but also those with the capacity to learn other positions as well.

That was the upshot of a series of interviews we conducted with operators and consultants who work with laundry clients.

CURRENT CHALLENGES

One operator, Mark Harad-Oaks, director of operations, Arway Linen and Uniform, Philadelphia, says the labor market hasn’t fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-’22. “In our experience, COVID has ...