The Arborist Skill Shortage Is Not Just a Recruitment Problem | James Issacs

When an arboriculture company struggles to find experienced staff, the problem is usually categorised as recruitment. There are not enough applicants, the good arborists are already employed, overseas recruitment has become difficult, or the training system is not producing qualified people quickly enough. All of these things may be true, but they do not necessarily identify the actual constraint.

A vacancy is the visible outcome of a much larger workforce system. That system determines who enters the occupation, who employers select, how quickly inexperienced people become useful, how skilled workers are deployed, how long their bodies can sustain the work, and whether remaining employed compares favourably with contracting, starting a business or leaving arboriculture altogether. Recruitment sits inside this system and therefore cannot be expected to compensate for everything happening elsewhere.

Not all skill shortages are the same

The term skill shortage is often used as though it describes one clearly defined problem. In practice, several different conditions can produce the same employer complaint that skilled arborists are hard to find.

There may be a genuine shortage, where very few people possess the required technical skills and developing them takes several years. There may be a quality gap, where applicants have qualifications or basic experience but lack the judgement, reliability or leadership ability the employer requires. There may also be a skills mismatch, where capable people exist but are unwilling to take the available roles under the conditions being offered. The distinction matters because each problem can require a different response.

A genuine shortage may justify more training, stronger occupational attraction or overseas recruitment. A quality gap may require better selection, clearer development pathways and more realistic expectations about how experienced workers are produced. A mismatch requires employers to examine why capable arborists prefer another employer, self-employment, contracting or a different occupation.

More applicants will not necessarily solve any of these problems. The result depends on what kind of applicants arrive, whether the company can develop them, and whether the employment itself is strong enough to retain the capability once it has been built.

My earlier research into New Zealand’s arboriculture skill shortage suggested that the industry contains elements of all three. Skilled climbing arborists and crew leaders take a long time to develop, employers frequently struggle to find the level of experience they actually need, and many capable workers move towards self-employment or leave employee field roles under prevailing conditions. The shortage is real, but it is not a simple problem with one solution.

Headcount is not the same as workforce capacity

An arboriculture company does not simply need a certain number of employees. It needs enough productive capability, arranged in a way that allows work to be completed safely, efficiently and to the required standard. This distinction is important because arboriculturalwork is usually performed by small crews carrying out interconnected tasks. The output of the crew depends on how well its members work together, not merely on the individual ability of its strongest arborist.

A highly skilled climber may produce little additional value if the ground crew cannot clear material quickly enough, the truck is away dumping, the required equipment has not arrived, or the climber must stop repeatedly to supervise people who have been placed beyond their current capability. The company technically has a skilled arborist at work, but much of that person’s capacity is unavailable.

The same problem appears when experienced workers spend large portions of the day driving, transporting machinery, locating equipment, resolving avoidable job-planning failures or completing tasks that could be carried out by someone less scarce. These activities may all be necessary, but is the right person carrying them out?

When scarce capability is repeatedly diverted into lower-value work, the employer experiences many of the effects of a skill shortage without necessarily having a simple shortage of people. Jobs take longer, fewer crews can be deployed, supervisors become overloaded and further recruitment appears to be the obvious answer.

Hiring another arborist may increase capacity, but it may also place another expensive and difficult-to-find person into the same poorly designed system.

Training must work economically as well as technically

Calls for more training are common in industries facing persistent skill shortages. Arboriculture undoubtedly needs a reliable flow of new people, but increasing the number of trainees does not automatically increase the future supply of skilled workers. However, someone must carry the cost and operational disruption involved in developing them.

Some of this cost is created by the formal training process itself. Where theoretical assessment still depends heavily on employer-administered paper workbooks and manual marking, experienced arborists are drawn into administration on top of the underlying cost of developing a novice. A new trainee is unlikely to produce enough output to cover their full employment cost immediately, while their development also consumes the time and attention of experienced staff. The trainer may work more slowly, take on fewer difficult tasks or divide their attention between production and supervision. The whole crew can lose output while also carrying greater quality, safety and property-damage risk. This does not make training undesirable, but it does mean the economic structure of training matters.

A company that can make a trainee useful as early as possible is in a much stronger position than one that treats the trainee as an extra person standing beside a skilled crew until technical ability eventually develops. Alongside the obvious task of dragging brush, useful work might include driving, site preparation, equipment management, customer communication, machinery operation within current competence, or other tasks that protect the time of experienced workers. With respect to the theoretical side of training, it is my view that this could be delivered more consistently online, leaving employers to concentrate on supervised practical competence. The broader principle is that early usefulness and more efficient training processes reduce the net cost of developing each trainee.

This can have a compounding effect. Lower development costs allow the employer to take on more trainees, while experienced workers retain more time for productive and developmental work. Some of those trainees later become capable arborists, trainers and crew leaders themselves, expanding the organisation’s ability to develop the next group. The visible outcome is a larger supply of trained people, while the mechanism responsible for it is a better-designed path from beginner to productive worker.

The experienced arborist is often a bottleneck

Most arboriculture employers do not just need technical tree workers. They need people who can combine technical skill with judgement, communication, risk management and responsibility for the performance of others. These employees are difficult to replace because much of their knowledge is tacit, having been accumulated through repeated exposure to different trees, sites, equipment, clients, weather conditions and crew combinations. A qualification can provide an important foundation, but you cannot compress several years of varied operational experience into a short course.

The most capable arborist in a crew therefore becomes a bottleneck. Their judgement affects how safely and quickly the whole group can work, yet this same person is often expected to climb, supervise, train, communicate with the customer, solve equipment problems, interpret incomplete job information and ensure the site remains productive.

This arrangement can look great on paper because one highly capable person is handling everything important. In reality, it can make the company unusually dependent on a small number of people who are overloaded and difficult to replace.

The problem becomes more severe as the company grows. Work can only be divided into additional crews when enough people can be trusted to lead them. An employer may have trucks, equipment, customers and several developing workers, yet remain unable to expand because there are not enough capable crew leaders around whom those resources can be organised. At this point, the critical shortage is not general labour, it is leadership and operational judgement at crew level.

This requires more than advertising for another foreman. Employers need to understand how people acquire broader responsibility, whether potential leaders are identified early, what support they receive and whether the role is attractive enough to accept. Many strong arborists have seen crew leadership become an informal promotion in which they gain responsibility for everyone else’s performance without enough additional authority, support or reward. Therefore, it should not be surprising when they decline it.

Employment competes with self-employment

Arboriculture makes self-employment unusually accessible. A capable arborist can begin contracting with relatively little organisational infrastructure, particularly when working for other companies or starting with smaller private jobs.

From the worker’s perspective, the attraction is not difficult to understand. Self-employment may offer greater autonomy, more control over hours and work selection, higher immediate income, increased status and the possibility of building something valuable over time.

Employment must compete with this alternative. This does not mean every employer must match the theoretical upside of owning a successful company. Many small arboriculture businesses generate stress, debt, long hours and modest returns for their owners. However, the employee role still needs to offer a credible future. As an employer, it should be a position you could plausibly regard as a worthwhile long-term career, rather than one whose appeal depends mainly on recruiting people at the beginning of their working lives, before their alternatives have fully opened up. 

A capable field arborist may otherwise see employment as a temporary stage. They remain long enough to gain skills, contacts and confidence, then leave because starting a business appears to be the only way to gain meaningful autonomy, flexibility or progression without abandoning arboriculture.

This creates a recurring industry pattern. Employers invest in developing skilled people, those people move into self-employment, and the resulting firms compete for both work and the next group of experienced arborists. The number of businesses increases while the skilled workforce becomes more fragmented. This is not a question of loyalty, rather an entirely rational decision from the worker’s position.

The more useful employer question is whether a high-performing arborist can gain income, status, flexibility and wider responsibility without needing to leave. Mixed roles involving field work, quoting, training, specialist projects or operational leadership may provide one answer. Greater autonomy within a stable crew may provide another. For some people, the field role itself may remain the preferred destination if it is treated and rewarded as valuable work rather than the bottom of an assumed hierarchy. The right structure will vary, but the competitive alternative must be taken seriously.

Physical sustainability is part of labour supply

The physical nature of arboriculture is not an incidental condition. It affects who enters the occupation, how quickly people develop, how many days they can work effectively and how long they remain available to employers.

Climbing, lifting, dragging, repetitive chainsaw use, vibration, awkward body positions and exposure to weather accumulate over time. Experienced arborists may become more technically valuable at the same time that their bodies become less able to tolerate continuous high-intensity work.

This creates a predictable loss of capability if the only useful role available is full-time physical production. The usual assumption is that older or injured arborists should move into management, consulting or quoting. These may be suitable options for some people, but they are different occupations and not everyone wants them. A technically excellent arborist may have little interest in managing staff or selling work full time.

Workforce design should allow more variation than a choice between constant physical production and complete removal from the field. Shorter working weeks, mixed roles, better machinery use, more deliberate task allocation and recovery between high-intensity jobs can extend careers significantly. Each option creates scheduling and cost implications, but so does repeatedly losing experienced workers after years of development.

Flexibility should therefore be considered as a productive capacity question, not merely an employee benefit. A person working fewer days may still provide more useful output over a longer period, particularly if the arrangement reduces injury, fatigue and eventual exit.

The relevant measure is not simply hours purchased this week, rather the amount of capable labour the organisation can sustain over time.

Recruitment messaging comes after the work itself Employer branding and recruitment communication still matter. Skilled arborists need to understand what differentiates one employer from another, particularly when they are already employed and have no urgent reason to move. However, this message can only work with what exists inside the company.

A careers page cannot compensate for chaotic planning, poor equipment, weak supervision, unsustainable hours or a role with no credible future. Advertising a strong culture will not overcome the experience of skilled employees repeatedly carrying the consequences of organisational failures. Promising development means little when the company lacks the crew capacity to provide it.

The strongest recruitment message usually emerges from real operating differences. The company may protect skilled people from avoidable driving, organise work more carefully, provide genuine flexibility, maintain higher technical standards, create worthwhile mixed roles or develop trainees in a more structured way. 

These are workforce interventions before they are marketing claims. Once they are real, communication becomes much easier. Current staff can describe the difference, former employees may confirm it, and candidates can see evidence that the employment offer is more than a polished job advertisement.

Start with the constraint, not the preferred solution The temptation in workforce discussions is to begin with a familiar answer. The company needs an apprenticeship programme, a recruitment campaign, a four-day week, a new pay structure or a clearer career pathway. Any of these might help, but none should be treated as the default.

The useful starting point is to identify what is actually constraining capacity. This could be a genuine lack of technically capable people, slow trainee development, poor utilisation of skilled time, insufficient crew leadership, physically unsustainable roles, weak management capacity or an employment offer that loses against the alternatives.

Several of these mechanisms are likely to be interconnected. Improving one part of the system can also move the constraint elsewhere. Hiring more trainees may increase pressure on supervisors. Creating more crews may expose a shortage of leaders. Promoting strong arborists into quoting roles may improve progression while reducing field capacity. Increasing flexibility may improve retention while making scheduling more complex. These are not reasons to avoid change but you need to understand the system before selecting the intervention.

The arborist skill shortage is not simply a problem of finding more people. It is a problem of attracting the right people, converting beginners into useful workers, protecting scarce capability, building enough leaders and making employment sustainable enough to compete with the alternatives.

The vacancy may be where the problem becomes visible, but it is rarely the only place worth looking.

About the author

James Isaacs is an arboricultural workforce strategist at Ostix Consulting. His Master of Business Studies research examined skill mismatches and worker shortages in New Zealand arboriculture. His work draws on experience as an arboriculture business owner, field arborist and organisational improvement practitioner.