Women may not consider the waste and recycling industry as a viable career path, but one Baton Rouge area manager saw a place for a shift in the industry. She started recruiting fin the Captial Region and her effort has now become a national initiative for Republic Services Waste Management.
Fifteen years ago, Sharon Mann, now the general manager at Republic Services Waste Management of Baton Rouge, was faced with a driver shortage.
“We were just challenged with finding female drivers and we had openings, but we weren’t able to get a lot of quality applicants to apply,” Mann says. One day while she was picking up her son from school she noticed bus drivers waiting in the parking lot.
Mann grabbed several business cards and approached the drivers to talk to them about applying to be drivers with Republic Services. A school bus and a waste management truck both require the same specialized licenses to drive, and Mann says she knew bus drivers would bring so much to the role in terms of skill, safety, and customer service.
“All the sudden people really did start applying, so we brought in a lot of people and talked to them to see and boy it just took off after that,” Mann says. After a couple of years, “it was like they were recruiting themselves.”
The Baton Rouge branch now employs nearly 70 female drivers, up from zero in 2004 and inspired a movement nationally with the organization. Mann says a part of why female drivers have had success with the company is because Republic Services’ driver shifts start early in the morning and finish in the early afternoon, which allows them time spend with their families.
Following Mann’s lead in Baton Rouge, the company founded its “SheDrives” recruitment initiative. Republic Services was, for the second consecutive year, named to Forbes’ America’s Best Employers for Women, a compilation of companies that have made considerable progress in their quest for gender parity over the years.
Read more about Sharon Mann and her 32-year-career with Republic Services in this feature from Waste360.com. Â
