Development and Evaluation of Strategic Directions for Strengthening Forestry Workforce Sustainability

The forestry sector is increasingly dealing with a significant lack of labor and faces the difficult task of securing a professional, stable and sustainable manpower. In this study, different strategic directions for strengthening forestry workforce sustainability are presented and evaluated. The considered strategic directions were developed with respect to forestry employees’ views on necessary measures for making the forestry occupation more appealing. Those measures were observed in three categories: (I) stronger recruiting, (II) stronger retention and (III) higher work commitment. The findings of the survey and other performed analyses resulted in the creation of four different strategic directions: (1) the direct financial strategy, implying increased direct monetary compensation as the main instrument and putting focus on labor productivity; (2) the indirect financial strategy, stressing worker wellbeing through indirect material benefits and aiming at performance quality; (3) the educational strategy, focusing on worker training and education and (4) the technical–technological strategy, aiming at the increased utilization of modern machinery and advanced technologies in forest operations. The results of the study include a comparison of the defined strategies by SWOT analysis and the construction of An analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model as the multi-criteria tool for strategy evaluation. Considering the possibility and conditions of its implementation in the national forestry sector, the technical–technological strategy has been evaluated as best option to pursue. The objective of the study is to contribute to enhancing the sustainability of forestry workforce by defining critical issues and pointing to specific cornerstones that can assist in formulating effective future policies and strategies in the forestry sector.