What Advice to Management Would Your Employees Give You?
If your employees could tell you what they really think, and what they really want, what would they tell you? Maybe you already have an open communication with your employees that leads to transparency, clarity, and mutual understanding. So you already know what your employees want, and they know exactly where the company is going, and where they fit into the plan. That’s all good, and you should have no problem attracting and retaining all the skilled workers you need, for now, and for the future as well. Because that’s the kind of environment statistics show younger workers and new entrants in the construction workforce are looking for.
How do I recruit employees in construction? The construction industry is facing a labor shortage, learn how to attract and retain the next generation workforce with these three guidelines.
Next-Generation Workforce Seeks Job Satisfaction
According to Pew Research Center data, approximately 50% of Millennials and Gen Xers say working at a job they enjoy is “extremely important.” By comparison, only about 20% feel that way about “a high-paying job.” So anything construction employers and managers can do to increase the sense of enjoyment and reduce the amount of “this really sucks” in the workplace is probably worth considering.
Provide Employees with the Lastest Tools
Anyone who has ever worked in the construction industry knows that task-oriented frustration is one of the most intense killjoys on the job. Doing something the hard way, or doing it twice, because lack of the right tools or lack of proper planning sucks the life out of a jobsite. Successful policy upgrades and technical innovations that improve enjoyment and/or reduce frustrations will help to increase engagement and retention among younger employees and new recruits.
For example, a certain website that caters to job seekers offers a portal where workers can review their employers (past and current), including a section where they can offer advice to management. Here’s a comment from one anonymous staffer working for a company whose employees are always assigned to work at remote locations and jobsites. The advice from this employee to their managers was as follows:
“They need a mobile app for the work that they are doing that brings all the factors of what they do together and not use all of the fragmented resources.”
Here’s a company where the management team wants workers to use their initiative, good judgment, and ‘common sense’ to function productively on remote jobsites. But the company won’t demonstrate any of those characteristics in terms of modernizing its own business systems. It makes it hard for employees to behave a certain way when they see company management modeling a different kind of behavior in running the business. It’s important for construction companies to integrate construction software that works for their business model and for their employees like busybusy. busybusy help companies simplify the time tracking and project progress.
Action Focus Company Culture
If you want to make a change in your company culture, remember that you have to demonstrate and live the change that you seek in others. Employees may not remember what you say, but they will always remember what you do. If you behave with transparency and accountability and act on best practices, you can be sure your employees will do the same in return. Then they will begin to expect it from each other. And then it’s part of the culture, where the team will nurture and promote the core values and the professional growth that you all share in achieving objectives together.
