As construction companies grow, the owner generally takes on more work than they can handle alone. Then they often hire a low-priced, inexperienced junior or assistant to help them. As their company continues to grow, their daily pressures and responsibilities continue to mount, and the owner lives in constant chaos. They have difficulty finding enough time to properly supervise and direct their managers and the field. Finally, they decide to hire either an estimator, project manager, field supervisor, or foreman who will take some of their load off. But training these new hires causes them even more work and stress as they continue to estimate jobs, run the company, watch the money, meet with customers, and attend every job meeting.
What can overworked managers do to perform more efficiently? Most continue to work hard and stay too involved with estimating, project management, or supervising crews. They struggle letting go of the important decisions and want to stay in control. This doesn’t work as projects slow down waiting for the boss’s input or direction, and employees are not allowed to grow beyond what the boss allows them to do. This causes field labor productivity to decrease, and eventually good employees leave for better opportunities. Productivity in construction is at an all-time low compared to other industries. The average construction field worker only averages between four to five hours per day being productive. The remaining hours are lost waiting for their boss to tell them what to do, looking busy, correcting mistakes, searching for materials, or working with the wrong tools and equipment.
5 FUNDAMENTALS FOR PROFITS AND GROWTH
Without the right people with the right talent, experience and values, your company can’t reach its potential. When you don’t have time to manage, mentor, and train your people, they won’t meet their goals. And when you don’t have trusted people who are experts, professional, and high achievers in the right positions, you become the firefighter and problem-solver.
Top successful construction companies are built on these five fundamentals of effective talent development:
- Build capacity to grow with the best people who have the highest talent, experience, and values.
- Hire experienced talent ready to produce results based on your future needs and growth plans versus inexperienced, trainable, lower-priced employees.
- Owners must delegate authority and relinquish control by assigning fully accountable and responsible talent to handle the operations and meet overall company goals.
- Don’t procrastinate; do it now. Hire and assign trusted experienced proven professional managers to fully oversee all operations including estimating, project management, field operations, and accounting.
- Owners provide visionary leadership, inspiration, direction, innovation, oversight, new ideas, communication, mentorship, talent development, motivation, sales, and customer relationship-building versus managing or doing the day-to-day operations.
INVEST IN YOUR CURRENT AND FUTURE PEOPLE
Switching the leader’s role to focus on developing talent starts with training people to move up to their highest level and capacity. Most small to medium size construction companies don’t have formal training programs. Consider the old method of distributing project information via blueprints versus today’s project management software. In today’s high-tech, high-speed business environment, people need to learn and improve just to stay relevant. People want to make meaningful contributions and do well at their jobs, but if they don’t get the training and tools they need, they won’t accept responsibility for the quality and productivity of their work.
To get started, form a company-improvement committee which meets monthly. Task them to design your ongoing company talent development and training program. Let them develop your training ladder, mentorship plan, topics, schedule, and format for implementation. By involving many of your key employees in this effort, everyone will get onboard and make this program a success. Working together to learn and improve each week fosters team spirit and enthusiasm. Give your people weekly opportunities to perform, opportunities to learn, and chances to train others. The return to your company in productivity, quality work, motivation, and staff loyalty will be exponential!
Offsite seminars and workshops can also be excellent training opportunities. Make sure your training programs offer more than listening to instructors. Good training involves doing, coaching, interaction, and feedback. As a professional coach and trainer at several company meetings yearly, I see lots of bad examples of programs where the agenda includes training sessions, but no real learning happens. Some companies try to do all their training at one big annual meeting for their entire staff. The audience watches boring technical presentations, or a company manager reads information and shows details to the group. The audience doesn’t participate in activities, listen, or provide input, and therefore doesn’t learn how to implement any new skills being taught. They sit there, barely listening while they text their friends, and try to look interested and awake. And then, back on the job the next day, they continue to do their job exactly as they did before.
Training programs where effective learning takes place are combined with effective, ongoing weekly companywide training sessions. To round out and improve your annual training, be sure to include interactive training, feedback, fun, motivation, rewards, excitement, and recognition.
about the author
George Hedley CPBC is a certified professional construction business coach, consultant, and speaker. He shows contractors how to double their profits, grow, get organized, and get their company to work like a machine! He is the author of Get Your Construction Business To Always Make A Profit! available on Amazon.com. To talk, start a personalized BIZ-BUILDER program, or get his free e-newsletter, email gh@hardhatbizcoach.com. Visit his YouTube channel to watch his videos. To download online courses or get his contractor templates, visit www.constructionbusinesscoaching.com.