Hanan Nemeth, Vice President of Human Resources Consulting, HUB International
The labor shortage that’s become endemic to the construction industry has only worsened as the country struggles to overcome the pandemic’s effects. And in Florida, where a population boom is pushing a simultaneous boom in projects, there’s increasing urgency to find a solution.
Many forward-looking firms are designing their own training strategies to augment efforts of unions, government agencies and education systems. But it may take a holistic revamping of their offer to workers and how it’s upheld and represented to move the needle for today’s conditions.
Nationally, the construction industry added 22,000 jobs in September, continuing its comeback despite ongoing supply chain pressures. But skilled workers remain in short supply. The Home Builders Institute says that to keep up with demand, it will take 740,000 new workers each year for the next three years.
Jacksonville’s Reliant Roofing tackled the issue nearly from its 2015 start with a synergistic training program matching manually-skilled, experienced roofers with technically-skilled, young apprentices. An Orlando contractor, R.L. Burns Inc., is looking at setting
up its own apprenticeship program to train its own carpenters and superintendents – a way to better control schedules and resources.
That’s all good. But it may take more than training to appeal to today’s workers who, in any industry, have broader motivations. Paychecks are important, of course, but they want more: values, a culture and a work/life balance that make a difference in their lives. It’s part of a continuing shift in attitudes since the pandemic that has led to “The Great Resignation,” evidenced as a record 4.3 million U.S. workers quit their jobs in August alone.
In today’s environment, these attitudes should lead construction employers to go deeper than training programs. They need to rethink their employee value propositions to ensure they meet the challenge of delivering in a way that matters to today’s and tomorrow’s employees.
According to a Gartner study, to shift to being in tune with their workers starts with a re-evaluation of the employee value proposition (EVP) to reflect these changing nuances. Some 80 percent of employees want to be seen as people, not merely workers. They want their employers to support not just their work lives, but in their whole lives.
That means a more human-centric value proposition. It still must reflect an ecosystem of recognition, rewards and values, but it also must align with individual needs and extend beyond the work experience to contribute to an exceptional life experience. “Support” must be added to an organization’s ecosystem of values.
Using that context to drive their own shift, employers should consider what’s important in a value system for the business’ future, but also in order to recruit and retain the kind of skilled people who will be most invested in contributing to it, because their futures are a key part of the package. Here are some starting points:
■ Your employee value proposition isn’t a one-and-done thing, and it’s just as relevant (if not more so) to current employees as it is to prospective ones. Make sure its precepts are upheld and communicated with all groups and understand that authenticity is essential.
■ The value proposition should also evolve over time. This shouldn’t occur as a function of periodic strategizing by company leadership, but through the contributions of employees themselves. Employee resource groups, for example, are helpful for their insights on ways to build it and ensure relevance.
■ Retention is as urgent an issue as hiring and training needed workers. This means ensuring a retention budget shouldn’t be neglected as recruitment budgets grow. Support this drive by creating paths for advancement or new skills development or by converting “golden handcuff” perks into salaries.
■ Above all, lead with empathy. When employees say they want to be seen as “people,” that means they value a lot more than just “work.”
In reshaping their value propositions, employers should adjust their thinking over what benefits really matter. Aside from traditional medical, dental, vision and life insurance, attention should turn to how benefits and Human Resources (HR) policies support not just workers but their families on their life journey.
By acting as an “interventionist,” HR becomes every worker’s first stop when they need the right solution for their non-workplace needs. An interventionist HR team should be equipped to deliver exactly what’s needed at each stage of the employee’s life cycle – whether that’s marriage, re-marriage or divorce, a child’s birth or adoption, death of loved ones or retirement.
As construction firms struggle to deal with the perennial need for skilled workers, a deeper examination is needed to determine whether they are equipped, holistically, to deliver in today’s new normal. Is HR positioned as a first stop or are there other gateways to the workforce? How can they be unified? Is the technology for communicating and delivering benefits to employees efficient, user-friendly and secure? Are employers fully leveraging their employee data to be better able to anticipate future needs and to advance HR’s role as interventionist?
The “new” post-pandemic normal is fluid and dynamic, assuring everyone that there is no more “business as usual.” The best way forward is to rethink what matters to their current and future workers and how employers can best go about delivering that service.
Hanan Nemeth is Vice President of Human Resources Consulting at HUB International, Gainesville, Florida.
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