3 Ways to Keep Good Workers on Your Team
Attract and retain the best employees and subcontractors with these strategies
When it comes to running your businesses, having the right people on board — whether they are full-time employees or trusted subcontractors — can make your professional life so much easier. But with competition hot for hiring top talent, how do you make your firm the one where the best people want to work? We spoke with three pros for tips on attracting and keeping top-notch workers at your building or design business. Read on to learn what they said.
2. Make Communication Easy and Clear
Communication is another key to keeping workers happy — whether it’s communicating clearly about the details of the job or simply working with a worker’s communication style.
Wintersteen likes to adapt her method of communication to fit the preference of the subcontractors on the job. “If you have one who is really good at email, and another that does everything by text … you have to adapt to each person’s personality,” she says. She also makes sure that any subcontractor starting a job has every piece of information needed to do it before they start. If and when the subcontractors have questions, she’s available to quickly answer them.
Communication is another key to keeping workers happy — whether it’s communicating clearly about the details of the job or simply working with a worker’s communication style.
Wintersteen likes to adapt her method of communication to fit the preference of the subcontractors on the job. “If you have one who is really good at email, and another that does everything by text … you have to adapt to each person’s personality,” she says. She also makes sure that any subcontractor starting a job has every piece of information needed to do it before they start. If and when the subcontractors have questions, she’s available to quickly answer them.
3. Hire for Attitude
General contractor Steve Stoeppler of Stoeppler Construction in Nashville, Tennessee, works with about 25 to 30 subcontractors on a regular basis, including one who has worked with him for 15 years. He looks for one simple trait when hiring. “The bottom line is that they’ve got to care,” Stoeppler says, noting that he can teach technical skills but can’t train employees to have pride in their work. “Once you find that person that takes pride in what they’re doing and cares about their work, then you keep them and you pay them well,” he says.
Of course, paying well goes without saying. Given the hot competition for quality workers these days, if you don’t pay your workers well, they may find another employer who will.
General contractor Steve Stoeppler of Stoeppler Construction in Nashville, Tennessee, works with about 25 to 30 subcontractors on a regular basis, including one who has worked with him for 15 years. He looks for one simple trait when hiring. “The bottom line is that they’ve got to care,” Stoeppler says, noting that he can teach technical skills but can’t train employees to have pride in their work. “Once you find that person that takes pride in what they’re doing and cares about their work, then you keep them and you pay them well,” he says.
Of course, paying well goes without saying. Given the hot competition for quality workers these days, if you don’t pay your workers well, they may find another employer who will.
There’s a reason those best-places-to-work lists published online and in magazines are so popular — we all want to work in a great environment. So when hiring new staff members or new subcontractors, highlight what makes your company a great workplace.
At design-build firm Fox Home Innovations in Manhattan, Kansas, co-owner Chris Fox gives his lead carpenters, who are on staff, a binder outlining an upcoming project and four hours of paid time to study it. The lead presents a plan and proposed work schedule for completing the job to the business owners, the designer and the project manager. This helps ensure that nothing gets missed. Plus, employees get to plan and control their work schedules. “Everybody wants to be autonomous,” Fox says, “yet have the support and tools to be able to do their job.”
Susan Wintersteen of design-build firm Savvy Interiors likes to work with subcontractors who are excellent at their trades but don’t enjoy (or aren’t great at) the marketing side of the business. She tells them: “I will sell your services, organize your bids in a way that’s cohesive and thorough … get you paid on time and continue to schedule you and get you work. The only thing I need you to do is show up and do a really good job and continue to communicate with me.” For the subcontractors she works with, this is a benefit of working for her firm.