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January 28, 2022

Expert Advice on Workforce Strategies for Construction Employers

Every construction business owner has experienced a gap in their workforce either in the field or in the office. This gap, although prevalent, doesn’t have to be permanent. These shortages have happened before in industries across the US economy, especially in construction’s sister industries like utilities and energy.

Our host, Mike Merrill, sits down with workforce strategies expert Van Ton-Quanlivan, to discuss her successful workforce strategies at a critical point in the energy sector during its own skilled labor shortage. Today Van is the CEO of Futuro Health – the largest network of credentialed allied healthcare workers. She’s also the author of the Amazon Bestseller “WorkforceRx: Agile and Inclusive Strategies for Employers, Educators and Workers in Unsettled Times.” And if all that didn’t keep her busy enough, she’s also the host of the WorkforceRx podcast.

In today’s episode Van covers how labor gaps happen, the importance of workforce strategies to alleviate labor gaps and how to prevent internal gaps with proper knowledge transfer processes.

Key Takeaways

  1. Labor gaps happen in any industry with skilled workers. The potential for a shortage of skilled workers comes from many different sources and affects a number of different fields. Knowing that the situation isn’t unique means it can be solved. Techniques that worked in past shortages are now working for contractors that are willing to focus on solving the core issues leading to our decreased labor pool.
  2. Collaborating as an industry develops the best pools of workers. Rivals will benefit from working together to develop the right relationships and programs to attract and train the right people into the roles employers are desperate to fill. If the pool of applicants gets small enough every business needing those workers will suffer due to shortages, increased wages and constant infighting. When the right pool of workers is developed, everyone wins with the right people, in the right roles, at the right companies.
  3. Proper knowledge transfers protect against homegrown processes. When there isn’t a properly created and trained process to cover a key operation, great employees adapt by creating their own “homegrown” process. These processes can land leaders in hot water when that employee leaves and takes their process with them. Instead, take the homegrown process in question and either standardize it or replace it with a standardized process –– and then train duplicate employees the process to continue the cycle.