While construction doesn’t appeal to everyone, bringing awareness, education and implementation strategies to specialty contractors can empower them and build up the trades community.
In the specialty trades, contractors can benefit from leveraging technical innovations and industry trends. You’re sure to benefit when you take a hard look at your company and decide what your strengths are. Once you determine what you do very well, you can then leverage those strengths. For example, even for small companies, having an excellent culture can bring you success. Make sure your employees are aware of your company’s core values.
Your core values can help you in recruiting top talent. Be sure the public is aware of what your company stands for. What do people see when they visit your website? There should be information there that they can identify with, particularly the type of prospective employees you’re interested in attracting. Give people an opportunity to reach out and engage with your company. Give them a chance to identify with you, and in return they may envision being a part of your organization. If you want to attract people with good character, be sure to portray that in the information that you put out to the public. It’s important to be authentic and meet people where they’re at.
When bringing people into your industry, leverage the voices of diverse backgrounds. Having many perspectives and voices at the table can make a big difference – it builds stronger companies.
Seek out conversations with different perspectives and different viewpoints. Everyone has a style of receiving and processing information. There’s a lot to be gained by understanding other people’s perspectives. When they’ve joined your workforce, someone needs to be there for them if they are struggling – whether they are brand new or if they’ve been promoted to a new position that requires a whole new skill set. No one wants to look like they don’t know what they’re doing, especially if they’ve been promoted to management.
Culture and strategy go hand in hand. While you are fine tuning that culture and strategy, provide opportunities for your staff to work smarter and optimize workflows. For some companies, harnessing and leveraging data can be a golden opportunity to thrive. Investigate and invest in new streams of revenue, whether it’s prefabrication or modular construction, or some other innovation. Fine tuning processes and productivity are a solid avenue to increasing market share.
Growth in the construction industry is not all about data. It’s about the insights you can gain from that data. You can collect lots of information, but what do you do with it? Leveraging data presents the greatest potential for innovation in the industry.
In episode 80 of the Bridging the Gap podcast, I had an opportunity to talk with Tauhira Ali, Executive Director of Industry Innovation at NECA, about the benefits to specialty contractors of leveraging diversity of thought, technical innovations and industry trends. Listen to the full conversation today.
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