F E AT U R E Attracting Construction’s Top Talent Starts With Keeping Your Best Workers by John Biggs, writer
The construction industry is in the midst of a war for talent on two fronts. The global labor shortage makes it difficult to match jobs with candidates in the first place, but keeping the talent you’ve already got is an equally pressing matter. The U.S .job market as a whole could be in for some turbulence as well. According to recent reports, up to 40% of people want to change jobs this year, a phenomenon that has been dubbed “The Great Resignation.” Taken together, these factors paint a challenging picture of the road ahead for the construction industry. In order to successfully attract and retain talent, some construction companies are transforming themselves into places where people not only want to work but also where they’ll actually want to stick around.
16
S E P T E M B E R
2 0 2 1
The industry’s collective anxiety around talent has resulted in many construction companies looking inward in ways they never have, including how well their company culture reflects its values. Although culture hasn’t historically been a top priority for C&E firms, that’s slowly changing, and the results often speak for themselves. “Top Talent Attracts Top Talent” Kitchell is a diverse real estate development and construction company that does around $650 million in annual revenue across Arizona, Texas, and California in healthcare, higher education, labs, and some Native American communities. Even when many peer companies have begun struggling with their talent pipelines, the company’s internal reporting data shows their attrition rate is under 10%.
T H E
How did the company achieve this? “The biggest thing is, in order to attract top talent, you have to retain top talent. Top talent attracts top talent no matter what sector or industry you’re in, and culture can really drive that,” said Nicole Maas, Kitchell’s Vice President of Marketing and Communications. Kitchell’s culture was put to the ultimate test in 2020 when Zoom calls replaced in-person water cooler chats and after-work happy hours. And yet, instead of driving people apart, the sudden shift to remote work gave team members a chance to connect in a new and more intimate way. “Leadership, marketing, communications, field operations, you name it, we got more human. We saw families, we saw spouses, partners, kids, pets, bathrooms, bedrooms,
C O N T R A C T O R ’ S
C O M P A S S
