By Wayne Rivers, Co-Founder/President, Family Business Institute Inc.

In early 2021, people began leaving their jobs in droves. Contractors and business owners have reported hiring as their top challenge, and this article lines out how to combat this. 

A new phenomenon is affecting the construction business—and it is called the Great Resignation or the Big Quit.

In early 2021, people began leaving their jobs in droves. In fact, Fortune magazine reported that 4.5 million employees quit their jobs in November alone, and that was followed by over 12 million others who quit during the months of August through October!

What about this is important to you?

We have not talked to a contractor, or any business owner for that matter, in ages who does not report that their number-one challenge is hiring people. Additionally, news sources report that about 50 percent of people are considering job changes right now.

Think about that—half your people might be considering leaving you in the very near future! That is frightening.

McKinsey did a study where they asked both employers and employees the same question: Why are people leaving their jobs? You will be struck by the difference between the employer and employee responses.

How did employers answer the question?

• Compensation
• Work-life balance
• Employees were in poor physical or psychological health anyway

How did employees answer?

• Don’t feel valued by my company
• Don’t feel valued by my manager (a very close second)
• Don’t feel a sense of belonging at work

Employers pointed to tangible things: Money, health, or work-life balance. Employees talked about soft subjects: Not feeling valued and not feeling a sense of belonging. The almost-opposite responses offer a stark contrast. Employers think they know their people, but they just don’t.

How can you combat the Great Resignation? How can you get your people to look at you as their employer of choice so they want to stay and be part of your business family?

First, get all hands on deck right now! I mean now (yesterday, hopefully).

Get on top of this because, in a worker shortage, the worst thing that can happen to you is that your better people leave.

That has got to be terrifying; you’ve got opportunity after opportunity, and suddenly you are unable to staff jobs in a way that provides for clean execution. It is a contractor’s nightmare. Act now! Get together with your team, figure out what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong, and grab this bull by the horns and move!

Second, make employee retention your top goal. Hanging on to your quality people is more important than ever because they are so immensely difficult to replace. Hanging on to even marginal people is more important than ever. You have all seen statistics about how much it costs to replace a departed employee. The costs, including opportunity costs, are outrageous now.

Third, ask your people what they want. One of my consultants sent me a 70-page white paper about the “perfect incentive,” and they had all kinds of data to back up their claims. Basically, they concluded that hunting and fishing trips for project managers and superintendents were the cat’s pajamas. But what if your project managers or foremen don’t hunt or they have young kids at home and can’t afford to be away for days at a time? Zig Ziglar used to say that you can get anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want. Take the simple step of asking your employees what they want, and, if it is humanly possible, help them get it.

Fourth, work on your managers. The number-one skill that managers lack is, you guessed it, communication! Get them communication training. Family Business Institute’s Mike Flentje says the difference between managers and leaders is that managers manage tasks while leaders lead and inspire people. Do you see the difference? Help your managers improve their communication, especially the skill they tend to lack the most: listening well.

Fifth: connect! We write about the importance of strategic plans all the time. What we fail to talk about is the day-to-day task of connecting the 30,000-foot strategic plan and its mission, vision, values, and goals to the jobs your employees perform. Your accounts payable clerk, for example, may not see how her job connects to the company’s mission or values. You may have to show how every job, no matter how routine, contributes to the company’s mission and how everyone on the team is important. A technique we have learned from our peer groups and Boot Camp classes is to have some leaders go out and buy a bunch of gift cards. When they see someone exemplifying the company’s values, they reward them on the spot. They then trumpet and share the behaviors that the employee demonstrated and how that person connected to the mission or vision. Give spot rewards to your employees and then talk about them until you are blue in the face so that other people begin to get it, too.

Finally, think about your employees differently. Brian Tracy said that every individual is really the CEO of his or her own personal service company. Every one of your employees can literally take their personal service company, walk across the street tomorrow, and sell those services to your competitor. Think about your employees as the CEOs of their own small companies and view them as peer small business owners with various opportunities.

The Great Resignation is a real thing, and every contractor needs a proactive strategy for attracting and retaining the most valuable asset—people.