Category Archives: Employees

How to evaluate the performance of your employees

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It has been always difficult to evaluate the performance of an individual who is working in your company or organization. You may have certain expectation from him and if at all you find the person to be anywhere short in fulfilling those expectations then you presumably mark him down in that parameter. However, he may have been exceptional in all other activities and therefore perhaps do not deserve the score. Therefore while you evaluate a person you should take into consideration his overall performance and not single out instances where he was not able to fare well. it actually does not go well with anybody who have been working from the core of his heart and then in the end gets to know that he is marked down on one such instance which was in no way crucial or have caused any harm to the prospects of the organization.

In the construction business where you have a lot of men working for you, it becomes tougher to evaluate the performance of every individual. It is just impossible to keep a track of the performance of all the employees and then rate them. This is why you got to create a system where you can easily track the performance of your employees and can justify the scores that you give to them. Supervisors should stringently monitor the performance of the employees in their respective teams and present the report to their managers. The managers in turn will approve the ratings and will decide the rise in pay of the employee.

Punctuality should be a crucial check:-

All the employees in the company should adhere to their respective shift timings and late comers should be tolerated. The message should go loud and clear to all the employees in the company. Construction workers who arrive late at the site can eventually become the reason for delaying the work. Any delay will then have to compensate by overtime which means the company then needs to pay its employees more for allowing them to work for extra hours for the fault of few guys who had arrived late at the site. The company should take this very seriously and must mark down the latecomers during their evaluation.

Their overall behavior and willingness to work:-

Employees who have worked hard for the success of the company should be rewarded and it is the onus of the supervisors to pluck out people who have made commendable contribution. The supervisors should keep a close watch on the employees and check who is willing to work harder. Guys who have the quest to learn more about the business are the ones who should be given more opportunities and also should be given good ratings during evaluation. The behavior of the employee also plays a crucial role while assessing his performance. One should check how good the person is in bonding with his team and the kind of rapport he shares with other teammates. Employees possessing these qualities should be rated more than others.

It is Christmas time. Shower your employees with gifts

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Christmas is an occasion of rejoice and having fun with your near and dear ones. Calling your family at home and having a sumptuous dinner or taking your loved one in a posh restaurant and having a lavish meal. Buy gifts for your family; give your child the special gift that he always wanted to have. Christmas is all about fulfilling the dreams that you have seen along with your family. Being the owner of a construction company, it also becomes your responsibility to see that your employees have a great time during this season. If you make their Christmas special they will definitely want to stick with you for long and you got to understand the importance of the people working for you. Right from the senior most persons in your company to the junior most labor, you have to ensure that you give them the best gift to make their Christmas special.

If you want to give some gifts to the construction laborers, you can give them some thick hooded t-shirts that will protect them from cold weather or probably a pair of boots. A lot of companies prefer giving t-shirts. You can also distribute a bottle of wine or sweets among them. At the same time, you can also preferably offer them some money so that they can buy some things for their family thus showcasing that you not only think about their wellbeing but also about the wellbeing of their families. This can give them lot of happiness and a very good reason to continue with your company.

One of the most instrumental persons working with your company is the heavy equipment operators. You should also due credit to them and probably give them more gifts. The operators are the ones who work relentlessly inside the cabin which at times can be quite saturating. They do not care of their aching leg and continue to do their business. These set of people deserve some special recognition and gifts and what better timing it can be than to offer them this recognition at the time of Christmas. One more thing that can be done is holding up awards function where you will be giving awards to people who have shown an outstanding performance throughout the year. You can appreciate their hard work and the efforts they have put to make the company what it is now. In the same pretext you can also give away the Christmas gifts to them and possibly throw a party just after the award ceremony.

It will be a good get-together where the families of all your employees are coming in and having a good time. They can see their husbands or sons receive awards which will definitely make them proud. After which they can have dinner before departing for their homes. This will be an unforgettable experience for each one of them. After all it is Christmas time and you can certainly shower gifts on your employees to bring smiles on their faces.

Make this Christmas rewarding for your construction laborers

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Christmas has always been a special time for us Americans. We long for this month to come so that we can have a small vacation with our family, meet our near and dear ones, have some quality time with our family and of course have lot of fun. Business tends to remain slow during this month. Not just because it is Christmas but also for the winter which slows down almost everything around you. During this month we all expect to get some sort of bonus or freebies from our company and there are many such companies who offer free coupons to buy stuffs or to spend on things that you have longed to have. As far as the construction sector is concerned, construction companies distribute a lot of freebies to its employees. Not just the might big ones engage in distributing gifts but even the small sized companies take the effort to earn the loyalty of its employees.

Gift coupons can be given:-

It has been mostly observed that construction companies get a lot of coupons from their heavy equipment companies and companies that sell them raw materials and stuff. The construction company can on the other hand distribute those coupons amongst the laborers. In this way nothing goes out of the pocket of the company and your employee gets the gift they have expected. The coupons have an expiry date and should be used before a particular date. So inform your workers to use it before it expires and not keep it for the next Christmas.

Give them bonuses:-

What can be more beneficial than getting money on the month of Christmas? The employer should declare bonuses to be given to all the employees. You can vary the bonus amounts against each class of employees but while giving them bonus please do not undermine their tenure in the company. Try to be more generous to workers who have been loyal to your company and have been a part of it for many years. This does not mean that you will simply forego the ones who have just joined. But take a wise call while declaring bonuses and also inform the HR to work on this and come out with a meaningful plan.

Most deserving laborer can have free dinner with his family:-

While we all accept that innovation is the key to any successful business. It also works well when it comes to appreciating the hard work of your employees and rewarding them. You should pick the one whom you consider has been exceptional towards his work in the entire year. Pull out the track record of your employees and the names of those guys who have been phenomenal in different genre of work. You can fund them for dinner with their entire family. For a construction laborer it will be big thing and also his family will get the opportunity to have dinner at a place that they have always heard or dreamt of. That employee will be with you for the next many years and will work harder than ever.

Bonuses can bring cheer on the faces of construction workers

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In every industry, the workers play a very crucial role in the growth of the business. With happy employees and workers, the business will see constant and continuous growth. But, with unhappy workers, there is always the trouble of companies and businesses suddenly being faced by a strike, labour shortage and many other associated problems. Hence, it is a must that you keep your workers always happy.

The current scenario:

Every single business or industry requires skilled employees. However, despite the high demand, there is a scarcity of availability of skilled labours. Businesses, therefore, often encounter huge losses. But, many company owners are thinking of hiring new set or labours; rather than keeping the existing ones. They consider the cheap wages that they will have to pay for the new and inexperienced labours. However, the fact is that the amount of money that it will cost the companies in training the new labours will be huge. Hence, keeping the skilled and experienced existing workers is always something that one must do.

Having happy workers:

As already mentioned, it is always a good idea to keep the existing and experienced workers with your construction business than hiring new ones; a business owner needs to come up with ideas that will help them in keeping the workers happy. This is because; it is only by providing satisfaction that one can manage to hold the existing staff. And one of the most effective ways of holding existing skilled workers is to give them enough bonuses.

  • Bonus increases performance:

 

Everybody likes a little added bonus. Bonuses bring cheer to the faces of the workers. As you give your construction workers bonus, they will feel encouraged to work even harder and better.

  • Bonus increases loyalty:

 

For a successful business, it is a must that the workers or employees are loyal to your business. Bonuses yield an emotional impact on the workers and become more loyal to your construction company. This results in better performance at work. Moreover, satisfied workers wouldn’t resign from the job, creating a scarcity of workers.

  • Creating a healthy environment:

 

Undoubtedly, construction work is a strenuous one and always requires skill and the extra input to complete a task. When you hand out the bonus to the workers, it is quite likely that the happy and satisfied workers will give their input in the work. During the time, when there is an urgency of workers, your happy construction workers may forfeit their leaves and contribute in completing the task.

Conclusion:

Since bonuses can bring so many benefits for the construction business just for a small amount of investment on the skilled staff and get great returns, it is quite imperative that this factor is paid much attention to. After the successful completion of a project or even yearly or half-yearly, adding bonus to the wages of the workers will only add to the benefits of the construction business. The bonus does not necessarily have to be monetary at all times, it can be other benefits as well that would suit the need of the workers.

How to train the newcomers in the construction industry

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Recruiting new people in your company is a sign that your company is growing. But apart from that, it becomes the responsibility of the tenured men/women to see that the newcomers feel at ease. They do not have to struggle for petty things. Since they are new to the company they will not know the rules and regulations formed by the company for its employees and therefore they might do something that is kind of forbidden in the rulebook of that particular company.

The veterans should therefore lead the way and informed the new guys of the rules. Things that they should do and stuffs that they should refrain from doing should be explicitly communicated to them. Other than that, they should be guided with other facilities like restrooms, pantry, cafeteria etc. Most importantly, they should be guided on doing their work the right way.

Day in and day out, new people join the construction industry. Some are absolutely new to the industry and some have worked in other construction companies and have switched jobs. There is a variance among these 2 sections. For the ones who are absolutely new to the industry should be taken care quite delicately. They do not know anything about the business and hence they should be first given some training so that they understand the etiquettes of the business. Simultaneously they should also be trained on their work so that they can learn both the things at the same time. Being new to the industry, they might take some time to understand how things work here but if they are sharp, they will catch things up real soon.

For people who already have some experience in the construction industry, they only need to be updated about the etiquettes one should follow while they are a part of the company. Rest is expected to be already known to them.

One should be patient while training newbie:-

The trainer or veteran who has been assigned the responsibility to train the newbie has to be a guy with ample patience. He just can’t manage to lose his cool. The new guys will throw questions at him. Some will make sense to him and some will not. But he should not disregard any question or grumble when he gets a question that is according to him an incorrect one or make no sense. The newcomers are bound to make all sorts of question and the trainer needs to answer them patiently and by giving examples.

Practical approach is a must:-

Training on any construction related subject can’t be taught only in a classroom. They guys need to learn things on the jobsite. They need to see things happening and how others are working. They should be allowed to try while they have someone around them who will monitor their work and if correct them if they go wrong. This is perhaps the only way by which they can learn things sooner.

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Being in the company of good people is crucial in construction industry

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We generally meet all kinds of people when we are associated with an industry like construction. Generally people are tends to be good but some may not have that good intention. Hence, it is very crucial that you pick the people whom you feel that you can be compatible with. This does not mean that you will not have any relation with guys whom you feel does not fall in your compatibility zone. You will maintain your relationship with everyone but will restrict yourself to few people rather than getting open to everyone. If you make yourself available to everyone, there are chances that people might take undue advantage which will not be in anyway healthy for you. However, if you are in the company of people whom you trust, there are lesser chances that they will ever cheat on you.

Threat of losing project/client:-

If you get yourself in the company of wrong guys who may pose well to you, they might try to get info of your work and you never know when they will snatch away your project and start working on it. There have been numerous such cases where contractors have lost their project after they came into contact with someone they hardly knew and gave too much space to them. They on the other hand took as much info as they can to snatch away the project or just the client. They established their contact with the clients and ensured that the future projects are given to them. By the time the contractor came to know about this, he has already lost the client.

You will grow in the company of good people:-

Construction sector can often show you turbulent times. This being a dynamic industry, we can face any sort of threat from any corner. Therefore, it is important that you be in the company of people you know and whom you can trust. They might come for your help during your bad phase and bail you out. Alternatively, they can also give you valuable advice that you may hardly get from people in this circle. At times, this advice helps you a great deal. You might have taken a stand on the basis of certain information which may or may not be correct. However, you have a slight confusion on this and want to take a second opinion. Therefore, you decide to discuss it with your guys and you get to know more insights that you were complete unaware of. This eventually clears your thoughts and you are able to take a wise decision thus having a positive impact on your company.

Be in touch with them even if they are not your employees:-

We feel sad when we lose men who served our company for years and now want to retire. Even if they retire, they are very much a part of the company as they have served it for years. Therefore, being in touch with such people can always be beneficial for the company. They can guide you in difficult times and help you come out of a crooked situation.

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Start picking up star performers in your company and reward them to keep them retained

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The top performers are called as the ‘Star’ or ‘A’ performers, are the most important assets of any company. They possess the most valuable skills and move the business forward. Hence, it is necessary for any company to identify them, understand their career goals and reward them suitably. This approach will enable to retain the best talent which in turn will ensure stability of organization and allow its rapid growth

 

Star performers can be identified possessing the following characteristics:

  1. Capability of taking a responsibility in short span of time: They volunteer for handling new assignments. They are professionals who deliver strong and high quality results by means of an efficient teamwork.
  2. Unquenchable thirst for knowledge: They like to know how the things work. This quality gives them an advantage of improving troubleshooting skills. They master new types of expertise.
  3. Good communication skills: This ability allows them to deliver their ideas in an effective way. There is very little misinterpretation which avoids failures.
  4. Trustworthy and reliable: Senior managers and colleagues seek star performer’s advice and they are considered as good confidantes. They forge strong relationships and their opinions are always valued.
  5. Willing to take calculated risks:They weigh ups and down of a particular situation and take their decisions.
  6. Exhibits a well rounded effort: They are good both personally and professionally. If they are good at home, or at sports, they will undoubtedly be good at the workplace too. They serve as role model and mentor for others. Thus, they achieve excellence in most of the spheres of life.

 

Losing high performers is painful, both personally and professionally. Hence, it is very important that they be retained by the employer in the following ways:

  1. Give them opportunity to head or control a project: They need to take the core responsibility of a project where they get chance to present their ideas and they can take their decisions.
  2.  Leaders should interact with high performers and understand their passion and career goals.
  3.  Present them with challenges: High performers always like challenging projects. Hence the company should entrust them with interesting and difficult projects to keep these performers motivated to work.
  4.  The managers should ensure that the star performers trust their leadership capabilities
  5. Offer regular feedback : Weekly meetings should be held to let them know about their work performance and areas of improvement.
  6. Reward for great work : To recognition their efforts that have made a significant contribution to goals and objectives.  a.  Recognition memo from the Manager  b.  Send out a weekly email of the employee’s achievement to the entire company.  c.  Award the employee of the assignment they were interested in working.  d. If they are very outstanding in their work then to reward them handsomely as An Award to be given, Letter of Appreciation, Announcement as Employee of the week/month in Town hall meetings

 

When the top performers feel respected, honored and recognized for their efforts that their performance and confidence increases. This enables to retain the top most talent for a long time ensuring success of that organization.

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Make this Christmas special for your employees

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In today’s mechanical world, we perhaps do not have much reason to smile, to laugh or to enjoy. Thankfully, we have few festivals that give us the opportunity to enjoy lives, probably the very reason why we are all here. Festivals bring happiness into our dull life that has been saturated by hard work and never ending targets. Well, we all have deadlines and we should complete our work in that time. But at the same time, we should not forget that we are humans and not some machine that are just meant to work. In this time bound culture, we have also forgot to socialize which is why today there is a need of Social Networking Websites which in a way helps us all to remain bonded with each other.

Having said this, social media is again virtual in nature and in order to socialize in real, we need an occasion where we can just shut our shops and get together, meet people, enjoy and have fun. Christmas is one such perfect occasion that let us forget all our miseries, pain and problem and help us to live our lives like humans. But no festival is complete without lavish food, gifts for your dear ones and proportionate money to buy few luxuries at least once in a year.

The workers in a construction company work all day in a relatively risky environment where they always have a probable threat to their life. Still they work for the development of the nation. They are the most important pillars needed for nation building and therefore it becomes the responsibility of the construction companies to ensure that they make their Christmas special. It may be a one-time affair for the companies but the employees will remember it all throughout the year. The companies should as a goodwill gesture provide the employees with bonus so that they can buy gifts for their children, take them out to a restaurant, guys who are not married can have a blast partying out with their friends and people who are looking to go for a vacation can make good use of the bonus money.

If it is a new construction company, then it may not be able to give bonus in the first year as it may not incur much profit to distribute bonus. However, if possible give your employees some gift vouchers or simply buy them some gift which will be of some use to them. You can also commit them of expecting more in the forthcoming year and tell them the reason why you could not give them any bonus. But if the company makes decent profit in the very first year, you should then give some bonus.

Today we all buy stuffs online and therefore you can also give them e-coupons which they can use while making a purchase online. Construction companies do get such coupons from various distributors. In case, if you have lot of e-coupons available with you, you can give it away to your employees. This will definitely make their day and perhaps a Merrier Christmas for them.

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How to keep your employees happy

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One of the biggest challenges that many construction business owners encounter is massive attrition of employees. Once the employee works with a construction company for a couple of years, they tend to switch companies and move into a company that pays them better remuneration. This means that they have to spend a lot on training new employees every year. The number of people who stays back in a company after having worked for 5 years or more than that is very less and construction business owners have a hard time in dealing with this crisis. Though they manage to recruit experienced men but they also have to pay a higher price for having their services. This does no good to them but is a kind of money drain that they are finding difficult to avoid.

There are some very simple things that one may follow to keep their employees happy and avoid their movement to other companies.

Acknowledge and appreciate their hard work:-

When your employees put their soul and work for you, it becomes your duty to acknowledge and appreciate their work. If you fail to do so then they have plenty of other options where they can expect better employers who will appreciate their work. Appreciating their work also increases their morale and they start feeling that the company belongs to them. This will only add to the fervor of continuing the hard work for the company. It actually works big time to establish the healthy relation between the employer and the employee.

Equip them with state of the art machines:-

You can’t expect your employees to give you quality work without providing them with state of the art earth moving equipment. They need good machines to give solid outcome or else they might not want to work for you. Working on outdated machines means exerting more force on a job which otherwise can be done without having much physical difficulty if they were given the option of using technologically advanced machines.

Speak with them quite often:-

A healthy relationship is generated when you often speak with the other person and ask about his well-being. In the construction business, where most of the business owners are more concerned with profit making, the employee will truly appreciate your effort to reach out to them and speak to them about their family and their wellbeing. In case, if anybody is in a financial mess, then you can try to give them a loan out of company’s reserves and help him out from that crisis. This speaks high volume about the kind of person you carry in front of your employee.

Give gifts and bonuses during Christmas:-

It is a goodwill gesture if you offer your employees with some gifts and bonuses during Christmas. It will make them extremely happy if you give them or to the family of the employees any gifts during this festive season. It does matter a lot to them. Giving such freebies may pinch you a little but will definitely bring a big smile on the face of the people who devote most part of their days’ time working for you.

Be generous to pay operators with talent

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Companies normally pay more for talent. So a person who has acquired talent through years of experience and hard work should be definitely rewarded and he rightfully deserve every bit that he is paid. The construction industry is also known as a paymaster for people who knows the in and out of the industry and also termed as an asset to the company.

Through their experience they will be able to steer the future as well as the fortune of the company. They have seen different phases of the business and may know what to do under a given circumstances. When we look at the different levels in the construction industry we may find many people across genres who can be termed as efficient and people with immense talent. Right from a labor to an engineer every person has a role to pay and their talent is displayed by their work.

The talent and experience of an operator is nevertheless of immense significance to the construction company. The operator handles one of the most important parts of the business. He works on earth moving equipment and at the same time also takes care of it. He is the one who reports about any issues with the machine which is then rectified by a mechanic. He is also taken to task when a machine just stops working. His manager will want him to answer why he did not raise a flag when there was an issue with the machine. This means that he is suppose to take onus if anything goes wrong with it. So the operator who takes care of such vital things deserves to be paid more. The company should think about this seriously in case if they are of the opinion to save money on them.

Demand for talented operators does not perish:-

Since operators handle such an important department, the demand for their talent does not perish. Construction companies are always in the hunt talent with some years of experience in hand. They also check for candidates who have the will to learn more about his work. Someone who just does not want to stop learning is probably the man they want to have in their organization. Such men will always be in demand for what they owe and how they can shape up the future of the company.

There are few operators who take charge of the entire fleet of heavy equipment and ensure that nothing goes wrong on any given day. So if you ignore their hard work and pays them less than what they deserve, they may soon switch to a company that acknowledges them for their talent and hard work.

Companies who pay well have performed better:-

It has been noticed that companies who pay well to the deserving operators perform better than others. Their growth structure is on the upwards scale. If your operators are content with their salary, they may go out of their way and may give suggestions that will prove to be highly beneficial to the company.

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