Your construction team needs clear roles & responsibilities

“Disappointments aren’t based on what you find, they are based on what you expect to find.” – Ed Cole

Set clear expectations for your team

As an employer, a large part of your success rests on your employees. A common theme we hear from everyone in our construction network is that employees are their biggest challenge. Half of the equation is finding great talent. The other half is keeping them. 

We find that most try to allure and keep great talent with money and benefits. Those are important and necessary aspects of an employee package, but there is something more impactful to employee retention. Your company’s complete clarity from top to bottom, in every aspect of their business will create such a healthy culture that employees would rather stay a part of your organization than make more money in another company’s chaos. This all starts with your first interview with a candidate. 

The Interview 

When you bring a candidate in for an interview you will first dive into your company’s Vision, Mission and Core Values (clink on the links to review those articles). From there you will give a clear description of the roles, responsibilities and KPIs associated with their job. Employees want direction in life. They want to know where the company is headed and they want to understand their role in getting there. Vagueness in either aspect creates confusion and confusion creates chaos. People flee from chaos, so if you find that you can’t keep employees you want to look at your chaos meter. There is a release valve on your chaos meter; we call it an Org Chart. 

Start with an Org Chart

As a construction business it’s pretty well understood what roles are necessary in your business. A simple Google search will produce a list of seats you’ll need to fill to keep the bus moving. We already did all the heavy lifting of typing, “Org chart for construction business,” and hitting search so you don’t have to. We created a blank copy of a sample org chart that you can add or delete from depending on your specifics. You can get a copy of this by clicking the button below.

Keep in mind that not every role listed on that chart may pertain to your business. Also, people on that chart don’t need to be your direct employees. You may outsource your bookkeeping for example. You will still want to have a link in that org chart to the expectations laid out between you and the bookkeeper provider. They may have given you a proposal or a contract detailing what they are going to do, when and for what cost. Have that document saved in your shared drive so that you or any of your personnel can access it to make sure expectations are being met. 

Free bonus material 

We have to pause for a moment to elaborate on the above statement. Your entire goal of getting these systems in place is so that your business can run without you. Not that you are trying to eliminate yourself, but so that you can have the freedoms you’ve chosen to have in and from your business. There have been countless times where someone on our team has needed a password, information, or direction on how to do something. Instead of them having to go track their manager or the owner down, they were able to go to the shared drive, find the folder with the document and get the necessary information on their own. This creates freedom for you and for your employees. 

Have a uniform document that describes every role in detail

Once you have all your roles established on the org chart you can start plugging in names and linking documents. In our business there are individuals that fill multiple roles. The roles may overlap in a way that makes sense for them to do both. Or, they may be filling in temporarily while a seat was vacated and a replacement is being found. Put names directly under the role description and color code it so that it’s easy for everyone to reference. Each role should have a direct link to another uniform document that lays out the specific expectations of that job. You can get an example of this as well by clicking this link. Submit the form in the link and we will email you a blank copy. 

Conclusion

Everyone on your team wants to win. Most of the time when you find yourself with an individual that is having poor performance, it has more to do with them not being properly setup for success than anything else. Either you haven’t given them the necessary coaching or they don’t have the resources they need to succeed. In future articles we will talk about setting frequent check ins with everyone on your team, but know for now that it starts with having clear roles and responsibilities.