So far in 2023, the construction industry has had to deal with a series of odd contradictions. The aftereffects of the pandemic are now signalling a looming recession with rising interest rates, rising inflation, lower consumer scores, and a decrease in the willingness and ability to purchase new home builds as major indicators. 

Seeing how the start of the year is trending will rightly cause pessimism in the industry, but construction does have some things to be optimistic about in the coming year. For example, construction spending is projected to increase in 2023 by about 6 percent, largely due to strong gains in retail facilities and manufacturing. The high rate of increase in manufacturing projects is due to increased onshoring because of the disruptions to the supply chain over the last couple of years. The increase in retail construction spending is due to warehousing and distribution facilities being built to support the explosive growth in e-commerce. 

To make this year’s outlook even more confounding, there are still rising material costs cutting into profit margins, not to mention the ongoing skilled labor shortage leading to project delays. This uncertainty creates added pressure on an industry that’s already quite reactive. Now more than ever, contractors should try to take a step back, evaluate their current processes, and try to uncover areas of improvement. Doing this can help to spot opportunities for growth amidst the chaotic forecast for the industry in ‘23. 

One key opportunity that you might uncover is managing your workforce more effectively. It’s crucial that you hang onto your workforce and skilled labor tightly, and this article is going to outline 5 ways any contractor can work to improve their overall workforce strategy. Managing your workforce effectively incentivizes people to join your company and helps the team you have to continue growing in their roles. 

5 steps to more effective workforce strategies

1. USE SPECIALIZED SOFTWARE

Construction projects have hundreds of dynamic variables, which makes it incredibly difficult to accurately predict exactly how and when a project will be delivered. Over the years, these variables have been a large part of the reason the industry has been slow to make gains in productivity.

Even with the recent advances in construction software and technology, most contractors still use spreadsheets to manage their workforce. While they are a flexible tool, they’re also tedious to keep updated, limit collaboration, and are prone to human error. Managing your workforce without the right tools for the job can be a tall order and costly errors are inevitable. 

The right workforce management software can help manage project milestones and phases and lets you easily tie your resources to specific project phases. Workforce management solutions can provide valuable insight into your workforce utilization rates to understand the impact of future work, optimize your capacity planning accordingly, and stay ahead of recruitment needs.

An added benefit is having centralized project and workforce data, creating a single source of truth for your people. Making this data easy to access makes it easy to collaborate, make changes in real-time, and share resources across multiple offices. 

2. UNDERSTAND YOUR PROJECT DEMAND

Your project and phase milestones can be used to schedule your people more strategically and ensure you have the right people on the right projects at the right time. Take the time to outline and include project phases and their respective completion dates in your workforce planning as well as any other target dates you’re aiming to hit.

These completion dates help create the foundation for a productive job site. Be sure to communicate the expected completion dates for each milestone and phase with your project team, as well as how those dates were decided. When your people are aware of how their end goals came to be, it can help keep everyone engaged in the work and pulling in the same direction.

Don’t limit your project tracking to current and awarded projects either. Many contractors overlook planning for their pursuit projects. Failing to consider pursuits often leads to surprises when projects are eventually awarded, amplifying the downsides of the labor shortage. According to a survey done by Bridgit and SmartBrief, 86% of respondents have bid on projects only to find that they don’t have the necessary workforce to actually deliver. By adding pursuits to your planning, you’re able to get a better understanding of the true capacity of your workforce, bid on projects more strategically, and give your HR team ample time to develop a recruitment plan to hire the best candidates for your company. 

Don’t hesitate to look at your historical project data as well. Find projects of similar scope and size to better understand the resources that were needed to hit targets and identify teams that could repeat previous project success.

3. IDENTIFY YOUR AVAILABLE RESOURCES

Now that you’ve outlined the project and phase dates, create a list of all the resources and people you’ll need to hit your respective targets. Be sure to include the relevant experience and specific skills needed for each project role. 

You can use this information to develop and upgrade your team member’s skills as well by using team members’ strengths and weaknesses to ensure skill sets complement each other. For example, pairing a Project Manager with plenty of experience with a recently hired Project Manager will allow the former to lead by example, while the latter learns how to deal with the complexities of their role in a new company. Effective workforce management is about choosing the best-fit team members to work together and deliver quality work under budget and on time.

Tip: Include a “Plan B” in your list of resources with potential backups. If changes happen suddenly or additional support is needed, you can quickly reference your backup plan to identify team members that can help keep your project moving forward.

4. ALLOCATE YOUR RESOURCES AND REMEDY ANY ISSUES

We’ve identified milestones, project phases, and resources. Now it’s time to allocate your team members to projects. While it might make sense on paper to start, it’s not until you begin assigning team members to projects that you’ll see the impact of the project on the rest of your pipeline.

Workforce management software can identify any potential issues with your plan and help to fix them as they come up. For example, Bridgit Bench will indicate any allocation issues within your resource plan. If a team member is being overutilized, you can quickly adjust allocation percentages or replace them on a project with an available team member and see the impact of that change immediately.

Tip: Be sure to clearly communicate resource planning expectations for your project operations. If you want weekly updates from your Project Managers, let them know how you expect them to communicate with you. 

5. EVALUATE & COMPARE WITH YOUR HISTORICAL PROJECT DATA

Workforce planning is an iterative process. Evaluating your initial plans when a project is complete will help to identify areas of improvement. As you make adjustments over time, make sure to document everything in your project debriefs. Consulting this historical data can help you replicate past successes, avoid past missteps, and scale your workforce planning process efficiency across your project pipeline. 

Lastly, it’s important to ask yourself three key questions: 

• How well are you utilizing team members across the company?
• How efficient is your planning process?
• Does your team feel like they’re being given career-building experience?

Answering these questions honestly provides the opportunity to set new goals and target metrics that build on historical successes and mistakes. You’ll also have the incentive to develop your workforce as an asset that sustainably grows and refines with your company.