In an ideal world, we would all hire top notch carpenters, laborers, and other trades people with tons of experience for every single one of our construction job openings. Unfortunately, experience doesn’t develop quickly and training is the key to developing your talent. This has never been more true, as the entire industry is struggling to find qualified workers to fill positions, which means construction companies have to start hiring people with little to no experience or construction knowledge and hoping they work out.
Many companies follow the “sink or swim” method of training, meaning they throw a new employee into a situation, see how he or she handles it, then base that person’s worth off of his or her performance. Those same companies are most likely have a revolving door of employees. According to a study by the Center for American Progress, it costs a company 16%-20% of an employee’s yearly salary to replace that same person. So, replacing employees not only can delay your construction schedule due to lack of people, but it also greatly reduces your profit. That’s just one more thing to consider in your overhead costs.
I hear it over and over again: “training takes too much time that I don’t have” and “training is expensive”. Well, finding and hiring new employees is costly, difficult, and time consuming, as well, and it doesn’t make your employees any better at their jobs. The folks at Whirlwind Steel’s blog recently put together a great list of 5 Tips for Training New Employees, and we thought it was definitely worth a share. We’ll highlight our take on the tips below, but it’s definitely worth reading their post, which you can find by clicking here. Whirlwind also manufactures many types of steel buildings, so, if you’re in need of one of those, their web site is a good place to start.
Tailor Your Training to the Appropriate Source
Training does not work in a “one size fits all” sense. Different trades need to look at tasks a certain way, so training that may be good for an office worker does not quite have the same affect that it would on a field laborer.
Safety Training in the Beginning is a Must
The end goal of each day is to make sure each and every one of your employees goes home safe to their families and incorporating safety training at the very beginning lets them know that it’s a main focus for you and your company. Below are some of the guides that we’ve put together for safety training resources you may find helpful
Train with Different Mediums
Some people learn by hearing, some by touching, and some by seeing. Make sure your training includes all of the senses to truly make an impact. Everyone’s brain works differently and you don’t want the valuable training time you’ve set aside to go to waste. Make it impactful and interesting.
Try an Apprenticeship Program
Teaming a new hire up with a more experienced person is good for two reasons: it allows your least experienced employees to learn your best employee’s habits and behaviors and it develops your best employee’s training skills. Training people to train is invaluable.
Patience is a Virtue
Remember that you didn’t learn everything you know in one day. Sometimes it may take you saying the same thing three or four times before your trainee fully understands the point, and that’s okay. One of the things I have learned as my career has developed is to reflect on the items that I didn’t know when I first started my job. Doing so helps me form a basis of understanding for the things I should teach in training and reminds me to have patience for those who don’t know something. That’s the point of training, after all, teaching someone else things they don’t already know.
5 Tips for Training New Construction Employees | Whirlwind Steel’s Blog
