Ahhh…the good old days. My career in Construction began over 30 years ago after graduating from Maryland with a degree in Horticulture and Landscape Design. I needed to pay back my college debts and the best paying job at the time was working as a Laborer for Harkins Builders. In fact, working as a laborer paid more than I could earn using my newly minted degree. Unexpectedly, I found a place for myself in Construction. Chris Harkins, my co-worker at the time used to say “You find the nicest people while digging ditches”. And it was true. The people I’ve worked with over the years have just been great.
Those were good times for the industry. Work was plentiful and jobs paid relatively well. Never before have I found times as trying as they are today; especially for organizations such as ours that are committed to Affordable Housing and our Non-Profit partners. The situation has forced us to reduce staff both in management and skilled trades. The prognosis for additional reductions in force seems likely as well.
We are not the only ones facing these issues. The industry as a whole, architects, engineers, and developers, are all being forced to take some drastic measures to remain profitable. While these challenges are tough to deal with, we try to remain focused on a few key issues.
1. Maintain Quality: In light of smaller profit margins and a more competitive market, we still believe the client deserves to get a high quality product regardless of diminishing margins. Quality and profit are not related.
2. Keep Employees Informed: We meet regularly with the staff to keep them informed as to where the company stands as well as whether his or her position will be affected by the slowdown. We think it is better to have the employees know in advance of possible reductions so that they might plan better for themselves and their families.
3. Keep Giving: While we may not be able to contribute as much overall to charitable organizations as we have in the past we are still committed to the same overall percentages based on our profits. We know that this economic downturn has affected many of our non-profit partners. We are still trying to help out in any way we can.
4. Prioritize Key Benefits: Health care is of critical importance to our employees. Most organizations experience annual increases in health insurance much as we do. Our goal every year is to pass on as little of these increases as possible. In tough times like these it would be easy to just say “we can’t absorb this anymore.”. But we know, that those affected are usually young children who without these plans may not receive proper care. By eliminating or reducing other less important benefits we have been able to keep employees health care benefits fairly consistent for the last several years.
5. Be Kind and Empathetic: Uncertainty at work is stressful for everyone. Laying someone off hurts. It hurts the messenger and its hurts the recipient. It is important for us to deal with these matters individually and to treat each person with respect.
So, for my first blog post, I’m not trying to be all doom and gloom. Hopefully “change is gonna come”. And soon.
