Don’t stop reading. This article isn’t about participation trophies, role playing or sensitivity training. It’s about how you can improve and retain your employees, and hopefully, grow your construction business through soft skills training.
There’s no doubt that most employees see job sponsored training as a nice benefit. It helps workers keep their skills current and fresh. If you’re a construction company owner who offers job sponsored training, you’ll likely retain your best employees because the perceived benefit of training will increase their loyalty to you.
Construction is a technical business, but when you get right down to it, it’s a relationship business. Good relationships with customers, co-workers and suppliers call for effective communication, leadership and conflict resolution. Are your employees equipped with the “soft skills” required to manage good relationships?
There is a growing trend of construction companies offering soft skills training. If you are already offering any kind of training to your employees, pat yourself on the back. But if you don’t offer training in soft skills to employees, there’s room for improvement. Here are a few soft skills your construction company should be offering training on:
1. Communication
This is a big one for all employees. Without good communication, you really don’t have a whole lot to work with. Good communication is essential to maintaining relationships with co-workers, supervisors and subordinates. It’s necessary to deal effectively with customers and generate new business.
Soft skills training should not only include verbal communication, but also non-verbal skills like the use of body language. Let’s face it – it does no one on the job site any good to have a project manager staring down the new guy with crossed arms and a tight-lipped glare.
2. Conflict Resolution
It’s no secret that the construction industry has a reputation of being rough and tumble. Employees come from varying educational and cultural backgrounds. Work can be physically demanding, and on a 95 degree day in the humidity, tempers can flare. Job sites are ripe for potential conflicts. Conflicts and disagreements between co-workers, and even employees and your customers, can sometimes arise from even seemingly benign scenarios.
Conflict within a workplace is normal and even be healthy. It’s often how problems come to the surface and get addressed. But are your employees equipped to react to disagreements in a productive way?
Give your employees the soft skills training they need to resolve conflicts before they escalate into full-blown incidents.
3. Teamwork
Teamwork is more than being a reliable shortstop on the slow-pitch company softball team. Good teamwork means you have the ability to work with others in a professional, respectful manner to accomplish a mutual goal. It’s not about everyone liking each other. It’s about trusting others, being accepting of coworkers’ ideas and knowing how to use each employee’s strengths to maximize efficiency and productivity.
4. Leadership
What if your foreman has to leave the construction site early to deal with a family emergency? Will a member of his team step up and fill his shoes for the day? Will he do so with commitment and good communication skills, and motivate the rest of the team to stay on task?
Your company’s current and emerging leaders should receive leadership training that encompasses effective delegation, listening, giving performance feedback, offering constructive criticism and motivating others.
Make no bones about it: getting employees on board with soft skills training can be like herding cats. While you might see some eye rolling when you introduce soft skills into your training program, make sure all your employees get the memo that soft skills are just as valuable as technical skills like bricklaying, dry walling and carpentry.
Need a Hand?
Sometimes it’s helpful to have a sounding board to figure out how to develop your best employees and keep them on board for the long haul. Contact us online or call 800.899.4623 to talk about how hold onto your best employees.
