Masonry Magazine June 1998 Page. 10
From Turnover to Tenure
Stop Hiring the Wrong Applicants
The process of hiring a quality employee is no more a mysterious process than the process used to outbid your competitor for a big job. Both processes are quantifiable and share commonalities. Both processes involve tangible and intangible factors. Both processes involve TIME. An equal amount of time spent in the hiring and development of company personnel as spent in quantity take-off and bid preparation will help alleviate employee turnover. Following is a guide to initiate a new employment process.
Create, on paper, a job profile. (This is not a job description. Use of a job description for entry level work in our industry is useless. Each job is different. Each job is constructed differently. Each day is different and today's work force is different.) This example is for entry level workers. Divide the job into two categories:
TANGIBLE SKILLS
1. Knowledge and proficiency of the trade
2. Masonry material knowledge
3. Knowledge of scaffold erection & maintenance
4. Safety training and knowledge
5. Appearance
6. Proficiency with rules and measurements
7. Knowledge of job-site tools
8. Math skills
INTANGIBLE QUALITIES
1. Desire to work
2. Promptness
3. Attendance Record
4. Demeanor
5. Communication skills
6. Drug-free
7. Mobile
8. Integrity (is the application complete with accurate information?)
This is a starter list. Instituting a hiring process that differs from current hiring practices is but a bandage for the current labor problems. It is, however, a beginning.
Before implementing this list, you will need to determine which of these items are important to you. Weight them according to their priority in your organization and USE THEM CONSISTENTLY. If these are the necessary skills in an entry-level employee you will also have to determine how you are going to handle inevitable deficiencies. Whatever methods you choose for this DO THEM CONSISTENTLY.
In today's market, management is better served to identify and communicate to employees company goals and company values. (If you do not have these written, write them.)
Management is better served to re-think its commitment to employment for the benefit of the social capital (people) who in turn control economic capital. (Happy employees create profit.) Management is also better served exhibiting its accountability for company employment and termination practices. More than anything else in our industry today, these practices determine your bottom line. Honor them.
solving the retention problem you are experiencing. The first step in identifying a retention problem is to determine how all of those people who do not want to work, were hired to work at your company in the first place. During a seminar in Charlotte regarding interviewing techniques, one man asked the seminar facilitator about hiring based on a gut reaction to an applicant. The facilitator's response was correct when the contractor was asked how that method worked for him. If your retention of new hires is a negative number, your gut is steering you wrong and another method of interview criteria needs to be incorporated into your organization immediately. You cannot afford to continue in this hiring pattern. (A general contractor in this market with an in-house masonry crew normally has a payroll of about 100 people. Two hundred twenty-nine W-2 forms were processed this year). Information and resources about effective hiring practices are available at bookstores, libraries, and office supply stores. Most adult education curriculum of local school systems offers human resource development seminars and retreats.
Let's consider what is typical of an interview for a laborer's position in the masonry industry. The interview is probably no more than 30-45 minutes in length. In all likelihood the application is not filled out completely, especially the part about references and information of previous employment. The applicant is offered the job, accepts it and is told where to report to work the next morning. As the applicant walks out of the office, he says under his breath, "I'd never work for that guy." The hiring manager shakes his head and hopes this man comes to work the next day, but he's not sure that he will.
The hiring superintendent is so desperate to get warm