Imagine a typical construction worker. What do you see?
Are you picturing a man in a hard-hat, holding a power tool at a construction site?
You might find it surprising that laborers make up only about a quarter of the construction workforce – the rest is filled up by tradespeople, managers, and back-office administrative staff.
In today’s world, being a subcontractor is not just the work, but all the other tiring parts that make up a business: IT, HR, sales, payroll, just to name a few. To juggle everything, you need a group of employees to support you that is as diverse as the day-to-day problems the world may throw at you.
Diversity doesn’t just bring different skillsets and perspectives to your business, they add plenty of other benefits as well:
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- Quickly Fill Worker Shortages – Good employees are getting harder and harder to find. Embracing diversity means you will have a much larger talent pool to choose from. In New York, a whopping 53% of construction workers are immigrants (compared to 24% nationwide). By widening the search past the “usual candidates”, you can get a leg up on the competition, bid for larger projects, and get started sooner.
- Keep Employees Longer – Happier workers stay longer: that’s a fact. A more welcoming and inclusive work environment prevents workers from quickly moving onto the next construction job. And let’s face it – retraining employees is time-consuming, costly, damaging to both your time and your bottom line.
- Drive Innovation – By bringing in people from different backgrounds, you are providing a space where various ideas and new concepts can come together, which can often be the spark for new ideas and ways to improve your business.
- Better Image – With today’s construction industry being less like a “boy’s club” and increasingly filled with minorities, women, and people with disabilities, having a diverse workforce presents a more positive, forward-looking image to your clients and prospects – which could often make all the difference.
- Get More Contracts – Many local and states governments as well as large institutions have mandates on the spending on minority-owned businesses or the number of workers which are minorities. By showing compliance, you can get those contracts which can push your business to the next level.
- Quickly Fill Worker Shortages – Good employees are getting harder and harder to find. Embracing diversity means you will have a much larger talent pool to choose from. In New York, a whopping 53% of construction workers are immigrants (compared to 24% nationwide). By widening the search past the “usual candidates”, you can get a leg up on the competition, bid for larger projects, and get started sooner.
But how do you get started and how do you prove to the world that you are a firm looking forward to a more diverse, inclusive construction industry? That is where Constrafor comes in – with a suite of software that helps you keep track of not just your own diversity hires and metrics, but those of your contractors and subcontractors. So whether you need diversity reports to show compliance with New York State, minority hiring figures to access grants, or male/female ratio charts to show prospective clients, Constrafor can help produce all of those in minutes.
Not only that, Constrafor can help you bring all your invoices and payments under one login – reducing all that pesky paperwork so you can focus on what you do best – running your business. Sounds interesting? Contact us today!
