Rancho Mesa's Media Communications & Client Services Manager Alyssa Burley and Account Executive Casey Craig discuss how to strategically grow a construction company.

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Director/Host: ⁠Alyssa Burley⁠

Guest: ⁠Casey Craig⁠

Producer/Editor: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Lauren Stumpf⁠⁠⁠⁠

Music: "Home" by JHS Pedals, “News Room News” by Spence

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Transcript

Alyssa Burley: Hi, this is Alyssa Burley with Rancho Mesa's Media Communications and Client Services Department. Thank you for listening to today's top Rancho Mesa news brought to you by our Safety and Risk Management Network, Studio One. Welcome back everyone. My guest is Casey Craig, Account Executive with Rancho Mesa. He specializes in providing commercial insurance for paint, plaster, and drywall contractors. Today we're going to talk about how to strategically grow a construction company. Casey, welcome to the show.

Casey Craig: Thanks for having me.

AB: So one of the biggest ongoing challenges in the construction industry today is hiring and retaining quality employees that can help build on a company's existing foundation. So how are the successful construction companies you're interacting with sustaining their growth with regards to their employee population?

CC: It all starts with your new hires, bringing on the right employees, taking your time to vet out who's coming on your job sites, making sure they can do the work properly, putting people in the right position. So if somebody struggles working at height, we don't want to be putting them on a ladder where they're going to be a little more tentative, give them a job where they have a chance to succeed, and then we're looking to promote from within. So if we can, those employees that are safer understand what you're expecting of them. putting them in leadership roles so that they can pass that along.

 AB: Absolutely. And employees are a company's most valuable asset, really. How should companies go about determining which roles employees should be assigned?

CC: For the employees that you already have, a big thing that you can do is set specific steps for them to be promoted. So when they get hired, I think a big problem is they feel like they're laborers, they don't see a path to moving on, so they move on to other companies pretty quickly, and we lose good employees that way. If we're hiring from the outside in at a higher level, things that people are taking on is having them take assessment tests to see how they like to be trained, what they're really good at, putting them in roles that they can be successful at.

AB: Yeah. And once these employees are identified as being maybe future leaders within the organization, how should a company prepare these employees for a new role?

CC: The most successful companies that I see, they get these new employees into higher meetings, like not ones that are just for field staff, but higher-level meetings to see how they interact with other people to make sure that they're ready for that next step.

AB: Okay so kind of including them in the decision making process, asking their opinion, things like that.

CC: Yeah getting a little outside of their comfort zone.

AB: Yeah that makes sense and you know companies can also take advantage of both safety and professional development courses to grow their existing employees and Rancho Mesa has a couple different options for that. We have our Safety One platform that provides online safety courses for employees, while our RM365 HR Advantage Portal offers online courses to help employees hone their soft skills that they're likely going to need as they grow their career. So those resources are available to Rancho Mesa clients. So what are the benefits of promoting existing employees into other roles versus hiring from the outside?

CC: Probably the biggest advantage is that they're going to understand your company culture and the safety guidelines that you have in place. So they're not bringing in bad habits to your company. They're able to teach the newer employees your way quicker. It'll boost company morale, it's really nice when people in the field get to see other people from the field moving up. It gives them kind of that hope that this can happen for me as well.

AB: Absolutely.

CC: And then I think a big thing for anybody who's in ownership, we're trying to take projects off of our desk. You know, we don't want to have to handle the tedious thing. So we want people in these roles that can thrive. When I know that a problem is going to get solved before I even know about it, helps me be a lot more productive. And then the last thing, I mean, this is kind of a big part of it, you're going to lower your insurance costs. I mean, a lot of the accidents that we see on job sites are happening with employees that are newer within the first six months. So having the right people training them is going to put them in a place where they can succeed. Lower claims equals lower mod equals less premium.

AB: Awesome. I completely agree. So Casey, if listeners have questions about maybe managing their risk, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

CC: You can email me at ccriag@ranchermesa.com or 619-438-6900.

AB: Alright, well Casey, thanks for joining me in StudioOne.

CC: Thanks for having me, guys.

AB: This is Alyssa Burley with Rancho Mesa. Thanks for tuning in to our latest episode produced by Studio One. For more information, visit us at RanchoMesa.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.