How to make employees more productive in construction companies

Problem: employees doing the bare minimum, high turnover, the owner compensating by working twice as hard.

Solution: structured training, clear career paths, shared objectives and a system to distinguish those who deserve it from those who don't.

Result: a more autonomous, more motivated and more productive team, without having to micromanage everything yourself.

Before you manage others, manage yourself

Your team's productivity starts with you. If you don't have clear goals for your company, you can't expect your employees to have them. If you work 14 hours a day responding to everything, you are teaching your team that nothing moves without you.

A football manager doesn't go onto the pitch to play. He prepares the team, gives instructions, corrects mistakes during the week. Then on Sunday he watches and only intervenes when necessary.

In Italy as elsewhere, those who work in the construction industry often do the opposite: they play, referee, manage and sell the tickets. All at the same time. And then they wonder why the team doesn't perform.

The first step is to decide what you want to achieve. Not "to work better" or "to turn over more". Real numbers: how much margin, on how many projects, with how many employees, by when. When you are clear in your own mind, you can convey that. Otherwise your team is following a captain who doesn't know where he is going.

Internal training: not just technical

Most construction companies do no training. At most they'll send someone on a technical course about a new installation system. But the training that really changes things is different.

There are two levels.

The first is training on values. How you treat the customer when they call with a problem. How you communicate a delay. How you present yourself on the job site. These things are not learned by osmosis. They have to be explained, repeated, corrected. If your employee answers a customer badly, the problem is not the employee. The problem is that nobody ever told them how to answer.

The second is continuous technical training. Not the once-a-year course. Half an hour every week where the site manager shows an installation detail, a common mistake, a faster method. The best teams I've seen working had this fixed ritual: on Monday morning, before leaving for the job sites, a 20-minute catch-up.

A trained employee costs more in the short term, but produces much more in the medium term. If you invest 2000 € in training for a fitter and they manage to finish even one job site in less time (saving 15-20 hours of work), you've already recouped the investment. Across 10 job sites a year, that's 150-200 hours saved. With an hourly cost of 35 €, we're talking about NaN € more in margin.

The problem is that most owners only look at the cost of the training, never the return. They reason as if the time spent training were time wasted. It's the opposite: it's the best invested time you have.

Beyond the salary: career paths

One of the reasons that good employees leave is that they don't see a future. Today they install windows, in 5 years they will be installing windows. Same role, same pay, same days.

If you want to keep capable people, you have to build a path. You don't need complicated organisational charts. It just needs to be clear: someone starting as a helper can become an autonomous fitter. An autonomous fitter can become a team leader. A team leader can manage relationships with clients on the most important job sites.

Each step has precise requirements and an economic difference. Not vague promises. Written numbers.

When an employee knows where they can get to and what they have to do to get there, they work differently. Not because you ask them to, but because they have their own motivation.

I have seen companies where the move from helper to autonomous fitter meant 200 net more a month. It is not an enormous amount, but it is concrete. And above all it is linked to a clear goal, not to an arbitrary decision by the owner.

Shared goals and common activities

Teams that work are not groups of people who work in the same place. They are people working for the same result.

This means sharing the numbers. Not all of them, but the ones that count: how many projects you have, how you are doing on timeframes, where you are losing hours. If your team doesn't know how the company is doing, it can't contribute to making it do better.

A brief meeting every week. 15 minutes, no more. "This week we finished 3 out of 4 job sites on time. On the fourth we overran by 6 hours, let's look at why." No blame. Just facts and solutions.

And then the activities away from the job site. A dinner now and then, a team lunch when you finish an important job. It seems trivial, but people work better with people they know and get on well with.

An owner I work with started sharing the margin on every project with the team at the end of the month. Not the accounting details, just the final number: "On this project we made 22%, on this other one 9%." Inside three months, the team began to point out waste that they had previously ignored. Because now those numbers meant something to them too.

Incentives and recognising merit

The salary is the minimum. It keeps people in the company, but it doesn't make them productive. What makes the difference is tying part of the compensation to results.

I'm not talking about complicated systems. I'm talking about simple things: if the team finishes the job site on time and without customer complaints, there's a bonus. If the month goes well for the company, a portion of that result goes back to the team. If someone proposes an idea that saves time or material, they are recognised.

Let's do a concrete example. You have a 30,000 project with an expected margin of 25%, so 7,500. If the team overruns by 3 days, you lose at least 1,500 of margin. If, on the other hand, they finish on time and with zero defects, the margin remains intact. Take 500 of that margin and share it among the team as a bonus. You keep 7,000 in margin and you have a team that will do even better next time. It's mathematics, not generosity.

The point is that merit must be rewarded visibly. If the good employee and the mediocre one earn the same, you are telling the good one that it's not worth the effort.

Who to keep and who to let go

Not all employees are worth keeping. This is the issue nobody wants to tackle, but it makes the difference between a company that grows and one that stands still.

The people to keep share your values, are capable in their jobs and point in the right direction. They don't have to be perfect from day one, but they must improve over time.

The most difficult thing is to act. Many owners hold onto problematic people for years because "it's hard to find someone" or "deep down they know how to do the job". But the cost of the wrong person is not just their salary. It's the damage they do to the good people around them. The best ones leave first, because they have alternatives. And you are left with the ones who have nowhere else to go.

Do a simple calculation. An employee who slows down the team, creates tension and generates complaints costs you at least NaN € a year in lost hours, redone work and lost customers. Finding and training a replacement costs less. And in the meantime the rest of the team goes back to working as they should.

To make this decision you need data, not feelings. How many hours each team has worked. How many complaints. How much margin it has produced. Without these numbers you are deciding by guesswork.

BAU Gest

Keep track of hours, projects and margins per team

With BAU Gest you know exactly how much each team is producing and where you are losing money. Clear reports, every week.

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Net margin24,2%

Active jobs8

Hours deviation+12%

Monthly plan: where to start

You don't have to do everything together. Here is a realistic plan over 4 weeks.

Week 1: write down the growth levels (helper, autonomous fitter, team leader, point of contact) with requirements and pay differences. Pin them up in the office.

Week 2: start the Monday morning meeting. 20 minutes, a technical or organisational topic, a discussion. Do it always, even when it seems like it's not needed.

Week 3: set a bonus tied to a specific project. Communicate it to the team before the job site begins, not afterwards. They need to know what they can earn and how. Write the rules on a sheet: time target, required quality, bonus amount.

Week 4: look at your employee list. If you have a person who you already know you should let go, stop procrastinating. Every week that passes makes the decision harder and the damage greater.

After the first month, repeat the cycle. Add a second topic to the Monday meeting. Raise the bar on the bonus. Promote those who deserve it. Every month your team becomes a little more autonomous and you a little more free to do your job: leading the company, not replacing the employees.

Productivity is not a trick. It is the result of the right people, trained well, with clear goals and a reason to commit. The companies that grow are not the ones with the most employees. They are those with the right employees, put in a position to give their best. Build this, and the rest will follow on its own.