I am not an actuary or a statistician, but my guess is that overall morale in our industry is quite low.  Employees who once worried about climbing the ladder of responsibility now feel that they are fortunate to have a rung to hold onto.  Business owners fear making payroll.  Production managers who used to fear they wouldn’t get all of the work on the board completed and on time may now struggle to keep people busy.  Even if your company is maintaining performance metrics, the evening news is filled with down notes.

I often discuss corporate culture in this blog and the vast impact that a sound culture has on a company’s bottom line.  If employees “buy in” to the program that the company promotes, everyone benefits.  Folks get to work on time.  Jobs can be finished quicker.  Pride in ownership displays itself.  But I believe a part of this equation is employee morale.  This is a tough time for all of us, and many construction business owners who are struggling to fill job boards and make payroll don’t have much sympathy for staff.  But your staff, even if they aren’t directly feeling the heat from reduced hours, pay or benefits may still be struggling.

I recall a time in my life when interesting projects that involved the use of my seldomly used timber framing tools was all that was needed to keep me motivated.  Working on many of the house museums in Savannah, GA, also helped me get excited to work each day.  But then marriage and family came, and my focus changed with their arrival.  Setting a timber truss wasn’t the only thing I needed to stay motivated.  I needed other things - job security, insurance and a check each week.  Our staffs are feeling these same pressures coupled with a deep uneasy feeling that something in our economy just isn’t right.  They may not be able to address it in scientific terms, but they know that something just isn’t right.

Now is not the time to withdraw to the daily struggles of the corner office and wall yourself off from staff.  To the contrary, now is the time to interact with them, and get a solid feeling of your construction company’s working pulse.  Meet with carpenters, team leads, superintendents and project managers. Most of all, communicate to your employees every bit of information that you are willing to divulge.  Empowering staffs with information won’t make them cut and run – instead, it will help them to better understand fundamental economics that are impacting their career and employer.  Ignoring questions of staff morale will surely lower it.