Business View Magazine | Volume 9, Issue 2

22 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 2 GUEST SUBMI SS ION and showing them the merits of a career in construction. So how can your company adapt? Unfortunately, there is no cookie-cutter, plug-and-play strategy that will automatically churn out new recruits for you. It takes time, investment, and internal changes. Consider the following to effectively recruit a younger, more diverse audience: Is your culture conducive to minority success? With minorities making up most of the potential labor pool, it is crucial that construction companies invest in building a culture that can help them flourish. This goes beyond hiring a more diverse population to fill job openings. You need to create a framework within your culture that is healthy and ready to welcome diverse talent. By performing internal company assessments, conducting team training, and ensuring continuity of values from the top down, you can help foster a space that appeals to this younger demographic. Creating an inclusive culture demands involvement and commitment at every level of your company. Another strategy to help prepare your company for a more diverse workforce is investing in field leaders who are trained and have the people skills to manage people of different demographics. If your company is not set up to help minorities thrive, recruiting and retaining younger employees will prove difficult. Have you built relationships with educational institutions? Many secondary and post-secondary schools, such as Career and Technical Education (CTE) schools, offer construction programs with a strong potential pool of workers. As a team, you should be thinking through what your construction company’s presence at these institutions should involve and how to develop a relationship with the institutions’ leaders. Establishing a relationship with the dean of the program for example could develop a key pipeline for you. Having a presence in schools does not require only in-person engagements; a hybrid approach including in-person workshops and virtual speaking engagements could be a very effective strategy. How do you provide value with community involvement? Presence in the community is good; but providing value in your interactions will help progress relationships and build up your pipeline. At schools, is there an opportunity for you to help update their curriculum in construction-related subjects so that students are learning applicable skills? Or maybe you can volunteer to lead a workshop during the school day to harness the curiosity of young minds. You should also seek out community organizations