___________________________________________________________________________ Service Contracting Solutions
We wanted to make sure that we hired the right people who share our values.
“ We really focused on developing our people and did this through training and development programs. We’ ve emphasized the importance of soft skills, how we keep each other accountable, or help each other when there are mistakes or questions. The successes of last year represent everything that we have been working hard on for a long time. It meant that when the opportunities emerged in the market, we were able to fully capitalize.”
... we want to make sure that we are growing in the right way, not for the sake of a number
Career development
Jason Fike, the Vice President of Operations, embodies the benefits of prioritizing training programs as Liz points out:“ Jason has been pivotal in helping us improve our development. He began in an estimating role, then worked in our industrial department and worked his way up to project managing and now VP of Operations.”
Jason then reflects on some of the broader benefits of this approach:“ The more typical model in our industry is to hire experienced people with short-term goals in mind, to get through the next project, for example. This means the work can be very unstable. We hire to retain people; we want to keep them long term and train them to become the best they can be and provide them with all the opportunities we can.
“ This approach helps attract people to the company. It’ s something we’ ve been developing and evolving for a long time; initially, it revolved around pairing experienced operators with new staff members so they can follow their lead and learn on the job. While this is a crucial element to the overall strategy, we realized that for our field leadership, the priority is always getting the job done and making sure the project remains profitable, and deadlines are being met. In response, we are creating our own internal training and development superintendent who, like our safety team, will operate completely independently from production. As a result, we have already seen a mindset change in our staff who have gone from seeing their role as just a job to now seeing the opportunities to build a good career.”
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