Be forewarned of the risk involved. Almost all of the remodelers interviewed for this article have had people jump from the field to the office, and the success stories are outnumbered by the failures. And it is even rarer for an employee who fails in the office to successfully move back into his former position in the field.
MANAGING ADVANCEMENT While a career track won’t serve its purpose if your people don’t know about it, take care to avoid promising something you can’t deliver. Motivating an employee to improve himself only to leave him disappointed when he achieves his goals and still isn’t promoted will have the opposite of the desired effect. “I didn’t want to make promises right away,” McCadden says. Instead, “our employees understood our organizational chart and that our purpose was to grow.”
A one-page form outlines the guidelines for field career advancement at Atlanta Design & Build, in Marietta, Ga. It gives provisions for how long an employee must stay at a level before being promoted to the next (at least 30 to 60 days) and stipulates that steps in the pay structure can’t be skipped. It also notes that employees must request consideration for promotion themselves. “When someone asks me to evaluate them and to make sure they are growing the way I want them to grow, that shows a lot of desire,” says company president H. Dale Contant. “I’m going to pay attention to them.”
This echoes Faller’s point about the kind of employees who take advantage of advancement opportunities. “Career tracks motivate people who care, and we want people who care,” he says.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t want an employee who isn’t interested in advancing through the ranks. Many in remodeling are attracted to the industry because they enjoy the craftsmanship part of the job and want to avoid management responsibilities. Force them into a leadership role, and you may end up losing your best people.
One of Kowalski’s employees had developed skills to the point where he was ready to take the classes he needed to become a job foreman. However, he had left his previous job in the corporate world because “he had too much responsibility. He was burned out and didn’t want any more.” Kowalski recognized the employee’s value to the company in his current position, was patient with him, and the employee has recently felt refreshed enough to take steps toward moving up.
Tom Riggs, owner of Riggs Construction, in Kirkwood, Mo., says that he has had a couple of quality employees who don’t want the pressure and responsibility of becoming foremen. “They are happy, but they don’t get the [considerable] perks,” that would come with the promotion, Riggs says.
It’s a choice that employees will have to make for themselves, but as company owner, you should at least nudge them to go forward. On his field crews, Allen has an employee with exemplary technical skills who he’s made a concerted effort to get to become a junior associate. The man declined, saying that he didn’t want to supervise anyone. Eventually, Allen discovered the problem: The employee, a finish carpenter, had no interest in overseeing people who didn’t have the same dedication to craftsmanship that he did. Allen paired him with a younger carpenter who was dedicated to quality, and the senior employee “put in tons of time” training his colleague. There are now four carpenters working under his supervision, and, Allen says, “he’s trained them all to be top-flight finish carpenters.”