Like many other industries, David DeQuattro and RGB Architects were impacted by the pandemic. 2019 the economy was steaming along at a good clip and the labor market was tight and all was working as expected for a robust economy. With the year 2020 came the COVID 19 pandemic, which caused a titanic shift in the world including the how business operated, employees produced, and low technologies changed. A significant amount of the labor force was required to be furloughed, work remotely, or laid off when there were no options for remote work.
David DeQuattro saw that mainly the hospitality and retail markets took the biggest unemployment hits because lockdown restrictions prevented this business from operating as well as there being no way for cashiers, waiters, cooks etc. to work remotely. The professional service industries, specifically the AEC firms in the construction industry, did not see the layoffs or furloughs as construction was deemed an essential requirement that maintained operational. Firms in the AEC market turned to technology options like Zoom, Teams, and other web collaboration outlets to remain active and productive when all, but the most essential employees were required to work from home.
The AEC industry made these web-based hosting platforms work and as a whole and kept the employees on the payroll, the projects moving and the lights on. Now in 2022 the worst of the pandemic has passed, and life has returned without the restrictions. Construction demand remains at a high, AEC firms are busy with project backlogs and much of what was developed with the web collaboration platforms has been integrated as next methods of operation. However, the labor market has grown significantly tighter with a demand for employees far out stripping employees available. This possesses several challenges, which include a lack of trained and experienced personnel available to hire, reduced productivity, significant increases in payroll due the laws of supply and demand, employee retention when other firms infiltrate and offer ever higher salaries and benefits packages. All these pressures are compounded with the new work from home model that was forced due to the pandemic restrictions but is now reluctantly embraced by employees.
So, what as a business owner do you do when you are unable to get all your employee’s back into the office or you can’t find the additional qualified employees needed to meet the workload demand?
Look to alternative and creative methods to bring the required resources into the firm and these can be strategies for remote employees, which allows for a much larger area to find talent rather than being restricted to a local market within a commutable distance, outsourcing options to drafting only firms or developing strategic partnerships with other firms to create a larger more flexible resource base that the firms involved can benefit from. All options have positive and negative issues which may work for some and not others or combinations may prove effective. Examples being the remote working model allows for the addition of qualified talent not local to the area but how that remote working condition is managed is important to maintain productivity, team coordination, integration into the firms’ methods and culture and how staff in the office react to a remote employee.
Strategic partnering is another option where the benefits of again having high quality personnel when needed but not having to maintain full time on payroll to address those times when a major push is needed beyond the capacity of the full time staff but is only a temporary condition not warranting additional hires if you could even find and train them in the current market The goal with strategic partnering is to leverage the partners resources when crunch times occur or when specific expertise is needed. When one firm is short of employees to meet a short-term obligation, the other firm would be able to expend some of its employee capital to assist and this would occur back and forth as needed. This option too needs to be managed carefully. This method which can yield many benefits also requires a cautious hand when you look at potential partners, do they have the same goals, the same work ethics, quality standards, operational methods etc. Also, there is non-solicitation agreements to avoid poaching of employees from one firm to the other. Ideally with the remote work technologies a partnership of this type would be effective when the two firms are remote so as not to impinge on each other’s local market or potential awkward situations of having the same client base.
In these unusual times creative solutions are required to avoid stagnation and by leveraging technology in a resourceful manner gains can be made. The firms that are always looking at being flexible and resourceful will see the benefits of a hot construction market even in the face of a restrictive labor market.
