Ryan Englin on Construction Champions Podcast: Construction Is the People Business

I went on the Construction Champions Podcast with Ron Nussbaum to talk about something every contractor needs to hear: construction is the people business first and the construction business second.

Without people, you can't deliver your product or service. Period. Construction will be one of the last industries truly impacted by robotics. Machines will supplement, but they will never replace the skilled craft worker in the field. If you accept that reality, everything about how you run your business changes. Your people become the priority. Not your trucks. Not your tools. Not your contracts.

I shared my background growing up in a blue-collar household. My dad was in manufacturing his whole life. Owner operator. Worked 12-hour days, six and seven days a week. Started his business to have more control over his time and money, and never got either one. The problem was never that he was a bad entrepreneur. The problem was nobody ever taught him how to effectively attract, hire, and retain the best people so he could step back and actually lead. That realization is what eventually became Core Matters.

Ron and I dug into two big issues facing the construction industry right now. First, there is a perception problem. Society has spent decades telling kids that the trades are Plan B. Parents pushed their children toward knowledge work because it looked sexier, not because it was better. We have an entire generation whose parents never once encouraged them to pick up a trade. The good news is the tide is turning. Mike Rowe has done incredible work shifting that perception. In early 2023, apprenticeship enrollment jumped 50 percent while college enrollment dropped 10 to 12 percent. People are getting the memo.

The second issue is one individual companies have more control over: the construction industry has a newspaper mentality from the 90s. Most contractors have not adapted to the modern workforce. Almost 100 percent of job seekers start their search online. They expect to research your company, your leadership team, and the job before they ever apply. And if they look you up and find a website from 2003, a Gmail address, and a social media page that hasn't posted in a year, they make a fast assumption. If your online presence is not growing, people assume it is dying. That perception kills you before you ever get a chance to meet the candidate.

I told Ron about a construction company I came across just six months before the episode. Their website had one way to apply for a job. A fax number. I haven't seen a fax machine in 20 years. The modern workforce does not even know what one looks like.

We talked about recruiting as a marketing activity. The same work you do to attract customers applies to attracting employees. Define your target. Craft a compelling message. Choose the right channels. Build a pipeline. Nurture it. Your job postings are advertisements, not compliance documents. If your ad reads like a legal document, you are repelling the exact people you want to attract.

I walked Ron through our process when we start working with a new company. The owner has to be 100 percent bought in. Not 90. Not 95. One hundred. Because the second there is a hurdle, the owner who is only mostly committed will say "see, I told you this wasn't going to work." Once we have buy-in, we define who the company actually is. Most contractors have never done this work. They don't know their own vision, purpose, or values.

Vision is where the bus is going. If you don't know where your company is headed 5, 10, 20 years from now, how do you expect people to stay on the bus longer than a couple of months? Purpose is why you get out of bed to do what you do on the days you don't want to get out of bed. Values are how you behave on a daily basis when you are on that bus together. People don't leave jobs. They leave people. They leave when the culture does not match what they were told it would be.

When you get clear on vision, purpose, and values, you create an employer brand that is attractive to the right people. That is the shift. Stop looking for good people and start attracting good people. If you are not attracting good people right now, it is probably because you are not attractive to good people. Look in the mirror. Clean yourself up. Make your online presence match the company you want to be.

We also talked about building systems so your social media and employer branding run almost on autopilot. You are already communicating new projects internally. You are already telling a project manager about specs. Add one step to that process: send a few details to whoever handles social media. Post the win. Brag on your team. Change the message slightly. Instead of "look at what we built," make it "want to be part of a team that builds cool stuff like this?" Same information. Different audience. That is all it takes.

Ron asked a great question about whether companies bring social media in-house or outsource it. My answer: bring it in-house. You will never get someone outside your business to care about it like you do. It does not have to be a full-time role. One roofing contractor we work with has their office manager handle it. She was already on social media at work. They redirected that energy into company content. Going from zero to something matters.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on employer branding, the Core Fit Profile, and the full attract-hire-retain system on Titans of the Trades.