Performance and skill gaps are some of the biggest issues the construction sector has faced for the last several years. Operations, demands, and even technologies are changing over time. And whenever this happens, acknowledging and solving to fill performance gaps is vital to maintaining productivity within your construction team.
Not knowing and not being aware that there is a performance gap within your team will have a serious impact in the long run – hitting the performance of your construction business. Hence, this is the very reason why you have to address this gap as early as possible. Find out some of the best ways to address performance gaps in this blog post, what causes them in the first place and how you can effectively solve or close them
What is a Performance Gap?
In many cases, a performance gap directly results from a missing skillset inside your team. This can show up as a need for continuous development in your crew members. If you miss or overlook it, you are putting your construction company’s survival at risk.
Performance gaps are a huge problem, and it is crucial to bridge them if you want to keep thriving and stay profitable. Correctly determining performance gaps and their causes is one of the most vital elements of rectifying them. Know that performance gaps stem from different sources, but common causes include:
- Changing job requirements
- Lack of knowledge
- Lack of understanding of the job role due to incorrect hiring practices
- Ineffective management
- Leadership and structural problems within the company
- Physical and emotional conditions in the workplace
Correctly identifying performance gaps within your construction team may mean adding in a third-party depending on current resources and capacity to assess your team properly. It is a great initiative to use multiple data resources like KPIs and invest in project management tools for construction to better deal with performance gaps and any other rising issues.
How to Effectively Address Performance Gaps
1. Evaluate the skills your team needs versus what they currently have
The first step in addressing the performance gap is figuring out some areas of need among your current crew members. Your construction team is required to have a wider set of skills. So, when you evaluate what your people are lacking, you must consider the business goals and expectations you have already set for the current position.
Assessments, surveys, and interviews are all effective ways to assess your crew members and get feedback directly. Also, it helps your team focus on their capacity and skillset and determine what they can improve on in some areas.
Once your team is involved in the process, you will slowly understand the size of the performance and skill gap and work towards closing it.
2. Conduct Onsite Job Training and Coaching
After doing the first step, you will not just gain a better understanding of the size of the gap. But also, you have a better idea of how you can educate and train your construction team. If your crew members are reliable, well-rounded, loyal, and hard-working, you must always look for areas to develop their skills.
You must create a plan to train your people on specific construction jobs and tasks. You can go for apprenticeship programs and training methods that are effectively helpful in developing the hard skills required in the construction sector. And invest in the latest project management tools because they will give you the greatest advantage. Deploying some of the best software solutions indicates that you care enough about your team and want them to develop skills and be equipped with the best cutting-edge software programs available in the market today.
3. Assess your Hiring and Recruiting Methods
If the performance discrepancy among your crew members is too big, immediately look for ways to bring in new talents. Take note you must be hiring for areas of your need. And this means you have to re-assess your hiring and recruiting process. You can begin with structured interviews, for they are a great way to ensure you properly assess every candidate, allowing you to do effective comparisons and contrast.
In finding ideal candidates for specific job roles, asking the right questions related to the position is highly important. Are they equipped with the right skillset? Are they physically capable of performing construction jobs? How aware are they when it comes to safety requirements? All these questions are necessary to ask.
4. Offer the best tools for your team
Most of the time, performance and skill gaps exist due to the need for proper tools and resources for your construction team. As a construction business leader, prioritize your people once and for all. Invest in the latest construction software today if you want higher productivity and smoother operations with less to no performance gaps.
You have many options and must find what suits your team’s current needs best. Performance gaps can best be tracked using sophisticated construction project management software. With this software put into place, you can monitor your crew member’s work performances and asses each of them effectively. All details and updates regarding their performances can be accessible, regardless if your crews are far too many and situated in multiple locations.
5. Address Workplace environment and company culture
Workplace and cultural issues often significantly affect your construction team’s productivity, resulting in a serious performance gap. These issues range from poor communication to a lack of emotional intelligence and many more.
You can best address such issues through thorough evaluations and assessments. You can also opt for other advanced ways to better deal with and lessen these recurring problems. For better communication between all your team members, you can deploy the best project management software for beginners that serve as a central platform where connecting and collaborating is one click away.
6. Incorporate Competency Framework
A great competency framework can help you to address and recognize performance gaps instantly. First, you must build a strong foundation to asses and track the individual role productivity of each crew member in your team. The competency framework helps you distinguish what good performance looks like rather than focusing on the skills, allowing more room to take proper steps and correct issues on a deeper level.
Motivation Can Also Cure Performance Gaps
From evaluating your team’s skills to conducting training, offering the best tools, and incorporating frameworks, you are sure to address performance gaps so easily. With all the tips we mentioned in the previous section, there is another missing aspect you are yet to consider, which is another critical element when addressing gaps.
Remember to motivate your construction team consistently. Even if you are convinced your crew members to know exactly what goals to hit and have the skills to hit them, they will only succeed if they have the strong will to pull the trigger.
So keep motivating your people and avoid discouraging them. You can get started with the following:
- Building performance goals with a strong foundation of clear, data-driven objectives. Doing so will help you earn a ton of respect from your people and keep them motivated to steer clear of any performance gaps.
- Follow up with your construction team and let them know you care enough to keep paying attention to them. On top of that, ensure they are skillful and well-equipped with the best tools, like construction planning management software they ultimately need to make things easier and get the job done immediately.
- Use data-backed insights to set the correct metrics that truly matter. This is a great approach compared to expecting your team to hit goals that they do not fully understand in the first place.
Once you can apply these tips we shared with you, you will close gaps well before you realize you fall into them. Hopefully, you will implement these strategies and get the results you need.
How Can Pro Crew Schedule Help You?
There are several good reasons why your company has to deploy the state-of-the-art construction technologies that exist and are emerging in the market today. One is to effectively address and resolve performance and skill gaps among your construction team.
Pro Crew Schedule – the affordable construction management software provides many benefits to your business. So, if you wish to reduce the gaps that have been long unresolved within your team, then this construction software is just the right one for you.
Pro Crew Schedule gives a more efficient and effective way to centralize the coordination of all processes across your projects, especially the communication of all parties involved. Considering the complexities of your construction processes, combined with the recurring gaps, this top-tier software is designed to make it easier to adopt and navigate into your workflows.
Get started with a free trial and find out how Pro Crew Schedule can optimize your internal processes, improves efficiency, reduce performance gaps and better align your construction team!
