Keeping your employees happy should help boost your productivity. However, this may still not be enough to keep your project on track. To make money in 2019, you’re going to need to invest in yourself, your small business, and your employees. Implementing these seven strategies and tips can help boost your profits.
1. Use Subcontractors
As you manage them effectively, subcontractors could be an investment that helps you avoid costly delays. Make sure to solicit bids from multiple contractors so that you can secure their services at a competitive price. Also, communicate your expectations. Using time card software helps ensure that subcontractors:
- Arrive on time
- Arrive at the correct location
- Report their hours correctly
2. Adopt Technology
Numerous software programs can help streamline workplace management. Programs utilize factors such as:
- Advanced data and analytics
- Robotics
- Mobility
- Automation
Unfortunately, as this report from KPMG details, the construction industry has been unusually slow at adopting management technology. Managers should be willing to accept the fact that the way they’ve done things in the past may not necessarily be the best way to do them moving forward. Using technology to identify and improve deficiencies can help reduce the use of wasteful resources, therefore boosting your profits.
3. Stress Workplace Safety
Investing in workplace safety can keep your employees healthy. A healthy team is a productive team. Accidents can halt progress in its tracks, resulting in costly delays. Also having to pay workers compensation could add up quickly, especially for a small business.
Of course, neither of these account for the moral, ethical, and legal obligations that managers have to keep their employees safe. But the bottom line is that a safe workplace will help keep revenues high.
4. Maintain Your Equipment
Similar to workplace safety, you should make sure that your workers care for their equipment. Construction equipment is essential for day-to-day operations. It may be tempting to cut costs by not maintaining your machines but then you run the risk of mechanical failure, which will not only cost more to fix but will also delay your project.
As a small business owner, you don’t have the resources at your disposal to handle severe mechanical failure. So it is important to encourage your employees to track and report data about the equipment they use.
5. Set Goals For Your Team
If you ask any small business construction manager what their goals are for a project you are likely to hear “maximize profits.” However, this goal is not measurable or attainable. Before a project begins, managers should take the time to set a realistic profit goal and then craft a plan that will help them stick to this goal. Writing down your target profits and communicating this with your team will help give everyone something they can work towards.
6. Don’t Cut Corners
In the construction industry, your reputation is everything. If you cut corners by using cheap materials or shoddy work, word will travel fast. Sure, you may have maximized profits on one project. But by doing so, did you maximize profits in the long run?
If you’re a reputable contractor who performs quality work, businesses in the community will want to work with you again. It’s better to earn $10,000 from three separate projects than to make $15,000 on one project in which you cut corners. Communicate your work expectations with your team so they know that the bottom-line should not come ahead of ethics.
7. Offer Performance Bonuses
Creating an environment in which employees want to work can help boost profits. Offering performance bonuses will encourage employees to make efficient use of their time on the job site. The cost of a performance bonus pales to the cost of inefficiency and wasted working hours.
