Bridgit: Elite contractors are using these strategies to beat attrition

What strategies actually work to attract and retain construction workers? 

After crunching data from 233 companies and 114,000 people across the globe, Bridgit has new insights into workforce challenges. 

Mallorie Brodie, co-founder and CEO of Bridgit, said that after launching the workforce planning platform in in 2019, the company was eager to consolidate large sets of useful data for the industry. 

“We were doing a ton of research with the industry with executives at large contractors in Canada and the U.S. and we would anecdotally hear all of these stories but there was no data set that existed,” she said.

This year, several patterns emerged. First, top performing firms are intentional about the size and types of teams they cultivate, depending on what work is down the road. Second, attrition isn’t random and there are specific strategies that address it better than others. Finally, the labour shortage isn’t just about finding more bodies. The right mix of skills and experience matters. 

Retention cheat codes

We won’t bury the lead. The data is clear: workers hate long commutes and want meaningful opportunities . 

Across a substantial number of conversations Bridgit’s team had had with construction leaders, the commute factor  emerged as one of the most significant liabilities for losing people prematurely. This is especially true for superintendents. Researchers also noted that lower commute distances can also be an attractive lever when recruiting supers.

“The need for the workforce to move in order to be on a project is very very common but that does drive burnout and creates a very difficult work life balance,” said Brodie. “I think it’s really important that contractors are tracking this and trying to keep it top of mind.”

It’s also about more than high salaries. The data shows that most superintendents and project managers, when earlier in their careers, are actively evaluating employers based on whether the work will develop their personal portfolio and skillset—the project types, owners, and delivery methods that will define their reputation and open future doors. Past project types and owners should be considered during workforce planning so new opportunities can be provided.  

Peering into the future

It’s not just about next year. It’s about the years after. Bridgit’s data shows that that leading contractors are shifting toward proactive, data-driven workforce planning. Top-tier companies maintain a competitive edge by planning an average of 6.8 years into the future—two years longer than the industry average—and focusing on complex sectors like industrial and healthcare. 

Brodie explained that companies often conduct workforce planning at a very high level: simple supply and demand. They are thinking about how large the workforce needs to be in order build what’s in the pipeline. 

“That’s not enough to effectively workforce plan into the future in a strategic way,” said Brodie.

Other questions should arise. How far do you need to plan? What type of project history do people have to derisk future projects, what level of experience should those people have?

Brodie noted that this is no easy task. The industry is dynamic. You can’t set up a workforce plant for years down the road and forget it. Things are changing from week to week. 

“It’s not just about the labour shortage. It’s a labour shortage with very specific skills that are going to be required to meet the demand of the industry in next number of years. It’s not as simple as having X number of people and then our problems are solved.”

Overcoming attrition 

Construction has a median attrition rate of nearly 20%, meaning that hiring efforts have to grind year after year just to maintain current workforce levels. To overcome this, top contractors have deep collaboration between their operations and HR executives so they get ahead of recruitment and avoid the “treadmill” effect. This is when attrition begins to align with our outpace hiring. 

Bridgit’s data shows that while construction’s top contractors had similar attrition rates, their growth rate was three times higher. The data suggests that proactive hiring and workforce planning, not lower turnover, is what separates the leaders from the pack. 

Critical roles

Not all labour is equal. Some roles are so critical to the success of projects, they can be the difference between success or failure. The report found that retaining quality superintendents and project managers as a huge competitive advantage. And rates for these roles were a quarter of their less tenured counterparts. 

The takeaway was this: senior-level superintendents and project managers don’t move around often. Rather than trying to hire for these roles, builders have found that it’s a more effective strategy to hire supers and PMs who are earlier in their career, and then be intentional about retaining them.

But the data shows large, sophisticated firms haven’t yet cracked the code on superintendent and PM retention, meaning that companies who are able to be intentional about keeping these roles beyond the industry average of 3.7 years can create a competitive moat that some of the biggest names in construction are still trying to build.   

The rookie ratio

Are you tracking your “rookie ratio”? You might want to start.

According to researchers, one metric that has emerged among many more strategic contractors is the “rookie ratio.” While the definition can vary somewhat between organizations, this ratio is a quick way to communicate the number of rookies (typically <1 year of company tenure) vs. non-rookies on a project. Increasingly, strategic contractors are setting rookie ratio benchmarks that balance the development of newer team members with the experience needed to deliver successful projects.

The data shows that larger teams tend to have higher rookie ratios, with teams of 51 or more people averaging a rookie ratio of 56%. Strategic contractors don’t just track their rookie ratio, they set targets for it. Incorporating this number when planning results in teams that are balanced by design. The goal is to have newer team members are paired with veterans who can develop their talent. 

Researchers noted that knowing whether a project can accommodate a higher rookie ratio provides less-tenured team members with valuable experience. It also frees up tenured team members for higher demand work.  

HR shouldn’t be an island

Brodie explained that integrating operational data with the human resources department could greatly improve a firm’s performance. 

“One of the biggest insights we had when we were doing our initial product research was the information is very siloed between HR and operations,” said Brodie. “In a non-project-based industry, all of the information related to people would really live in an HR platform. It’s not changing every single day the same way it does in the construction industry as individuals are learning new skills on projects.”

She believes that merging this day-to-day operational data with standard HR data is a powerful tool to make more data-informed decisions around workforce planning.

“The goal of this report is not to be prescriptive and say things are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and what exactly you should do. But just starting to have more detailed data that is industry specific helps contractors have these conversations internally and see where there is opportunity for improvement.”