7 Tips to Increase Productivity in Your Construction Company

As a construction business owner/manager, you might be aware of how much your stagnant productivity has negatively impacted your finances. But, are you aware of where these problems are stemming from, and how you should go about fixing them? 

Well, let’s see…

If something tells you that your experience with time theft, safety hazards, broken communication, and a variety of pandemic-related downfalls, are what have directly harmed your construction productivity, then you are correct. 

If something tells you that these issues will not go away, until you do something about it, then you’re 2 for 2.  

If you’re still working with pen and paper then you know how complicated completing tasks can be. While each issue differs in nature, they can be solved collectively with technology! We will simplify it in 7 ways that will massively increase your productivity.

How to Increase Your Construction Productivity 

If you let it, the smartphone in your back pocket could double as a tool for your day-to-day construction work just as much as the hammer you wear around your waist. 

We aren’t suggesting you take out your phone right now to bang it against a nail. What we are suggesting is that your smartphone could help you manage important logistics, such as keeping a tight budget, goal keeping, and keeping your team on the same page…all in one, downloadable app. 

Construction productivity smartphone apps can provide you with: 

• Real-time information on employee whereabouts to keep on schedule 
• Erase confusion about instructions with a detailed task management tool
• Maximize work efficiency with confident trainings and onboarding
• Boost employee morale 
• Employees who not only feel safe, but are truly safe
• Documents on file and in a safe, secure, password protected cloud

AND more!

When you don’t implement technology into your construction company, it can take as much as 20% longer to complete! That means that you can witness going over budget by 80%. Continuing to resist improved efficiencies through the use of technology could result in a losing business to your competitor, which is your worst nightmare. 

Is that a risk you’re willing to take? Check out these 7 tips that will quickly improve your construction’s productivity; save time and money, keep employees happier than ever, and give yourself the peace of mind that you’re doing everything you can to save your industry from crashing. 

While email is today’s form of “snail mail”, texting doesn’t fall short behind with its blurry lines between personal and professional communication use. 

So between the fear of untimely updates and the fear of messages getting lost in a vortex of regular everyday text, there is a need for something that will not only avoid these problems, but also aid collaboration amongst construction teams.

That being said, a chat messaging platform for professional use only that connects to a directory of all staff members, can support the constant need to voice needs, wants, and unforeseen issues on the job site. With your employees in direct contact with one another, they can keep the working chain in a flow with fast and to the point messaging. 

Like dominos, one communication issue or misunderstanding between employees or something unanticipated happens while completing a task, everything can come to a crashing fall. For that reason alone (and no other reason needed to make this point clear), communication takes first priority. 

Your employees are putting their life on the line, to build structures that are also required to be safe and sturdy for those eventually occupying it, there is absolutely no excuse that legitimizes the use of outdated communication platforms for construction productivity. 

Whether an employee needs to announce he has taken a break (because studies show this is extremely crucial for the heavy lifting aspect of the job) to scheduling mishaps, the price of the end outcome of a project and the safety of everyone, depends on how accessible team communication is to each and every worker. 

Manualized checklists for safety are a great concept, but they take way too long to finalize when it demands so many channels to overlook them. Between printing, scanning, messy paperwork, lags within those steps, and then emails to approve it all, it should already be obvious that manually making checklists is not going to save anyone (at least not in time!)

On top of the slow output, depending on the job site or the stage within the project’s life cycle, the need for safety products and precautions will always change. To keep up with these changes, manualized efforts need a face lift. 

Digitized safety checklists ensure everything is in order, available at all times, and accurate. Digital checklists can be anything from a set of steps to fulfill a complete task or a list of what not to do, what to stay away from, what to keep a watchful eye out for, what tools to pack and where to pack them. These can be as detailed as needed and it can be set to employees during specific portions of different project stages so that everything stays organized. 

As much effort you put into keeping your employees safe, if they don’t feel it or if they aren’t completely aware of how to take matters into their own hands, that can lead to life ending injuries down the road. A way to ensure employee safety and to keep employees themselves accountable for their safety, is through an accountable digital checklist. It’s priceless!

So beyond the fact that injuries cost companies like yours more money than you have to give (setting you back on budgets) it also completely kills your construction productivity. 

Looking for employees that know what they are doing? The second your employee steps onto the construction site it is their responsibility to get the job done to the specification and in a productive manner. Therefore, the onboarding process needs to be taken seriously, in order to fairly expect that of an employee! 

Studies show that employees who are properly taught the necessities, will have the confidence to work at an efficient rate (this will also keep your accident reports low, and operations high). However, with ever changing projects and new techniques for new blueprints, this requires consistent training; not just at the very start. 

If you have various projects occurring at one time, and everyone is on their own clock, this would be very difficult to attain. Not to mention Covid restrictions have put up barriers to group meetings. In instances as such, there need be online forms and a remote approach to onboarding and training. 

Digital forms and tutorials allows you to:

• Customized questions to keep everything in specification to the safety and security of an employee’s particular project

• Feel secure knowing all personal files, documents, and records are stored in one organized place, forever, and password protected
• Onboarding is done on the watch of the employee supporting the fluidity of their work life (you as a manager can set your chosen expiration time/date).
• Construction is a pool of folks coming from different backgrounds, and are in need of personalized instructions. Create language-specific onboarding so that every worker has the access to train at their highest capacity; safest standards in mind. 

With all of this in place, employees will feel more comfortable, confident, and equipped to handle anything that comes their way on the job site. Construction productivity at its finest! 

With all of the moving parts in your line of work, there’s no such thing as too much planning. It’s hard to set your plans in stone when even the slightest delay puts everything behind schedule. This impacts your stakeholders, the role of your contractors, your employees, your customer, but most importantly, it affects you! Falling behind on time, always upsets the budget, so in order to avoid this and all of the frustration that comes along with it, you need a task management tool to guide:

• Project’s trajectory from start to finish is visible to everyone (everyone is on the same page!)
• Keeps employees focused on their assigned tasks
• Transparency on employee speed of progress
• Makes all deadlines clear
• Update new changes and employees will never fail to miss those 
• Without lags, it makes expectations more accurate
• Communication in direct relation to specific project 
• With geolocation capabilities, you have assurance your workers are at the right place, at the right time. 
• Live viewing of tasks, and subtasks that are completed 

This is a way to play an active role in your construction’s productivity, but by managing it from afar. Apps can keep everyone in line, and therefore keeping everyone on board with the steps of development.  

Motivation is a tool in itself to keep construction productivity high. In the past, and still in today’s day and age, managers like you who want to push employees to do better, will incentivize it through performance indicators. The incentives can range anywhere between bonuses, health benefits added onto a contract, or even something as simple as showing your constant appreciation for their hard work, can go a long way. 

Feeling valued is something every worker (no matter which industry) wants to feel, but especially in an industry like yours where the work is physically demanding, there needs to be some sort of individualized recognition. 

With an online platform that can keep progress reports on each individual, with little to no work, you have an idea of who is showing up to work, and who is taking advantage of the dollars you pay them. With this on display, this not only will give you a better idea of which employees are best vs which need more employee management, but it will also play a part with how they self-push. 

With incentives and pure positive affirmation, this drives everyone to achieve more. This isn’t possible to keep up with your own two eyes, so with something that digital, you can be sure that all activity is monitored accurately and rewarded thereafter. 

You can’t build an entire building in one go. To keep things humane when it comes to goal setting, is to break everything up into “bite sized chunks”. What better way to break up the timeline of your projects, with a semi-automated scheduling tool that keeps employees in the know of what their days, weeks, and months look like.

With a digital calendar and schedule, both you and your employees will have an idea of the steps that everyone is in need of taking to make the big picture come to life. Construction productivity is no small feat, so in order to master your goals, you must use tools that keep the momentum going at a sensible pace. 

To avoid burnout, to keep count of employee work hours, and to ensure everything stays legal in relation to labor laws, an attendance tracking system attached alongside the scheduler would keep your employees and your project management style in rightful order. 

Goals are healthy and a necessity at every phase of your construction productivity. The confidence you can have in achieving fair and realistic goals, is duable when time tracking construction and scheduling, work hand in hand. 

There’s nothing like productivity, within productivity. That is exactly what an all-in-one employee management system is. To keep your deskless employees together as one, even on even the remotest of days (yes, corona days), and to keep you from overloading your phone with two too many apps, why not get one that includes everything we just discussed to increase productivity in your construction company?! 

Construction productivity is walking on a thin line and there is no time to waste. With apps such as Connecteam, you can lead by example in your industry, by keeping production at full speed ahead.

Increase your construction productivity with an app solution like Connecteam by:

• Erasing time theft and buddy punching with automated time clocking 
• Keep your PTO, absences, and sick days all accounted for in relation to the law
• Motivate your employees to work harder through goal setting and task management
• Keep your plans timely with detailed forms, checklists, and lists 
• Know the whereabouts of your remote employees with GPS tracking tools
• Have a built-in chat on all platforms to keep communication front and center

Think about all of the things that get in your way, and how all of this can sort that through. 

You might be also interested to read our round-up of the best construction workforce management software 2024.

The Bottom Line on Construction Productivity

Construction productivity is not a simple one to master. It requires a lot of work when you’re not provided the necessary tools. 

As time has gone on and you recognize that your old outdated ways of operating are insufficient, these tips to improve the most basic operations of your construction company, can improve your construction productivity from night to day. 

It’s no secret that the construction industry deals with massive amounts of labor shortages. Now stated as a fact, this has been reported to be an issue that stems from the lack of willingness to transition into more modern practices. 

With technology in the mix, you’ll not only solve all of your construction productivity problems, but you will also bring in a much larger  and younger crowd to grow the skill sets that are needed to keep this industry alive. Keep an open mind to applications such as Connecteam and try it for yourself to incorporate these 7 tips onto your construction business as soon as possible (it’s free to try!).