How Your Contracting Business Can Avoid Disputes

Construction disputes can be a nightmare. No one enjoys getting stuck in the middle of one, especially if you don’t think you did anything wrong. The best path is to avoid it in the first place With these tips, you can minimize your risk.

Review Your Contracts
Many people start out by building contracts using boilerplates that they can find online. But in a lot of cases, those boilerplates don’t provide the clarity that you need for the type of projects you do. They may also be outdated, failing to address current issues in the construction industry, like the labor shortage or supply chain issues. Take the time to review all of your contract language. Break it up into pieces so that you don’t start to skim. Underline passages that don’t make sense or seem too vague. That will give you a jumping-off point to improve them.

Hire a Professional to Clarify Language
If you ever end up in a dispute, you’re probably going to need a lawyer to help you negotiate it. You may be able to save yourself a lot of time and hassle by hiring a lawyer to review your contract language, as well. Lawyers with experience in contract disputes in construction may be able to tell you which terms are more likely to become an issue in a dispute, as well as better alternatives. It can be a significant investment of funds. But the comfort and assurance of knowing that your contracts are legal and specific could go a long way toward helping you negotiate with new clients with confidence.

Update Your Business Practices
Although contract disputes often involve some issue with the contract language, there are plenty of other problems that can trigger a dispute. If your business practices are inconsistent with your contract language, you could easily end up with a dispute. Despite the fact that many construction firms consider overspending and delivering late to be the standard, you don’t have to assume that for your own business. Take the time to examine your business practices and see which areas could be improved. Getting better at estimating costs or delivery time might be the difference between a satisfied client and an angry one.

Resolve Issues Early
As with most aspects of construction, the sooner you find a problem, the better off you are. It’s easy to assume that early issues will resolve themselves in time, but it doesn’t always work out that way. If you seem to have problems communicating with the client or reaching consensus from the outset, you should pause on progress to negotiate them. After all, someone who is unhappy with the approach you are taking during design or planning is more likely to raise issues with the results of those stages. Investing the time to make sure everyone is on the same page gives you a better assurance of a satisfactory end result.

Be Transparent About Expectations
Transparency is the best path to ensuring that your client understands your obligations and confirming that you can meet their expectations. A lack of communication or delays in the delivery of things like project plans can put people in the position of rushing through important review and negotiation stages. It can be annoying to deal with a client who constantly wants to change the scope, but the solution is not to keep everything under wraps until you’re ready to start construction. Work on hammering out the issues as they come up, and you’ll be more likely to solve them before it’s too late.

Avoiding disputes isn’t always possible, but you can reduce the likelihood. To learn more about starting your career in construction, contact CSLS today!

5 Reasons a Healthy Lifestyle Makes You a Better Contracting Business Owner

Living a healthy lifestyle is its own reward. When you’re a business owner, it’s even more important. Check out these five reasons that being healthy will make it easier for you to run a business.

You Have More Energy
Running your own business requires more energy than it takes to work for someone else. You have to manage all the various aspects of the running of the business, not just engage in work that brings income. Even if you are able to hire employees to handle administrative tasks, you still have to manage them. If you want to keep a steady pace, you must start with a sufficient amount of energy. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is the easiest way to ensure that your energy level is high enough to meet your ambitions.

You Sleep Better
To even reach that level of energy, you need enough rest to recharge yourself. Of course, eating right and exercising can help you there as well. Experts estimate that adults need 7 to 9 hours of sleep every night, and most American adults don’t get enough. Even if you get a sufficient amount of sleep, low sleep quality can make it feel like you don’t. It’s not surprising that bad sleep leads to bad health, and vice versa. A healthy lifestyle improves your sleep quality, which makes it easier to achieve your health goals.

It’s Easier to Manage Your Mood
You’ve probably seen health experts tout the benefits of exercise as a way of managing your mood. And if you’ve ever encountered people at work who always seems to be in a bad mood, you can understand how important that is for your ability to run a business. People create an atmosphere around them that is affected by a variety of factors, especially the way they approach it. Exercise burns off excess energy and can help you avoid getting stuck thinking about things that frustrate you. In turn, you’ll be more likely to come to work with a positive outlook. All of these things make you an easier person to work with, which makes your work environment a happier one.

You Feel Better
You can probably tell the difference between waking up in the morning feeling good and waking up in the morning feeling awful. The former sets you up for a great, productive day. The latter sets you up to feel uncomfortable and frustrated. It’s probably obvious which one you would choose because feeling better is an important part of having a good day. By focusing on your health, you’re less likely to get sick or feel the effects of chronic health problems. That can give you more good days, which make it easier to get more work done and finish the week on a high note.

You’re Less Likely to Get Hurt
Although almost anyone can get injured by an accident on the job site, repetitive stress injuries are a different matter. People who work in construction have a higher risk of injuries related to repetitive movements. Although there are a number of factors that contribute to your personal risk for these injuries, your level of physical fitness is an important one. Building and maintaining strong muscles help to support your joints. As a result, you are less likely to sustain injuries related to repetitive stress, and you will find it easier to recover from injuries as a whole.

Maintaining your health is a vital part of running your contracting business. For more tips on the things, you’ll need to start, visit CSLS today!

5 Tips to Reduce Your Personal Expenses While Running a Contracting Business

Starting a contracting business involves lots of expenses. If you aren’t careful enough, you might end up overspending on your personal accounts as well as your business ones. With these tips, you can cut down on your overall expenses and make it easier to stay ahead.

Follow a Budget
In order to figure out ways to reduce your expenses, you have to figure out what they are in the first place. Even if you follow a budget regularly, there’s a high likelihood that you need to check in to confirm that it’s still working for you. If you don’t want to build one from the ground up, it’s pretty easy to find sample budgets online that you can tailor to fit your personal finances. The key is to make a budget that you can follow. Setting ambitious goals that are far beyond your reach may have the opposite effect of leading you to ignore the budget you just created. If you’re not used to sticking to a budget, start small and build up from there.

Look for Easy Cuts
Making a list of your regular expenses may help you identify things that you could cut without a lot of trouble. For example, lots of people have a gym membership that they pay more for the sake of vanity than actual use. It’s also common to subscribe to a service that you don’t use very often, if at all. Several subscriptions can add up to hundreds of dollars per month. Take a moment to evaluate your expenses and make sure that you are getting the most for your money. Canceling a service can be a hassle, but the savings is often worth it.

Plan for Emergencies
Emergencies are expensive, especially if you have no plan in place for them. You never know when you’re going to unexpectedly have to replace a tire on your car or fix the damage at your house. Additionally, there are a lot of regular expenses that can turn into emergencies if you don’t have the funds set aside to pay for them. One of the easiest solutions to this problem is to build an emergency fund to help. Even if it’s just a few hundred dollars in a savings account that you don’t touch outside of emergencies, it’s better than nothing. Having even a little set aside can help you cut down on the expenses that you incur when an emergency starts creating problems for your work or other aspects of your life.

Minimize Debt
It’s not always possible to stay completely out of debt, but you can minimize it. Debt comes with repayment obligations and interest that you have to pay on top of the principal. Debt servicing can cost you thousands or more each year, depending on how much debt you have. Be conscious about your decisions, especially if you are determining what to pay for in cash and what you can buy on credit. Even a handful of decisions to wait on small purchases could save you hundreds by the end of the year.

Track Mileage
When you run a contracting business, it’s easy to shoulder some of your business expenses with your own money. Mileage is a great example. If you use your personal vehicle to drive to a client site, you could be tracking that mileage as a personal deduction for your business. In the short term, you’re paying more for fuel to run the vehicle. In the long term, you’re putting more miles and wear on the vehicle. Deciding to make that an expense for your business helps you to separate those costs and ensure that your business doesn’t cost you more than you bring in.

Managing your expenses will help you to build a contracting business that can last for years. To find out how you can prepare for the contractor licensing exam, visit CSLS today!

How Long Can Construction’s Labor Shortage Last?

If you’ve been watching the construction industry for a while, you might think that the labor shortage is going to last forever. When experts say that construction demand is going to decrease, it often seems that demand grows even more. The shortage is tied closely to demand, but it’s not exactly the same. Here are a few ways you can look at the state of the labor shortage, and what it means for working in construction in the future.

Demand Is High
Evaluating the current state of demand for construction is more complicated than it seems. You can look at reports of new construction starts over the past few months, and that will give you some information but not a complete picture. Part of the problem with construction’s labor shortage is that demand is currently high. The pressure to complete projects relates somewhat to existing demand for housing and commercial spaces, as well as a resurgence after drops in demand during 2020 due to the pandemic. In essence, there are still a lot of projects that property owners would like to start, regardless of when they actually decide to do so.

Experts Are Retiring
Of course, in order to complete those projects, there needs to be a moderate pool of experts available to do highly-specialized tasks. The trouble is that there isn’t, and the problem continues to get worse. For the past few years, many people in construction have been retiring after careers of 30 to 40 years or more. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough people coming in with the skills needed to replace them. This aspect is where the labor shortage can get perplexing. Even if hundreds of thousands of people flooded the industry, it wouldn’t solve the problem immediately. The industry needs people to fill roles that are high in demand.

Skills Take Time
The construction industry has spent the last few years trying to figure out how to motivate more people to join, and part of that is enticing people to build the experience that they will need in order to meet the demands. Although you may not need a ton of experience to work in a variety of construction jobs, the ones with the highest salaries and the greatest job security may take a few years to establish. As such, when you read about construction businesses trying to appeal to workers, you should keep in mind that it’s a long game. They’re hoping to create a future pool of construction workers and contracting business owners.

Delays Will Continue
Right now, the experience of many contracting business owners is a bit of a struggle. People have to fight to get subcontractors in certain fields, which can lead to delays in completing projects. In some cases, property owners even decide to put a project on the backburner because they can’t find the professionals needed to do the work. In the short term, this can drive innovation because businesses will have to get more creative and efficient with their processes. In the long term, the industry has to plan to minimize the extent of the shortage, even if it can’t be eliminated entirely.

Now’s the Time
All this means that now is a great time to start in construction. Businesses are bordering on desperate for workers, which can be a great opportunity for someone looking for better employment and a stronger career path. Starting now isn’t likely to hurt your future prospects, because demand is set to continue for years into the future.

Solving construction’s labor shortage starts with the decision to join the industry. For more information about your future in construction, contact CSLS today!

What Employees Expect From Your Contracting Business, and How You Can Deliver It

You probably haven’t missed the changing environment for employees in industries of all kinds. The labor shortage that construction has been dealing with for years is now gaining a lot of attention on the national stage. If you want to hire workers, you’re going to have to get them in the door with more than a smile. Here’s what you can do.

Higher Pay
It’s no mistake that if you want to get the broadest range of applicants and a higher likelihood that employees will stay once you hire them, you need to pay more. You don’t have to read the news often to know that the entire country is going through a labor shortage, and construction has been dealing with it for a decade. Right now, your ability to secure contracts and complete work is dependent on your success in getting and retaining employees. There are other factors that people look for in a work environment, but the pay is usually the first one on the list.

Benefits
Next on the list for a lot of people is benefits. When most people are dependent on their workplace for things like healthcare and retirement planning, you can expect prospective employees to ask you about it. Even if you can’t offer all the benefits of a larger business, it’s worth doing your research to see what you can offer in these categories at a minimum:

  • Healthcare
  • Paid vacation and sick leave
  • Retirement

The ultimate goal here is for employees to feel like working with you is a benefit, not something that takes away from their ability to take care of themselves, their families and their retirement. That way, any job change they make has to improve upon what they are already getting from your company.

Training/Education Reimbursement
Virtually everyone is on some kind of career path, and your business could be an attractive option to help employees on their way. When you hire people, you may be looking for evidence of education or certain credentials. You can encourage them to keep achieving. It’s tempting to believe that training employees only prepares them to leave, but in reality, the opposite is often true. Employees usually prefer to stay with a company that supports their growth, and providing training or education reimbursement is a good example of that. By comparison, employees are more likely to leave companies when they feel like they are being intentionally kept at the entry-level.

Sustainable Work Schedules
If you have ever had to work long hours just to pay the bills, you understand how unsustainable it can be. You’ve probably had at least one boss who took advantage of your willingness to please to make you come in on your day off or work hours past quitting time. Right now, employees are much less likely to tolerate these kinds of practices. They want to know that they have a defined time that they can expect for work, with the knowledge that the other hours belong to them. Offering a work schedule that they can manage and plan for makes it easier for them to make a commitment to you for the long term.

Remote Work Opportunities
Although the economy tends to swing back and forth between favoring businesses and favoring employees, the pandemic brought a particular aspect of work into the light. Many employees prefer to do at least some of their work in an office or workspace environment, but there are a growing number of people who want the option to work from home as well. Of course, as a contracting business owner, you may do most of your work at the job site. But your employees may appreciate the ability to handle online training or other administrative tasks from home.

Getting over construction’s labor shortage takes businesses that are willing to go the extra mile for their employees. To learn more about how to start a contracting business, visit CSLS today!

Is Your Contracting Business Ready for an OSHA Visit?

As an owner of a contracting business, you are expected to maintain certain levels of safety for yourself and anyone who works in the area. On occasion, OSHA may decide to conduct unannounced visits in certain regions based on injury reports and other data. You’ll be better off if you know what to do. Here are a few factors to keep in mind.

Keep Organized Records
One of the best things that you can do in advance of a visit from OSHA is to keep organized records about your daily activities. For example, if you have a specific interval for conducting safety drills or training sessions, you should have a verifiable record of those activities. In the event of accidents or injuries, you should follow all local guidelines for handling and reporting them. That way, if you are ever in a situation where an OSHA inspector shows up to your business unexpectedly, you do not have to scramble to provide them with information on their request.

Stay Current on Safety Regulations
It may seem like it goes without saying that as a business owner, you should stay current on all safety regulations related to your field. But the reason that some businesses get surprise OSHA inspections may be related to the way that they follow safety regulations. Keep in mind that the rules might change throughout your construction career. Formulate a plan to ensure that your employees receive adequate training, and participate in regular drills and safety audits. That makes it easier to confirm that your team is actually doing the work in a way that is most likely to minimize injury.

Designate a Point of Contact
If you have a business with a handful of employees, you should consider designating at least one person to be a point of contact for an OSHA inspector. This person should have access to your businesses policies and procedures, as well as detailed company records. They should be able to answer questions from the inspector about any activity relating to your business. It’s worth keeping in mind that, even if your business is very small, you may need a second person who can serve as a backup. In other words, you might expect to be this contact at all times, but you won’t always have a guarantee that you can be there at the time. You should have someone who can fill that role for you.

Ask for Information
When any visitor arrives at your place of business or at a job site, it’s routine to ask them for evidence that they have a logical and legal reason to be there, as well as the purpose for the visit. If someone arrives and says that they have been sent by OSHA to perform an inspection, you should ask them for identification and any other relevant documentation. Before they conduct the inspection, you may have an opportunity to speak with them about the reason for their visit. At that time, you should also notify your employees about the visit, so that they are aware that there is an inspector on-site.

Be Present During an Inspection
It’s easy to get nervous about an unexpected OSHA inspection, but it’s best if you stay in the moment. Inspectors perform inspections as a way of identifying possible risks or to gather information about past events. You will have a better result if you:

  • Participate fully during the inspection
  • Answer questions completely and honestly
  • Avoid trying to offer unnecessary information

If you’re not sure what you should or should not do, it’s a good idea to consult a lawyer about your rights and responsibilities. This won’t guarantee that you can avoid receiving a citation. But if you cooperate reasonably, you can minimize future trouble for yourself and your business.

OSHA inspections can be a source of anxiety, but they may happen at various points throughout your construction career. To learn more about what you can do to build a safe contracting business, contact CSLS today!

How to Make Long Nights Work for Your Contracting Business

The end of daylight savings has arrived, which means that you have some long nights ahead. Although long days are great for your contracting business, the absence of them doesn’t indicate problems. Here are a few ways you can use those long nights in your favor.

Start Early
Although the change in daylight hours happens in both morning and evening, you can still maximize your daylight hours by starting a bit earlier. Instead of waking up when it is already light outside, keep an eye on the sunrise and plan to get up at least a little earlier. That way, you are already at the job site and ready to go to take advantage of the maximum amount of daylight. If you’re not an early riser, or if you just have trouble getting up to an alarm, make minor changes in your routine. Adjusting your clock just 15 minutes earlier per day may make it much more reasonable to accept.

Switch Up Your Work Schedule
When the sun rises before you do, and sets long after you have finished work for the day, there’s no reason for you to adjust your schedule based on daylight hours. In the winter, you may be due for a change. Sometimes, coming up with a new plan to handle work during the day can give you a refresh that makes it easier to get everything done. For example, you might shift some of your administrative tasks to the late afternoon, instead of getting them done first thing in the morning.

Just make sure that you allow for enough break time. Schedule your breaks around natural transitions, especially if you’re still working after sunset. Stretch your muscles, eat a snack with protein, fat, and carbs, and adjust your work gear if it gets cold. That way, you don’t burn out and get too tired before you’re done.

Increase the Lighting
Although the sun is one of the most effective light sources you can use, it’s certainly not the only one. If you’re arriving and starting work in darkness or finishing the day after sundown, you’ll need more light. Consider different options based on the amount of lighting that you need for the space, as well as the precision that you’ll need. Brighter lights make it easier to focus, but they can also feel excessive or glaring in small spaces. Invest in a few battery-operated products, so that you can take some wherever you need to go on the job site.

Catch Up on Administration and Maintenance
The winter is often a slow season for contracting businesses, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t have anything to do. During the busy season, there are probably a lot of tasks that you find difficult to schedule, like reviewing your marketing strategy or catching up on equipment maintenance. Many contracting business owners choose to perform this upkeep during the slow season because it is easier to schedule it around other projects you have going. That way, you arrive in the spring with your business in better shape, ready to meet the needs of your clients.

Take Time Off
As a contracting business owner, you may feel the pressure to stay incredibly busy at all times. And during the busy season, it certainly is easy to let your schedule run away with you. But you need to keep it sustainable, or otherwise, you will burn out fast. Use the shorter days as an opportunity to maximize your productivity, and take breaks at night. This is also a great time to encourage your employees to take a vacation or participate in training.

Maximizing long nights takes a little practice, but you’ll get the hang of it. To get started building your construction career, visit CSLS today!

Why This Winter Is a Great Time to Start Your Construction Career

The last couple of years have been a whirlwind for all industries, construction in particular. Everyone has to rethink the way that they do things, with big benefits for those who take advantage of it early. If you’re starting to think about a change in career, now’s a great time to get started. Here are a few reasons that this winter may offer the change of a lifetime.

The Labor Shortage Is Getting Worse
Construction’s labor shortage may be starting to feel like a song that has been playing on repeat for about a decade. But now, other industries are starting to hear the song as if it were new and not seen in a generation. In essence, the labor shortage is everywhere. Contracting businesses are having a hard time finding skilled workers. Larger construction businesses are struggling to secure the services of subcontractors. And companies everywhere are finding that their employees are looking for a new career path. You could be one of them.

It’s an Employee’s Market
Changing jobs may feel like a big deal, much less changing careers. But if you were going to do it at any point in time this decade, now is highly beneficial. It’s an employee‘s market, which means that there are more companies looking for employees than there are people looking for jobs. It means that people planning a career change are in a better place to negotiate for higher pay, benefits, retirement options, and more. If you’re thinking about starting your own contracting business in a few years, you may have more flexibility to prepare for that.

You Have Time to Prepare
One concern that a lot of people have about changing careers is that they will wait too long and then miss out on the best opportunities. But frankly, you could have changed your career construction any time in the last 10 years and noticed a big improvement in your future prospects. With the worldwide labor shortage as it is, you probably have extra flexibility to prepare. That means if you want to save up so that you can focus on your studies, or look at your options for apprenticeship programs, it may be easier to do it now than it was even a couple of years ago.

Change Is Everywhere
The other thing about changing careers is that you have to tell everyone about it, and receive their feedback. At a time when practically everyone is considering an upgrade in their jobs, changing careers is going to feel quite normal to the people around you. As such, family members and friends, who might have cautioned you against leaving a reliable job a few years ago, maybe more understanding and even encourage you to do so now. Even if you’re just looking to get your foot in the door as you start to meet the requirements to become a licensed contractor, you’ll have more options right now.

Big Things Are Coming
The gradual end of a worldwide crisis makes a lot of people think about what they want from life and how best to get it. It’s creating changes in the construction industry, and they are going to be big. It’s time to make significant updates to infrastructure all over the country. Businesses are looking for ways to entice and keep employees while balancing their needs in a new world. Construction plays a significant role at all stages of this process. If you’re wanting to get in on it, you’ve rarely had a better time.

Starting your contracting business may be one of the best decisions that you make this winter. For expert guidance on what you’ll need, contact CSLS today!

What Can Be Done About Construction’s Supply Chain Problems?

Construction has had issues with the supply chain for at least a couple of years now. Although many industries are currently feeling the squeeze, it may be affecting construction worse than others. The good news is that experts are actively looking for solutions. Here are a few of their ideas.

Temporary Release of Stockpiled Materials
The United States keeps an emergency stockpile of certain types of materials. The amount and use of the stockpile is dictated largely by the executive branch of the federal government. By releasing certain amounts of raw building materials, the government can bypass some of the current delays in the supply chain. It’s not a permanent solution, as these supplies will run out eventually. But it can help to bolster the market so that contracting businesses can continue to get supplies while the manufacturers and shipping interests fix the problems causing delays.

Infrastructure Updates to Eliminate Shipping Backlogs
Ultimately, putting a bunch of new materials into the shipping routes won’t help much without coping with shipping backlogs. Right now, one of the biggest problems that many industries are having with supply consistency is shipping. Specifically, ships are facing significant delays in transferring their materials to a shipyard, and then delays in getting those containers on a truck or other vehicle. Even a few days’ worth of backlogs can turn into weeks ‘worth of delays in deliveries. Upgrading and expanding the shipyards, while providing for increased labor, can modernize the processes to make them work more quickly.

Increased Paths to Raw Materials
Fixing the problems with shipping is a major part of addressing the supply chain, but so is access to the raw materials in the first place. The supply chain is failing at several points, and some experts think it is unwise to focus too much on issues that come up toward the end of the chain. In short, they believe that it is important to find different ways to source raw materials and make sure that businesses can get them from more than one supplier, in different locations. That way, things like bad weather or a shipping delay in one port are less likely to cascade into problems for everyone.

Assistance to Supplying Countries
Improving access to raw materials may involve interacting with other countries and helping to fix these problems together. Although the U.S. produces a lot of raw materials for construction domestically, there are many countries in Central and South America and in Asia that manufacture raw goods for export to the U.S. When they get hit with supply chain issues, American businesses feel the pinch. Some experts recommend collaborating with and providing assistance to these countries, as a way of making the supply chain more stable for all.

Sharing Data About Consumption
In many ways, the supply chain problems are exacerbated by a lack of understanding about demand. Anyone who went to the grocery store and found empty shelves last year knows that demand can be a tricky thing to predict. Sometimes, demand rises because people are using more of a particular product. In times of unpredictability, demand can be outsized due to hoarding. By sharing data about consumption patterns with suppliers, some experts believe that manufacturers may be better able to meet that demand in a way that discourages hoarding.

Managing the supply chain takes a lot of experts. You’ll learn quickly how important it is, once you are a contracting business owner. For more information about the steps to opening your own contracting business, visit CSLS today!

How to Find the Best Employees for Your Contracting Business

In the middle of a labor shortage for construction, finding the best employees is a big deal. But where do you go to find them? And how do you know when you’ve made the right choice? If you know where to look, you can have a better chance of securing the best talent in the industry. Here are a few things you should know.

Look for Training Programs
Although many people get their start in construction with no formal training or education, local trade schools and other programs can be a great place to find new talent. There’s been a push in recent years to expand educational programs to help people interested in building a construction career. These programs may provide training or an apprenticeship to earn a certificate or even to become licensed contractors. By connecting with these programs, you may be able to get a sense for who is interested in working in construction, and the types of trades that entice them the most.

Go to Conferences
Ultimately, one of the best ways to get to know what’s happening in your local construction industry is to attend construction conferences. While you are there, you can network with other professionals and meet people who are looking to break into competitive fields. Conferences are a great way to find out what is new in the industry, especially issues concerning changing practices or technological innovations. Conferences also attract new people who are eager to find companies who support these new technologies. Give yourself some time to get to know the other attendees, and you might be delighted by the result.

Ask for Recommendations
Although there are lots of new ways that you can look for employees, it doesn’t hurt to ask for recommendations among regular clients or fellow contractors. You can even talk to friends and family, to see if they know anyone who is interested in getting involved with construction but isn’t sure how. Recommendations can be a great start because you already have a little bit of vetting done by someone you know and trust. Just make sure that the person doing the recommending is a reliable judge of character. You may not always get a lot of options, but it’s worth a try.

Publicize Your Expectations
It’s funny how some companies look to hire people without actually making it obvious that they want to do so. If you are actively searching out employees, make a job description and post it on popular job search websites. Provide plenty of information about what you expect from the job and what your company can offer to entice people to apply, like competitive wages or a solid benefits package. These days, people want the details before they decide whether or not they want to apply. The more information you can give them, the more likely they are to give you a chance.

Aim for Inclusion
For decades, construction has attracted workers from very specific demographics. But if you want to have access to a wider pool of possible candidates, you’re going to want to be as inclusive as you can. Be wary of job descriptions that imply that you’re looking for a very specific type of person. Instead, set reasonably objective requirements that don’t skew toward a particular demographic. Ask a relative or a friend who has a different background than you to review your hiring notice and let you know if it’s too exclusive. Opening up your hiring practices might lead more potential employees with varied experience and ideas that can help keep your business relevant years into the future.

Hiring great employees may seem difficult, but there are a few ways you could make it easier. For more information about what you’ll need to start your contracting business, contact CSLS today!