While construction companies need to manage thousands of moving pieces daily, none are more critical than people. Construction is inherently human-capital intensive, with contractors having to hire, manage, and retain anywhere from a handful to several hundred or thousand skilled trade professionals. This requires human resources staff to quickly onboard and train new employees, while also managing their invoices, benefits, annual reviews, and the myriad of other responsibilities that fall under the HR umbrella.
Because this can easily overwhelm HR teams — particularly those who still rely on disconnected systems or manual processes — many construction businesses have begun automating their HR processes with the help of connected, construction-specific software. Automating HR tasks enables contractors to accelerate onboarding, increase safety, and maintain compliance, while also enhancing job and operational visibility — all of which can positively impact a company’s bottom line.
When Western Specialty Contractors, the nation's largest contractor specializing in concrete restoration, masonry, waterproofing, and facade restoration, decided to automate their HR processes, it was part of a larger initiative to become more data driven.
The company had thousands of employees located across the U.S., which made it difficult to connect operations and people in a seamless, efficient way. This was particularly hard when it came to HR functions, which involved using various spreadsheets, access databases, and checklists to capture employee data. In addition, employees couldn’t easily see their benefits or salary information, and reports usually took weeks to generate.
The company had recently implemented Trimble Construction One — chosen due to its ability to connect the organization’s people and workflows — when the CEO tasked the IT department with streamlining the company’s HR processes. The CEO felt that automating HR would help make everyone’s job, training, and career development easier and more transparent across the organization.
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Western Specialty Contractors began using Viewpoint HR Management, an HR module that connects with Trimble Construction One, which enabled them to build a custom human resource information system (HRIS). The HRIS pulls relevant HR data into dashboards that provide a single view of important information, from safety and training to performance management.
Now managers can easily and quickly access important employee information, while also freeing the HR team to focus on other important tasks.
One of the most tangible results of the HRIS system is a compensation dashboard that provides a quick, one-stop view of an employee and their compensation history. Managers can now view their employees’ up-to-date salary information, training records, and position history in one place, enhancing employee and operational visibility.
With built-in workflows and notifications for approvals and rejections, the dashboard also streamlined the merit increase process. Managers can more easily approve a merit increase and update compensation changes for payroll with the click of a button — a process that used to take weeks but now takes mere minutes. The dashboard also allows managers to see a consolidated salary view as they prepare their budgets, streamlining the budgeting process as well.
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Finally, the HRIS enables managers to more easily track safety information and training status, from the office to the field. Each field employee has a QR code visible on their hard hat that can be scanned by a manager or safety inspector, allowing them to instantly view training records and qualifications for that employee. This enables supervisors to access important training and safety data in real time, helping to ensure that the right people have the right skills to complete jobs safely.
Western’s HRIS system was ultimately about harnessing data that was already there but hadn’t been connected in a way that made it easy for employees and managers to use. After the CEO tasked the IT team with streamlining HR processes, it was just a matter of connecting the right data and putting it in a format that everyone could digest.
As a result of deploying the HRIS, employees now have greater visibility into their salary and training history. It’s significantly easier for managers to prepare their budgets, review and approve salary increases, and monitor for safety compliance. The senior team appreciates the enhanced visibility into merit increases and being able to see staff-wide compensation at a glance. Finally, the HR department went from spending a week inputting data for merit increases to being able to accomplish it in just a few minutes.
While there are a lot of immediate returns in costs and efficiencies, the HRIS system also resulted in deeper employee satisfaction, helping to engage and retain employees long-term.
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Shawn Nichoalds is the Senior Director of IT at Western Construction Group, Inc., headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. He has helped the company implement and integrate technology for close to two decades.
