How Job Site Culture Can Build or Break Your Business

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ℹ ABOUT THIS EPISODE

Culture is the invisible hard hat everybody wears on your job site. When it's cracked, your whole business has a target on its head. 

Join Wade Carpenter and Stephen Brown as they reveal how your crew's behavior when nobody's watching directly impacts your profitability, safety record, and cash flow. 

Learn to spot the red flags of toxic culture and discover proven strategies to build a job site environment that protects your people and your profits.

⌚️ Key moments in this episode:

• 00:00 Introduction to Job Site Culture
• 00:22 Defining Culture in Construction
• 01:36 The Impact of Culture on Team Dynamics
• 03:17 Identifying and Addressing Red Flags
• 05:31 Safety as a Core Value
• 10:05 Communication Breakdown and Its Effects
• 12:18 Cowboy Mentality and Risk Management
• 13:34 Mental Health and Fatigue in Construction
• 14:59 Building a Strong Job Site Culture
• 20:40 Key Takeaways and Final Thoughts

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Join the conversation on our LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/CarpenterCPAs

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Wade Carpenter, CPA, CGMA | CarpenterCPAs.com
Stephen Brown, Bonding Expert | SuretyAnswers.com

Transcript

[00:00:00] 

Wade Carpenter: Culture's the invisible hard hat everybody wears. And if it's cracked, your whole project's got a target on its head. Today we're talking about how the way your crew acts when nobody's watching can make or break your business.

This is the Contractor Success Forum. I'm Wade Carpenter with Carpenter Company CPAs alongside Stephen Brown with McDaniel Whitley Bonding and Insurance. Stephen, why does culture matter in construction and what is culture? Why should we even think about this?

Stephen Brown: The whole term kind of came out with teaching safety, okay? Culture is a part of the fact that in safety, they realized years ago that safety comes down from management. It's only as effective as management's attitudes and how you communicate it. And the importance of it is how to make for a safe job site. So that's where it came from.

But job site culture is so much more than just monitoring safety, plans, forms you [00:01:00] fill out, toolbox meetings. It's a whole lot more than that. It's literally what's going on behind the scenes every day in your construction company, what is the culture?

How do people behave? How do people act? And you say, well, they act the way they need to act to get the job done, or I fire them. Well, that's true, but I guess the important thing, Wade, to understand about what this business culture means, is just to define it. It is a set of shared values, attitudes, behaviors, and unwritten rules.

Wade Carpenter: Yeah, I know we were kicking this around before we talked about this, and whether it's a construction company or my firm, your firm, it does play into the health and wellbeing of a company.

I think about my culture, before I went out on my own, some of the firms I worked at, one of them was a sweatshop and they, they did everything they could to get as much productivity [00:02:00] out of you. There was other ones where we felt like a team. And that's where I'm really proud of the way I feel like our culture is-- sometimes perception of the boss is things are hunky dory. But I know I've got a team that likes each other, works well to-- you know, when we have somebody out sick, or we recently had somebody with the death in the family and some of that kind of stuff, and everybody rallies around and takes up the slack and I'm really proud of that.

And I know you were talking about some great things that you're doing at McDaniel Whitley too.

Stephen Brown: Well that's true. And here's the thing. You were talking about the sweatshop where you worked. You're not there anymore. So there's a reason for that. This culture that you work for, you might say, well, my name's on the door. And you better believe the culture's gonna be right. But really can you manage all that?

And I guess the point is, the whole mindset of what it looks like to have the right culture in [00:03:00] place, is for example, you can look at a company's mission statement, Wade, and see a little bit about what their culture might be. This is our mission statement: safety, quality family. What is the culture you wanna build and then what's really going on?

The most interesting thing about this job site culture is there's some red flags you can look for to see if it's happening. And there's just proven strategies that help you turn it around, and that's everything. So just being aware of the culture of your company, what's going on behind the scenes, and the signs that tell you maybe things are off track a little bit and what to do about it.

And you say, well, I know that Stephen, I know that, Wade. But really, do you? And do you know all the different techniques you can use for making it better? There's a lot of them.

Wade Carpenter: Yeah. I think back to another firm I was at, a larger firm. We had this nice mission statement, and it said all [00:04:00] this nice, you know, but there was multiple partners and everybody did things their own way. But that mission statement, we all thought it was a joke because it's like that's not what they lived. It's like maybe something nice that they stuck in front of a customer.

But I think to your whole point of this whole episode is, okay, we got a culture. It doesn't matter what the mission statement says, what's actually happening? How are these people acting, as I said, when nobody's around? To use your example from earlier, they don't do the work, I just fire them.

Well, if you have too much of that attitude, if you're treating people a certain way, they're not gonna stick around. You have turnover and all that stuff. So I think a lot of that goes to, do they care? Do they care about the safety? A lot of that plays into the profitability.

Stephen Brown: And how does that culture that you thought was good or seemed to be going well, just decline? Well, it declines as you as a owner, manager, you get [00:05:00] big, you have more employees and you know that expression, one bad apple spoils the whole bunch? That's so true so many times.

You see one, two, or three individuals with a certain amount of decision making power that are just toxic, and they bring everybody else down.

But let's just kind of break it down a little bit, if that's okay, Wade, to different categories of culture that you can measure.

Wade Carpenter: Okay. What are they? I can think of several, but you keep bringing up great examples here, so.

Stephen Brown: Well, well, you can too, but, you know, I'm an insurance agent, so I gotta start with safety. Safety is everything to me. It depends on what you pay for your insurance, for your workers' comp. More importantly, you're in a risky business in construction, and you wanna send your employees home to their families every day. You wanna be healthy and as happy as they can possibly be while they're doing their job. And so [00:06:00] safety is something that is hugely important.

So in the Corps of Engineers, for example, there are awards for number of job hours with no accidents. Okay? It's measured, very seriously measured, and awards are given. And I'm so proud of my customers when they win one of these awards. But a million man hours with no lost time incidents or claims? You say that's impossible. It's not only possible, but it's expected and it's a probable culture in the world of doing corps work, it just is. 

So you have safety person from the US Army Corps of Engineers, then you have your safety people, and the whole culture is how you communicate, how safety's gonna be done on that job, starting in the morning, how it's gonna be monitored all day.

And for example, our personal protective equipment worn at all times. And that comes from above. You gotta be wearing it too. Have you had your safety talks? Have [00:07:00] you planned out the day and do you enforce that? Or do you just kind of say, ah, we know what we're doing today. Everybody's got it. We've done this for the last 10 years. That is a mentality that leads to a bad culture if you don't watch it.

And then they have Safety Culture State Reviews. They're called SCSR. Sounds extremely boring. Everything's got an acronym, but it's actually a great way of getting management workers, supervisors, all together. When your claims are starting to spike and you don't know why, to come in and do an intensive review and figure out what's going wrong, and then fixing it.

So, it may sound like an emergency thing, but just look it up. It's called Safety Culture State Review. It might be something you wanna do for your company. So that's the safety issue of it.

Wade Carpenter: Yeah, I think there's a lot of things you can say. You talked about the communication and there's a lot of, whether it's written, communication, documenting, all that kind of [00:08:00] stuff. But a lot of it comes from the top down. If you're leading the company or if you got leaders in the company that are toxic or that are cutting corners and doing things like that and letting people slide when they shouldn't, that kinda stuff can play into whether it's the safety or how people are acting on the job site, whether they show up late, and, do they really care about the job, I guess is where I'm going with that.

Stephen Brown: Yeah, exactly. And it is that mentality. And it's saying, okay, I'm not gonna report a near miss. A near miss is something that almost caused an accident, but didn't. Okay. So you're very fortunate that it did not cause an accident, but it almost caused an accident. It's an incident.

So you don't report a near miss. You let it slide. You let other safety things slide that are something that you've all decided at this organization are important, that starts happening. Then your culture gets weak and your job performance goes down and people get hurt, [00:09:00] and then you lose money, and then you have to rework the project.

All sorts of things can happen just from people getting hurt on the job or just cutting corners, like you said. Paperwork, necessary headache to some degree, but you gotta report these things in order to make it a priority.

You know, Wade, do you remember me telling you once about a oSHA class I went to and they showed us a photo of a job site and they said, there are a hundred OSHA violations in this photograph. How many can you pick out?

And at the beginning of the class, I picked out maybe 10. And I prided myself on being a professional construction insurance person, and I picked out maybe 10 at the most. And by the end of the class I saw all a hundred. And then people were seeing things in the job site photograph that really didn't exist, and the guy's going, okay y'all are getting over the top here.

But that mentality, that vision you have of safety is a core [00:10:00] value, and it has so much to do with the culture at your job site.

The next thing is communication breakdown. And how that affects the culture of your business. What are some things you could think of where things could be miscommunicated that could lead to culture problems?

Wade Carpenter: There's a lot of things I think I could say on communication. Sometimes you as the boss may perceive something, but they're talking about something different. And sometimes it's nice to have somebody else that can come in and say, this is really what's going on. I've got a couple of people on the team like, this is how people are feeling. And I wanna know that. Because I, again, pride myself on the team atmosphere we've got there. And just to use a couple of recent examples where we've had some people had some challenges and things that might affect their mental health and fatigue and all that stuff.

And just letting people know you care, that [00:11:00] goes a long way. It may not sound like, hey, they're on the job, but you know, they're gonna stick around. If they think you care, they're gonna care about the job.

Stephen Brown: That's right. People don't care about how much you know, they wanna know about how much you care that old saying. That's so true and it's also true as far as your workers having mental health issues. Suicides, things like that. You notice something, someone notices something and reports to you as the owner, then you have procedures in place for helping them.

Or you meet with that person. Are you having thoughts of suicide, of harming yourself? And then you have resources that you can take them to help them. And most of the time these folks that are thinking about this just need somebody to talk to. And when it comes from you as the owner of the company, you're saving somebody's life. And I don't know what's more important than that.

 But you know, just particularly communication breakdowns, specifically, crews not raising concerns, [00:12:00] like I said about someone's mental health or safety. Field issues aren't documented and they escalate. Okay. And then, subcontractors are not included in some key meetings you have. These are just major communication breakdowns too. Can I go on to the next one?

Wade Carpenter: Yeah, absolutely.

Stephen Brown: Okay. Cowboy mentality: speed is celebrated over safety. That's always how we've done it. And risk taking is rewarded instead of disciplined. What do you think about that?

Wade Carpenter: Well, I think it's a fine You've gotta hold people to task and make sure things get done, but are you compromising quality or doing something too fast to get outta there and then it's gonna cause problems down the road?

Can you gimme some real world consequences? I'm sure you got thousands of stories that you could tell. You know, higher accident rates, rework, reputation damage, legal disputes?

Stephen Brown: Well, think, Wade, about when motorcycle helmets were mandated, it became law you [00:13:00] had to wear them-- and the cool motorcycle riders, they weren't gonna wear a helmet. They were gonna let that wind blow through their hair and show their defiance. Maybe a bandana wouldn't show weakness, or a skull cap.

But nevertheless they said that this is my right to kill myself. You can't dictate safety. I think that's a good analogy. The cowboy mentality may not be right, but just a mentality that there's something uncool about safety. And let me tell you that can't come from anyone in a position of leadership.

We talked a little bit, Wade, about mental health and let's add fatigue to that. Long hours that are the norm with no breaks. Stress, substance abuse, burnout go unnoticed, and the crew morale is consistently low.

Wade Carpenter: Absolutely. It happens too, and what are some things we can do to get around these things?

Stephen Brown: It does happen. And the main thing are the long hours [00:14:00] with no breaks. You have to enforce that as a culture. And by doing that, you're saying you as an employer are the most important, vital part of our organization. You can feel that way. It may be no, getting the job done in the bottom line is the most important thing, but the two go hand in hand. And if you can't see that, maybe you should get out of this business because you're always gonna have trouble with labor.

Let's just talk about it from a practical standpoint, not from a moral standpoint. But the stress of the production schedule. What kind of stress is gonna happen before the job starts and how do we deal with that before the job starts?

That's all part of setting that culture. And you can either be frantic running around the job site and cause accidents and do lousy work fast, or you can plan ahead of time for a culture of safety, calmness, planning, communication, all these things to be in place to get the job done. Does that make sense?

Wade Carpenter: Absolutely. [00:15:00] So if I could I ask you, what should a company be doing to think about how can we build a strong job site culture in our business?

Stephen Brown: Lead by example. That would be one thing. Others do what the leaders show as an example. Disciplined behavior, not erratic behavior. Disciplined behavior that the employees can count on. And I'm not just talking about on the job itself. I'm talking about in your office and everywhere else where your company's operating. In sales and marketing and any division of your construction company. The leaders of that unit are leading by organization and you are as the owner and managers of the company.

Next thing is you encourage open reporting. So you reward problem spotting and not silence. And near misses are not shameful, but they're a learning example. Okay? And that's again, your culture that comes from above.

Make sure you involve your [00:16:00] subs. Make sure that all the trades that are working on your job are perfectly lined up with your standards. A lot of that has to do with pre-project planning, pre-project communication.

But then again, that subcontractor is a link to your ability to finish the job without anyone getting hurt and make money on it. So, how they operate and what they do is important.

And say for a General Contractor, state that these are our minimums. This is what we expect from you too. If it's a problem, maybe we shouldn't work together on this job, or let's talk about it now.

The next one is strengthen your documentation. Treat reports as essential, not optional. What do you think of that?

Wade Carpenter: We say that all the time, but too few people do it, quite frankly. And I just think about some of the things like, job site reports and stuff like that nowadays, it's amazing what you can dictate to ChatGPT, create a report without typing anything. And probably make [00:17:00] it sound better than you would actually write it up.

You're laughing at me, but that's really the truth sometimes, you know, I'll do that sort of make mental notes and then I can organize my thoughts that way.

But, just like documenting what's going on with the project, the weather, whatever it is. Document the near misses. And I don't know in your world, if that is ding against somebody. But I think back to my brother-in-law got hurt on a forklift, and his boss told him to do something. And he's like, I don't know about this. And he ended up doing it anyway.

And then, you should have seen the changes that were made after he got hurt really bad. I know this is getting away from the documentation issue, but you know, the near misses, I think can be used as examples like what they did with my brother-in-law.

They very clearly got out there and said, this is what you need to be doing. And I know in that case they really wish they had [00:18:00] said something beforehand.

So I don't know if you think that's relevant, but that's just something that comes to my mind.

Stephen Brown: No, it's so relevant and as an accountant, documentation is what allows you to analyze data to advise a customer of how things are going. And I just thought, okay, I know I'm gonna get a lot of comment on this from you. And then I was also thinking of my son Jim, his accounting background, who's getting married.

And I told you, put that spreadsheet together for his future father-in-law to help him budget wedding expenses. And he had drop down menus and everything. And I said, Jim you have made a fan for life of your future father-in-law, and now you've pissed off your wife uh, to be and your future mother-in-law. He said, well, I'm just trying to help dad. And I'm like, I know. I know you are, son, of course. Luckily the women took it that way. And so did the dad.

But you know, seriously, when you talk about documentation, I had a situation, Wade. One of my contractors literally had a toolbox session that morning, safety [00:19:00] meeting on taking these trees out. And the fact that a lot of the trees they were taking out were dead, okay. And that you take out a tree and the tops dead. You know those are called widow makers and they fall outta nowhere. Well, the very fellow, that job site manager that gave that toolbox session, it was literally, it was the afternoon before.

He got out there, early the next morning and did exactly the opposite of what he told everybody else to do and hit a tree. The top broke off came through and a lamb came through the cage on his piece of equipment. A bulldozer excavator, it came down through the cage and speared him and killed him. And he had a young wife and four kids. So it's tragic, you know? So you do what you say and you say what you do. So you walk the walk.

And also the last thing I wanted to bring up is addressing the stress and fatigue. Schedule [00:20:00] breaks, provide resources. What do they need to do their best job? And a lot of times the mentality is sending a crew out across country to do something and giving them $50 a day per diem and expecting them to work all day is just not the answer anymore, because are they really taking care of themselves?

You know who, who is looking after? Well, they're adults. Shoot, they can take care of themselves. They got a job to do. They know how to do it. But the culture that's healthy is saying, we're keeping an eye on these things and we're doing everything we can do to help them. So that's really all I had on culture and the impact of it.

Wade Carpenter: So what are some key takeaways you would say from this episode? What can our listeners go out there and do today?

Stephen Brown: Well, there's a checklist. And I put one together for members of our Memphis Builders Exchange for everybody to use. But it's pretty good. It just lists red flags to look for. It [00:21:00] reminds you, again, here you are with your documentation. Here I am with my checklist, but I love them.

You don't have to check every box. But you look over them and you see if they're in place. Wade, when I'm trying to get a best insurance quote from my, one of my contractors, there's all the companies have what's called supplemental questionnaires. And they are long and tedious. They're like the bane of my existence.

But that insurance company that's taken on sharing risk with you, wants to know what you have in place. And a lot of it has to do with safety, of course. But nevertheless these checklists that I love so much that a lot of people would generally hate, just think of them as a tool like anything else and just be aware. That's all I have to say. Be aware of what your culture is now and check it from time to time.

Wade Carpenter: I think that's a great message and thank you for bringing this to our listeners today. I think that all of us sometimes get blinders on and we don't think about these things. And like you said, the [00:22:00] culture audit, whatever you want to call it, maybe step back, maybe ask some of your key people, what is the sentiment, what's going on in the company? And do you really need to think about changing the thing? Changing the way you do certain things, the way you approach safety, or walking the talk like you said.

Stephen Brown: Okay.

Wade Carpenter: For our listeners, thank you for joining us today. If you have any feedback, questions about job site culture, I'm sure Stephen would be glad to chime in on the comments below. We appreciate you being here. We do this every single week. If you would, consider like, share, subscribe, it always helps out the channel, and we will see you on the next show.