There’s a new flavor of human resources leadership today where the employee experience meets HR operations to create human experience management, or HXM—and technology is the accelerant.

That’s how San Francisco-based SAP SuccessFactors’ leaders explain it, and they base it on the Business Roundtable, Washington, D.C., a consortium of chief executive officers from America’s leading companies that advise the White House to shape public policy. The Business Roundtable recently added the credo to the fiduciary responsibility of the corporate entity. Now today’s corporate mission is to serve the customers, suppliers and the employees.

Attention to detail

SAP offers employers many options for the day-to-day management of a workforce, adding a positive accent on HXM. Employers may now monitor job satisfaction with technology tools, such as apps, feedback surveys and other data. Such attention is crucial, especially because times of austere conditions, such as the pandemic, can impose stress between workers and management.

There is a wide range of other HR software for construction companies of all sizes. 

Managing workers’ needs includes the basic administration of benefits, timekeeping, training and education, and also physical and mental well-being conditions, such as hygiene and worker climate.

Within the go-go world of New York construction, the pressure to build, produce and stay on schedule clashed with the provision of construction workers at the outset of the pandemic in March 2020.

The New York Times reported that construction workers on a luxury condominium construction site on the Upper East Side of Manhattan became dismayed when they piled into crowded elevators and had to share portable restrooms with inadequate soap and hand sanitizer.

Such conditions show a poor focus on providing workers’ basic necessities. 

Value the workforce

It’s important to value the workforce by offering tools and technology that manage their benefits and well-being. Leaders also need to look at their portfolio of workers. A smart practice is to build a nucleus of permanent workers who receive worthwhile training and benefits, and supplement this nucleus with a cadre of flexible workers.

Managing workers’ needs includes the basic administration of benefits, timekeeping, training and education, and also physical and mental well-being conditions, such as hygiene and worker climate.

Project workloads are hard to predict. When work surges, contractors need to find job-ready electricians fast. This entails various risks with respect to safety, worker skill, deadlines and budget overruns. At a project’s end, there’s likely to be a dilemma when there’s no place to reassign workers. Electrical contractors can invest more in their permanent workforce and enhance their value with regular and recurrent training, education and other forms of professional development, improving workers’ skills and expanding the firm’s capabilities.

Balance is needed

What’s needed in a construction and project-oriented workforce is a delicate balancing act. It requires astute human resource management, attention to worker well-being and balancing the workforce with a portfolio of permanent core workers, supplemented, where possible, with a force of flexible workers. When orchestrated, the construction workforce is mostly solid, prepared and valuable.