The construction industry is big business – really big business. By 2025, the construction industry is expected to grow 85% to $15.5 trillion worldwide. While such aggressive growth is great news for potential profit margins, it can’t positively affect your company if you don’t have the manpower to jump on board and take advantage of the upswing.

Construction Industry’s Aging Workforce

Here’s the problem: Baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) make up the largest percentage of workers in the construction industry, only 9.4% are younger than 25. And with the youngest Baby Boomer at 55, in 10 years the industry will lose a huge part of its workforce, most likely its managers and leaders. To make the issue even trickier, according to the Associated General Contractors of America, 80% of contractors report having difficulty finding workers to replace them.

But the bigger problem is when those employees leave, or retire, they take their knowledge with them. In fact, they take about 40% of their expertise leaving existing employees to learn 42% of their work. Succession planning is paramount to make sure that knowledge stays with your company, along with your top employees.

Succession Planning for Survival

Here’s the solution: Succession planning helps your existing talent advance and build their career path with your company by allowing managers to easily identify your best employees, so you can determine who will be able to take on key roles in the future. A proper succession plan ensures your employees know you are invested in their future by helping them achieve their goals and develop within your company, boosting their engagement.

Succession planning also lets you see where gaps in your company exist. Do you only have one employee who does payroll? what happens if that employee has an emergency? Is there someone else who can make sure everyone gets paid on time? A succession plan allows you to look at every aspect of your organization, or just parts of it, to determine where gaps need to be filled.

For construction companies, it can be impossible to know the skills and competencies of each of your team members. Using software, succession planning gives management a real time look at how each of your employees are doing.

Construction managers know it can be difficult to hire team members and it is just as difficult replacing the ones who retire or leave. Arcoro’s Employee Succession Planning solution helps you transfer essential company knowledge from employee to employee without missing a step. So when your Baby Boomers retire, you’ll have replacements at the ready and able.