Your construction firm may find itself with a vacant position at any time. Maybe someone gets a better job offer, or you have to terminate someone. Or perhaps you promote someone and need to fill their old role.

Some construction firms see these vacancies as an opportunity to cut costs by leaving them empty. While it may seem like a way to save money, it is much smarter to use construction recruiters or fill the vacancy yourself.

Explore how vacancies can hurt a construction company’s reputation, employee morale, and bottom line.

Other Employees Must Take on the Responsibilities

The biggest issue with leaving a vacancy unfilled is that other team members have to take on the workload.

If you have other team members take on the responsibilities of the vacant position, they may feel overworked. This can hurt employee morale and increase the risk of turnover. This is crucial because of the high cost of turnover. Remember to account for marketing, recruiting costs, training, and other turnover expenses.

From a financial perspective, you may have to pay your other employees overtime. That overtime pay can easily be as much or more than you would have paid a new employee to fill the vacancy.

Tasks May Not Meet the Same Standards

The costs and effects on morale are not the only negatives of increasing the workload for current employees.

They may also not complete tasks to the same standards they did before. This is especially problematic for construction firms, as cut corners can lead to safety concerns or issues with compliance and regulations.

Construction Recruiters Offer a Short-term Solution Via Temps

You could get around this by using construction recruiters to find temps, but that would be a short-term solution until you hire someone permanently.

Or Responsibilities Get Overlooked

If you don’t have anyone take over the responsibilities of the vacancy, then important tasks may get overlooked. This is also a risk if you give other employees more responsibilities than they have time for.

The result of this can be major delays to your construction projects. That can lead to higher costs, a worse reputation, and even lost customers.

Your Company Can’t Grow

There is also the fact that if a construction firm isn’t fully staffed, it has no room for growth. You can’t take on more projects if there aren’t enough human resources.

Worse, if the quality of your construction projects decreases, you may find fewer projects available to you due to your reputation.

Conclusion

It can be tempting to leave a vacancy unfilled to cut costs. However, it can easily cost you more in the long run between overtime, lost opportunities for growth, and loss of clients. You will also notice a drop in productivity and quality of work and employee turnover. Avoid these costs by recruiting new permanent workers instead of relying on temporary solutions.

How can we help you?

Searching for an opportunity in the construction industry? Contact The Birmingham Group’s team of seasoned commercial construction recruiters today to discuss your career path or browse our open positions.

Are you a hiring authority in need of construction talent? Submit a search request today.