Challenge: The construction industry was hit hard by the failing economy and collapse of the housing market, which led to downsizing, layoffs, and merger acquisitions for Suffolk Construction. Plan-it worked with Suffolk to understand the impact of corporate changes on employee attitudes toward the company and overall satisfaction in their current roles.

Objective: To better understand the employee experience and, ultimately, how to retain/attract the highest-quality employees short and long-term.

Solution: An exploration of the “Suffolk Experience” was conducted across all markets with Suffolk headquarters and all departments/levels/functions within the company. Specifically, we explored shorter term strategies for keeping employees motivated under current economic conditions, and evaluated potential longer term strategies for hiring and retaining employees, not reliant exclusively on high wages. Employees of all levels were probed on the work experience, the core values of the company and their relevance to employee pride and retention, importance of key benefits, impact of recent cuts and acquisitions on employee morale, and employee working relationships with the company.

Result: Plan-it created an extensive set of “best practices” for attracting and retaining Suffolk employees that would apply to both the short-term current economy, and looking forward, beyond the economic slowdown to longer term corporate success. These best practices included recommendations for how to best maintain the company culture and values, improve project staffing models to optimize project success, build employee morale, improve the efficacy of the career pathing/review process, strengthen internal communications, and streamline/optimize the management of recent and future acquisitions.