In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic has acted as an accelerant for certain trends that were taking place across a variety of industries. In some situations, this is a good thing - remote work and telecommuting was always the future of many jobs, but that “future" ended up coming along quite a bit faster than most anticipated.
We're also seeing many negative impacts playing out in the construction industry right now. According to one recent study, nearly 88% of contractors say that they'd had "moderate to high" levels of difficulty finding enough skilled workers to complete certain jobs. A further 68% of people who responded to the survey said that they were unfortunately having to ask their existing skilled workers to do more without proper compensation.
Many organizations are needing to turn down projects due to not having the resources to manage them. Others are needing to put in higher bids for jobs in an attempt to pick up the slack. It's a difficult situation, but not necessarily one without a solution.
Leveraging Modern Technology to Your Advantage
To better understand how innovative technology may be the solution to bridging the labor skills gap in construction, you must consider the industry's relation to one of the fastest-growing degrees in education: STEM.
According to another recent study, STEM degrees grew by an incredible 68% between 2010 and 2018. The people with the skills necessary to do these jobs and complete this work are out there - they're overlooking the construction industry for a variety of reasons.
For starters, the industry itself has a perception problem on its hands. When most people think of a construction job, they think of manual labor - jobs that don't require technical skills when compared to other potential positions. Of course, any professional can tell you that isn’t always the truth - but that message isn't clearly getting across to the next generation of workers.
That's why an emphasis on innovative technology is so important, especially when it comes to attracting young people to the profession. Examples of the type of modern-day technology you can use to attract new talent include the use of drones for the purposes of 3D mapping prior to the beginning of a project. Virtual reality could be employed to give people a chance to perform a site survey in an enhanced way. Collaborative robots (CoBots) could also be used for brick-laying. The list is constantly growing as new technology is evolving and being utilized in the construction industry.
The point is, if you truly want to address the labor and skills gaps in the construction industry, you must get the next generation of American workers excited. Now is a time for action. More and more veteran construction workers are going to retire every year, meaning these gaps are only going to widen as time goes on. The companies that understand this new era and evolve, will be the ones who thrive over the next decade. The ones that don't will find themselves left behind by their savvier competitors who were paying attention all along.
