Non-Profit
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The construction industry in Israel has been experiencing a high turnover rate of construction site managers. The demanding position is facing a roughly 15-25% gap between supply and demand at any given time, and with this supply shortage, construction employers face high competition to retain skilled workers. They also feel frustrated by the low retention rates and lack of loyalty on behalf of their employees. The combination of the supply/demand gap, as well as the Great Resignation following the COVID-19 pandemic, is putting a strain on the construction industry. Zionism 2000, as the sector’s employers facilitators, was looking to understand the embedded reasons behind the high turnover rate and to build the basis for a joint-sectoral action plan to find sustainable solutions for this challenge.
In order to reverse the high turnover rates, the industry must be made aware of these factors and the detrimental impact of their accumulation, so it can work to limit them. Simply raising a site manager’s salary (which is a common assumption nowadays) will not work in isolation. Some suggested initiatives that the industry can put into practice include offering liability insurance to site managers, reducing their responsibilities by dividing their workload into teams, mitigating stressors in various ways, etc. Additionally, employers must view their employees as individuals who want to grow over the long-term and provide pathways to do so to support employee loyalty, motivation and development. Zionism 2000 will build upon these findings to empower stakeholders and employers within this sector to create an action plan to manage the matter.
We conducted a focused international literary review of countries like the U.K. and Sweden, which have highly similar construction industries to Israel. We also held interviews with industry professionals from Britain, Sweden, and Israel, including the site managers themselves, and interviewed employers. We joined social media groups within the industry to understand underlying motivations and concerns.
Our team hosted focus groups and also designed a survey that was executed by a third party research company, which was then completed by 300 construction site managers.
To culminate the process, we conducted data analysis on the survey responses to match it with the qualitative data acquired in the focus groups and interviews.
The analyzed data gleaned from the interviews, survey, focus group, and literary review was used to compile a report with usable findings and immediate recommendations.
We discovered that construction site managers were quitting their positions based on an accumulation of nine factors (9 out of a suggested list of 13 factors were weighted over 30% importance). Some of the key reasons include: criminal liability for safety at the sites, long work hours, other stressors, and lack of career growth, etc.
However, the analysis shone light on a surprising finding: the reasons, when experienced individually, were not enough to cause turnover. A compilation of factors above a certain threshold were to blame for turnover.