BiGS Actionable Intelligence:
LAS VEGAS — Many employers seek to improve workplace culture to enhance morale, retention, and productivity.
The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners (UBC) is also taking on that task, with some additional challenges. The union wants to better workplace culture at construction sites across the United States and Canada that range from outdoor locations that can be scorching in the summer and freezing in the winter, to narrow catwalks high atop bridges or skyscrapers, and cramped spaces inside boilers.
UBC faces the extra difficulty of improving the environment for jobs requiring physical exertion, long hours, and short deadlines in a field where, not long ago, bullying, discrimination, and hazing were often tolerated.
The process starts inside UBC’s 1 million square-foot International Training Center, located on 27 acres outside Las Vegas. Each year, 14,000 union members, most of them rank-and-file, cycle through the training center, some of them traveling on their first airplane flight. The bill for the union: about $1 million a week.
Training at the center does not focus on technical competencies. Those are taught mostly at 250 training centers throughout the United States and Canada. The emphasis at the Las Vegas center is on teaching skills that help boost morale, create new leaders, and improve personal relationships. These are soft skills, including emotional intelligence, communication, leadership, self-awareness, and self-management.
Creating job sites where carpenters feel they belong
UBC’s efforts to build a better workplace culture are part of President Douglas McCarron’s overall goal of improving the quality of life for the union’s 500,000 members, according to Randy Eppard, executive director of the UBC’s Department of Education and Training.
“What President McCarron wanted was a culture that our members enjoyed, where they could do well and grow ... and that required a professional working environment,” Eppard said. “So that was a tall order, because that meant we were going to change the industry, not just the carpenters ... all those job sites were going to be places where our members not just wanted to be but felt like they belonged.”
Eppard’s UBC ties run deep. Four generations of his family members have belonged. After earning a Ph.D. in adult learning, Eppard spent several years operating an executive education program at the University of Virginia. In 2011, he joined UBC as director of its Department of Education, with the mandate of expanding and improving training.
To change construction workplace culture, Eppard explored fundamental issues. “How can we manage our people through visions and values as opposed to fear and consequences?” he asked. “How can we start to treat people like professional adults and help them grow and pull them up? And that required a whole different way of communicating. So, we started off really focusing on things like communication and transformational leadership.”
Teaching how to react in a professional manner
Soft-skill training is sprinkled throughout the classes taught by the facilitators in the more than 70 classrooms at the Las Vegas center. One key course is called “212 Journeymen: Next Level UBC Leaders.” The name comes from water temperatures. At 211 degrees Fahrenheit, water is hot. Bring the temperature up just one more degree, to 212, and water boils, creating steam that can power a freight train. The 212 course uses this fact to highlight the way that extra effort can greatly improve productivity.
In the “212” class, Eppard said, union members learn how to be self-aware, especially regarding potential knee-jerk reactions to frustrating workplace situations. From there, they work on self-management and learn how to react to challenges in a professional way. They also learn how to build relationships and to foster collaboration. All these skills are critical for potentially dangerous work under high-pressure conditions.
“Sometimes in the heat of the moment, you can get a little flustered and it can be confusing,” said Jacqueline Engle of Las Vegas. She is a UBC carpenter who sometimes works on scaffolding as high as 175 feet in the air.
Engle said the “212” course played a significant role in helping her reimagine herself, including aspects of her personal life.
“It’s given me structure, discipline, and helped me differentiate between emotions at work and my personal emotions,” she said, noting that she now leaves her home problems at home and her work problems at work. “I’ve learned to do that and be a better worker ... and everything else.”
Workforce experts say that UBC’s effort to teach its members soft skills makes sense, because the skills have become so important in the workplace. Many nations have been so focused on teaching hard skills, such as training people to become nurses or coders, that they have ignored soft skills, such as how to function in a diverse workforce and how to behave in a way that encourages psychological safety.
Payoff: retaining carpenters and contractors
UBC measures the results of its training by gathering qualitative and quantitative data about retention, recruitment, and productivity. Outcomes have confirmed the training’s effectiveness. One participant, for example, implemented methods and tips he had learned in training and reported that job site retention improved by 90%.
“That’s exciting, because turnover is costly,” Eppard said.
The International Training Center is the crown jewel of UBC’s extensive training program. The program also teaches technical skills across the United States and Canada; conducts training for high school students and teachers; and collaborates with companies under union contracts on a program for workplace superintendents.
UBC President Douglas McCarron said that when contractors who hire union carpenters visit the center, “they're just blown away at the amount of training we do here,” and are more inclined to retain or hire union carpenters.
One visiting contractor told McCarron that the union’s spending and commitment to training was reassuring. “When I look at this,” the contractor told McCarron. “You guys are real.”
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