Introduction

Understanding and identifying hard work is a crucial part of enhancing safety and efficiency in every trade. This can be accomplished through the categorization of tasks, breaking down workflow steps, and, most importantly, identifying and mitigating the elements of work that are stealing life from our dwindling workforce.

Unveiling the Layers of Hard Work

Construction leaders are mostly blind to this type of "hard work" because it is hidden at the micro level. Only visible when we stop to understand the work from the "eyes and hands" level of installation. This hard work doesn't just exist in wasteful and incidental tasks but also in value-added activities. Yup that's right, even value added activities are causing wear and tear on the bodies of the men and women doing the work. This nuance calls for us to shift our thinking from doing more than just optimizing out put.

It shines a light on our responsibility as leaders to design the work to better serve the people doing it. Our objectives need to shift towards identifying and eliminating the hard work completely, which results in increased production, improved safety, and improved quality. Yes, Getting rid of all the hard work is a bit of a pipe drain because we have to acknowledge that complete elimination is not feasible due to constraints like costs and resource availability. But this does not give us license to turn a blind eye to it.

How to Start

So where do we start? We need to build 'empathy' for the worker. The best way to do this is to get acquainted with the hardship our trades people endure daily by observing one trade professional perform their installation. As you observe them, your task is to be vigilant in looking for signs of strain and stress, such as wiping sweat, taking deep breaths, wringing their hands or altering body posture. These cues are indicators of life stealing work that we can remove in an effort to improve the operators quality of life and improve work efficiency.

Now I know you are an action oriented person so before you trip all over yourself, here are three points that you should not ignore.

• Till the Ground: Introduce yourself to the person and get permission from the individual that you intend to observe
• No Solutionizing: Employ your discipline and refrain from telling them how to do it better, you are there to observe not judge
• Make a Deposit into the Emotional Bank Account: Take action in making the work less painful for the person you observed

If you want to take your observation to another level, I suggest you get video of the person you are studying and dissect every second of work. This way you can quantify the impact of the actions you take in redesigning the work.

Some readers may think "focusing on one person is a waste of time" and if you are that reader I suggest you think about how many times that one person performs that specific task in a day, in a week, in a year. Then think about how many people are performing that very same task. Redesigning the way the work is performed will produce compounding gains, if we take the time to identify and fix it.

Closing Thoughts

Being vigilant in seeking out hard work equips us to do more than just identify inefficiencies but also make impactful, lasting changes. Observing the minute details of everyday tasks, and rigorously attacking the hard work, we can create safer, more efficient, and more humane workplaces. And I predict the construction leaders that create these more humane workplaces will earn preferred pricing and preferred performance, which will aid them in winning the labor war.

Will you be one of those leaders?