A contractor is used to stress. However, there are a lot of things that can push that normal level of stress into overdrive, and cause things to quickly come tumbling down, both metaphorically and physically. To combat this, you are going to need to learn how to deal with difficult and stressful situations that your employees or your clients might put you in, whether they mean it or not. Here are three stressful scenarios, and how you might go about tackling them.
#1 A budget breach
A budget breach is an intense time for any business, but with construction company contractors, it can be a little different. Workers are constantly doing hard physical labor, and if someone gets injured or equipment is broken, you could easily feel like it is ‘game over’.
This could well mean a deadline might go sailing by, and that puts you in a whole other world of difficulty, as you have unhappy people to deal with and costs mounting every day. The fact is that in construction, it can be easy to breach a budget, so you might have thought that it can be easy to work around, and in some instances, it can be.
How can you reduce stress when it comes to tackling a budget breach?
A good way to reduce stress is to find a quick and easy way to solve this breach, which can help take off the edge and maybe even give you a little extra spending money to help you get your project done for the deadline.
This can be business critical, so it is essential that you find a reliable remedy and quickly. By looking into private lenders such as Sachem Lending, you can refinance current loan, meaning that you can continue with what you are doing. This can help you to potentially extend your budget, which can help you when it comes to paying off your loan in the long run too.
#2 A Malicious or negligent employee
This can easily be a business owner’s worst nightmare. Employees have access to a lot of things within your business, and if they have access to tools and equipment that cost you a lot of money, you certainly don’t want anyone incompetent and uncaring near it, as replacing or fixing items can easily take you over budget and for no good reason. You are going to need to make sure that you are keeping your eye out for negligent and malicious employees, as some of your most trusted might be working behind your back, trying to undermine you, or simply just stealing materials.
How do you reduce stress when it comes to handling negligent or malicious employees?
When it comes to office staff, a good thing to do is to work with permissions within your business and use services such as eDiscovery, which can help you if you feel that something is going wrong. With onsite workers, if there is an employee who keeps on breaking things, make sure that they are supervised at all times and you try to keep them on security cameras to make sure that they aren’t abusing your machinery and equipment on purpose and causing a liability to themselves and those around them.
#3 Running behind schedule
There is nothing more likely to increase your blood pressure than running behind schedule. You have expectant customers who you know are going to leave a bad review if you are a minute over the specified date, your employees are working as hard as they can but it never seems to be enough, and the whole project is just unraveling and crumbling in front of you. It puts you in an almost impossible position, especially if you have someone in the business above you, shouting down at you to get a move on.
How can you reduce stress when you are behind schedule?
Think maintenance and downtime prevention. Make sure that you are using every second of the day to claw back time and encourage employees to work overtime. This sort of thing can help you make up for those lost hours and can bring you steadily closer to meeting your deadline. This can be a vital part of ensuring that any time you are spending isn’t wasted, and you are also making sure that your employees are working as efficiently as possible.
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