“Nimble” is frequently used to describe how AEC human resources leaders responded to the cascade of challenges in the past year. On top of supporting field crews to help keep jobsites safe and productive amid Covid-19 outbreaks, HR teams scrambled to craft strategies for maintaining connections across a suddenly dispersed office workforce, sustain recruiting efforts with only limited access to prospective candidates and conduct sometimes difficult discussions of social justice issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Though existing crisis plans gave some firms a head start on shaping responses to some of those challenges, guidance for others was virtually non-existent.
“There was no playbook for a global pandemic,” recalls Nicole Calamaio, chief HR officer for Tempe, Ariz.-based Sundt Construction Co. “We were making decisions quickly in areas where we didn’t have a lot of expertise.”