Construction & Trades
Greenleaf Construction Utilizes Strategic HR Services to Improve Business Relations with Employees
Client Profile
Greenleaf Construction consists of a team of full-time, award-winning designers and craftsmen that specialize in high-end residential construction and historic renovations in and around the Baltimore area. They are unique in that their firm has seven full-time employees, including four lead carpenters and a project manager that manage their projects from start to finish. Led by President George Brown, the company prides itself on the attention to detail and passion for their work, allowing them to differentiate from other construction and renovation companies.
Client Challenge
When a business is growing at a rapid rate, it’s very easy to continue to absorb tasks, rather than looking for other solutions. That’s precisely what happened to George Brown. In 2016, Brown was feeling overwhelmed. His business was growing rapidly and his plate was overloaded with to-do’s. So, at the advice of his Executive Coach, he began tracking his time to see what was monopolizing his time. It didn’t take long for him to realize that a greater percentage than expected was being spent on HR related activities. “I was running around to job sites chasing down employee signatures, working through benefits issues and workers’ compensation claims, onboarding new employees, and more, and realized how much time I was spending on HR and knew it needed to change,” shared Brown.
That’s when they were introduced to Phil Romm, Chief of Strategic HR for the Growth Solutions Team. “I knew we needed HR assistance, and started with having them write our employee handbook, and things progressed from there,” said Brown.
Solutions & Results
Initially, Greenleaf hired the GST Strategic HR Services to produce their employee handbook. “What we were using was a complication of a number of company handbooks that I had access to, and had synthesized into a manual, but it wasn’t really properly done,” said Brown. So Romm and his team created a new handbook that addressed the company’s benefits, policies and more. It was the perfect task to jumpstart the relationship between Greenleaf and GST Strategic HR Services.
Greenleaf also had Romm’s team conduct their 360-Review process. By having an outside source conduct the reviews, the process became anonymous for the employees, and produced more useful information for Greenleaf. “The data was presented to me in a very clean format, and I found that the employees were more candid than they had been in the past, making the whole process more worthwhile,” remarked Brown.”This took hours of work and stress off of my plate.”
These projects went so well, that Greenleaf also implemented an online HR software package to further maximize efficiency in the organization. The Growth Solutions Team Strategic HR Services built and maintains an electronic platform giving them the following functionality:
- Full Employee Management System
- Tracks all employee daily hours
- Manages vacation and time off requests
- Completes annual performance reviews
- Onboarding and off boarding of employees
- Enables electronic signatures for effective communication and acknowledgment with employees who work on project sites and rarely come into the office.
- Improves communication and speed of compliance for corporate documentation and communication
- Centralizes all employee files in an online databank
- Recruiting portal to provide consistent bench of applicants necessary for successful businesses.
With the help of the Growth Solutions Team Strategic HR, Greenleaf Construction has been able to better facilitate their growth, retain top employees while dealing with any HR issues that arise. Most importantly by consulting with Phil Romm’s HR team, Brown is able to effectively run his business and the Human Resource issues are handled by the professionals.
“By outsourcing my HR responsibility to Phil and GST, it has allowed me to function as a business owner and focus on growing my business and increasing sales,” commented Brown. Since most of his employees are working remotely on construction sites, having all the documentation online means that he can track time and download information to his employees in real time, saving him valuable hours each week.
“I would highly recommend Phil Romm to anyone needing HR support but can’t justify hiring a full-time employee. This entire experience has been invaluable to me and the success of my business,” concluded Brown.
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