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Save the Boomer Knowledge
February 08, 2008
Construction management firm The Weitz Company retains its boomers by embracing their experience
By Leo Jakobson
Industry: Construction
Objectives: Retain highly experienced, older employees by empowering them to use their experience, rewarding them for doing so, and encouraging them to share their knowledge.
Results: Since 2001 revenue has doubled from $800 million to $1.6 billion in 2007. And the company has grown into the 19th largest general contracting firm in the United States.
When it comes to motivating employees, "people have a hard time seeing beyond monetary rewards," says Kris Jensen, vice president of corporate services of Wisdom Worker Solutions, a nonprofit based in Des Moines, Iowa, that specializes in executive- and life-coaching for workers over 50 and companies that employ them.
Still, Jensen says, "We are seeing some shifts occurring relative to incentives. The one-size-fits-all gold watch is going. Incentives are so individually defined, if you figure out what I want, I'm yours for life." And what boomers want, she adds, is flexibility. "They want control over their environment," Jensen says. "They've been watching Generation X and seeing that you can have work/life balance."
Not that work/life balance is all they want, Jensen says. Broadly speaking, they want the opportunity to build their skills, and they want to stay on the radar of the people who make decisions, she says. That doesn't just mean they want to keep moving up the corporate ladder. "Boomers recognize that because they want to keep working, they may want to retool, to shift direction," Jensen says. "They are looking for an avocation."
Practically, this means benefits like personal coaches have become "a big prize," Jensen says. "[Boomers] say, 'Wow, the company invested in me. I must be valuable.'" Job rotation and shadowing programs, executive internships and company-sponsored community volunteering are also valued.
Even mentoring opportunities can be popular, although boomers are suspicious that these can be designed to drain their experience before giving them a premature boot, Jensen says. The best way to counter this, she adds, is to make mentoring programs a two-way street, so all participants give and take knowledge.
 Share the Skills
One client that Jensen began working for last year, The Weitz Company, has created what she calls "communities of practice" in which peers—junior and senior employees—come together to share best practices. The senior employees, she adds, "are not just offloading knowledge."
At Weitz, also based in Des Moines, this is not something new, but rather an essential facet of the company's corporate culture, says Chairman Glenn De Stigter, who retired as CEO two years ago. Founded in 1885, Weitz is the 19th largest general contracting firm in the United States, with revenues of nearly $1.4 billion. Focusing on high-end projects, the company, which De Stigter and executive management took private in 1995, believes in effectiveness rather than just efficiency, he says. This means doing the job right rather than just getting it done.
"The right crane, the right software is important," De Stigter says, "but not as important as people who know their job. We are in the service industry, we are serving the client, and that does not work unless you have the right people." With that philosophy, employee engagement comes into the equation very quickly, he adds.
While competitive pay and benefits are required—a post-buyout equity participation plan has made some 250 employees stockholders—the most important element is providing employees the opportunity to feel they are contributing to the company, and recognizing them when they do, De Stigter says. "That fits into a basic need to add value and contribute," he says. "Most people want to make a difference."
"The company's role, number one, is to give them [that] opportunity," De Stigter says. "At Weitz that is a core value. [We] empower the employees, set up the company so that there is a culture of enterprise," he adds, noting: "If whatever you create works, you benefit."
As difficult as empowering employees can be, making sure that knowledge is shared throughout the company is even harder, De Stigter admits. "Weitz is spread across the country. How does what has been learned in one area shift to another? How does it move from a project engineer in Arizona to one in Massachusetts? How does it move from the project engineer to the project manager? If you have a decent-size enterprise, the solution is in-house. The problem is, how do you find it?"
Jensen describes Weitz's solution as building "communities of practice." Put simply, De Stigter says, "the company empowers individuals to make decisions, and then brings them together." All the firm's construction managers get together quarterly, generally with a facilitator. They bring in subject experts from within the company, and the project managers meet with the project engineers under them regularly. The company uses peer recognition and management recognition to add "an element of engagement," De Stigter says.
Beyond that, Weitz's corporate five-year plan always includes opportunities for employee advancement in growth goals. And the transfer of knowledge the company encourages—peer to peer, senior to junior, junior to senior—improves the ability of employees to take advantage of those opportunities. As does encouraging employees to take classes and to volunteer in areas related to their work, such as on local planning boards and zoning commissions.
For this to succeed, the company has to assuage older employees' fears that by passing on knowledge, they are reducing their value to the company, De Stigter says. "Management looks for opportunities, cases in which someone shares knowledge and is rewarded," he says. "We avoid [giving employees] the idea that if they pass knowledge on to a young buck they will be pushed out to pasture."
And, the general contracting business has an extra reason to keep boomers engaged, according to De Stigter: Fewer young Americans are going into the construction and engineering professions, giving Weitz an extra reason to fight to keep senior people.
That means thinking about how to deal with an employee who might want to cut back to 24 hours a week, De Stigter says, or finding a new position for someone considering retirement. "I'm going to a retirement party for a guy who's sort of retired two or three times," De Stigter says, adding that he and another executive are already talking about finding something new for him to do.
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