Ballmann Earthworks owner/operator Jon Ballmann started his St. Louis, Missouri-area business in his 20s, and his rise to success was paved with great ideas that were also well-executed. Here are his tips for finding and keeping great employees:
Tip 1: Listen and Pay Attention to the Work
“Generally, we're about two thirds operators, one-third support staff, so you learn pretty fast, just listening to them talk and watching them work,” Ballmann says. “Yeah, I mean, what is it? A picture's worth a thousand words, maybe a video and real life is probably worth 10,000 words. So, you find out pretty quick, who's around for that, for the long haul.”
Tip 2: Hire Young Workers and Build Them Up
“Start young. I am willing to put up with the mistakes in a young guy that wants to learn. Because he learned from that mistake,” Ballmann says. “You know, sometimes as we get older—I'm seeing it—you get set in your ways and your happy place and you don't want to change, or you make a mistake and you don't care. These young guys, they remember. And if they learned from it, let's fix it and move on. You know, of course, we hope that it's not catastrophic. But if he graded something to 10 psi, because he did some math wrong, well, let's fix it, we'll move on. We had an instance where some pipe was laid, no close to 15 inches high, and used the wrong hub. We were only 60 feet in it wasn't too bad. But everyone there learned. We all make mistakes, we're human.”
Tip 3: Look for Farmers and Athletes
“You know, a lot of them have farming background and you know, we live in sort of in a rural community anyway. So they're self taught in a lot of ways,” Ballmann says. “Hand eye coordination—I've also found, you know, the athletes are really good operators because the hand eye coordination is so important. We do have our veteran guys too, that are, you know, my age and older, and many of them started young and just hard working folks and out here to work hard every day.”
Tip 4: Keep ‘Em Busy
“Keep work in front of them, keep them working. Many of my guys drive company trucks. So it's one of our incentives. And so I pay for everything with the truck,” Ballmann explains. “There's some give and take. Now they're fueling equipment and picking up fuel every night or in the morning, you know, to bring to the job. But that's probably one of the bigger incentives that we have is provide a pickup for those employers.”
Tip 5: Cater to their Interests and Passions
“We have a lot of different personalities. We probably know more about their personalities than they do about themselves. You know, who likes to work late, who doesn't like to work late, who likes to work extra hours after a short break, who likes to just work less hours, and where they're working and who they're working with,” Ballmann says. “What general contractor and what machine they might be running. So I try to cater to all of that. But I do try to, you know, do it for them. Yeah, (we can’t)don't do it all the time. But when you can, why not? Now, I'm sure plenty of people tell you I'm not very good at (catering to their interests). But I think about it a lot and they don't even realize it.
