Retaining construction workers - Why tradespeople leave and what your employer brand changes about it

The Dutch Economic Institute for Construction calculated this month that the sector needs around 73,000 extra people over the next three years. Roughly 52,000 of them are expected to come out of vocational training. The remaining 21,000 have to come from somewhere else, while the Dutch armed forces are growing towards 100,000 staff by 2030 and fishing in exactly the same pond. That sum holds an uncomfortable conclusion: retaining construction workers is not an HR topic sitting next to recruitment, it is the biggest recruitment channel you have.

In practice these are usually two separate worlds. Recruitment sits with marketing or an agency, retention sits with HR, and the site manager hears very little from either. Yet that is where it is decided whether someone is still on the job eight months in. This piece looks at what international research says about why tradespeople leave, and what that means for your employer brand.

Why is retaining construction workers a recruitment question?

Do the maths. The Construction Industry Institute found that a 10 percent increase in turnover is associated with roughly 2.5 percent higher total labour costs on a project. The same institute found that contractors with retention rates of 80 percent or higher made a profit on more jobs, delivered more projects on or ahead of schedule and performed better on safety. Turnover is not a soft cost. It sits in your margin and in your planning.

Add the recruitment side to that. Every tradesperson who leaves costs you a campaign, a selection process, onboarding time and lost productivity. In the US figures collected by Bridgit, replacement costs run from 50 to 200 percent of an annual salary, depending on the role. One technician who stays is cheaper than three you have to recruit.

That is why good work starts with the question, not with the creative. Is your intake stalling, or is your workforce leaking? Those are two different problems with two different answers. Only once that is clear do you know whether you need a campaign or something else entirely.

Who leaves, and when?

The 2026 Bridgit Construction Workforce Benchmark Report gives a clear picture. On the average team, 36.4 percent of people have been with the company for less than a year. At the same time, attrition among non-senior superintendents runs at 15.4 percent against 4.1 percent for senior superintendents. For project managers the gap is similar: 14.3 percent against 3.6 percent.

That gap is the whole story. People leave in the early years, before they have grown into anything. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, average tenure with one employer in construction is about four years. Those who get through that first stretch tend to stay a long time.

For your employer brand that means something very concrete. The return is not in more applications, it is in the first twelve months.

Why does it go wrong so often in the first year?

The UK Construction Industry Training Board asked newcomers who had left the sector why they stopped. 28 percent said the work was not for them, 19 percent pointed to problems with their employer, college or tutor, 16 percent did not enjoy the job and 11 percent found the pay too low. Money comes last.

That pattern shows up more widely. The Work Institute Retention Report from 2024 attributes 21.4 percent of all departures to a lack of career development, 10.8 percent to total rewards and 10.7 percent to work life balance. Development weighs about twice as heavily as pay.

And there are hard practicalities that rarely make it into a job ad. In the Bridgit figures, 44 percent of construction workers put in 50 to 59 hours a week and 25 percent work sixty hours or more. 13 percent commute more than two hours each way. Those are exactly the things people give up on at home, not at the office.

How does an honest picture up front reduce departures later?

The US Office of Personnel Management summarises the research on the realistic job preview and points to the meta analysis by McEvoy and Cascio from 1985. The principle is simple. Give candidates an honest picture of the work early in the process, including the unpleasant parts, so that anyone who does not fit can take themselves out. That cuts turnover in the first months and it saves you the cost of recruiting all over again.

This is exactly what we mean by magnet and filter. You do not want as many applications as possible, you want the right ones. A candidate who drops out because he can see the day starts at half past six and sometimes happens in the rain is a win. You would otherwise have lost him in month four, along with the crew that trained him up.

In practice that means filming on site rather than in the boardroom, and letting the crew describe what a day actually looks like. For Hanab, part of VolkerWessels, we built the employer story that way: from the work itself, with the people who do it. There is more on that in our article on recruiting construction workers.

What does retaining construction workers mean for your employee value proposition?

At MonFri an employee value proposition rests on three pillars: image, internal and market. Image is what the outside world says about you. Internal is what your own people say. Market is what the sector offers and who your competitors for talent are. The distinctiveness sits in the overlap.

In a retention question the internal pillar is the sharpest one. If your promise does not match what happens on site, you recruit people who leave again. Culture and values genuinely matter here, but they rarely stand out as a message. “Driven, ambitious, real makers” sits on almost every contractor’s website. You do not claim culture, you let people feel it, preferably in the words of the shop floor rather than the boardroom.

The market pillar is especially relevant this year. The Economic Institute for Construction expects the Dutch armed forces to generate around 5,100 extra full time jobs a year through to 2035, with civil engineering and infrastructure as the direct competitor. At the same time it expects contraction in industry and trade, and notes that stricter housing requirements may limit the inflow of foreign agency workers. Your competitive field is shifting, and your promise should move with it.

Why is the site manager your most important employer brand channel?

Back to that gap of 15.4 against 4.1 percent. Most turnover sits with people who are not senior yet, and in the Bridgit figures it takes a median of about 3.7 years to reach that level. During exactly that period, the direct line manager is the main point of contact with your employer brand.

A job comes home with you. Employer branding is not product marketing: you buy a product, a job becomes part of your life. The promise you make in a campaign is delivered by the site manager who decides on a Monday morning whether someone feels welcome or in the way.

That has consequences for where you invest. Part of your employer branding budget belongs with the people who deliver your promise every day. How to find and keep that group is covered in our article on recruiting site managers.

Which number has to move?

Set out in advance what you want to improve, or you will have nothing to show afterwards. In a retention question that usually comes down to four numbers: first year turnover, the time from vacancy to first working day, the source of your intake, and the reasons that keep coming back in exit interviews. A baseline measurement takes little time and makes the rest of the work discussable.

It also helps internally. A board that can see first year turnover coming down understands why you are investing in content. Without that number, employer branding stays a cost line that goes first when the wind turns.

And not every question is a campaign. Sometimes the answer is a shorter application process, a better career platform, or an onboarding programme that genuinely supports the first ninety days. Less exciting than a film, and regularly more effective.

How does MonFri approach retaining construction workers?

We start with the question. Are your vacancies not filling, or are your people walking out? Does it sit in the picture the outside world has of you, in what happens internally, or in the market you compete in? We establish that with a baseline measurement, conversations on the shop floor and market research, before writing a single line of copy.

Then we build an employee value proposition that holds up, and translate it into content that stays visible all year: stories from the crew, images from the site, a career platform that is honest about the work. We use AI for scale, variants and testing. But why would you synthesise someone you could simply film?

Want to know what this means for your organisation? Take a look at our services, call 020 23 38 587 or email hi@mon-fri.com.