BL Companies Manager of Recruiting and Talent Management Ashley Pistecchia was a recent guest on Fletcher Wimbush’s People-First Builders podcast, a forum for leaders who shape the construction industry by building teams, culture and legacy. While acknowledging that he doesn’t usually have recruiters on his show, Fletcher said he felt it was really important to hear from Ashley because of the unique challenges in sourcing, finding and evaluating talent in the engineering and architectural world. Employee ownership was then the perfect topic to lead into a discussion about retaining that talent, hence the title of the episode: “How Employee Ownership Strengthens Retention with Ashley Pistecchia.”
Here is an excerpt on recruiting:
“I spend so much time telling our staff that the students at these career fairs or the candidates that we’re speaking to, they don’t want to speak to us on the HR and recruiting side most of the time. They want to hear directly from the people that are going to be in the similar roles that they are.
So for me, it’s more about empowering our teams and our people to have the tools that they need to go out and really be able to tell their story. The best way to recruit is through your people and through your talent. If you can motivate, if you can advise, if you can help support them, it just makes it more of a seamless process on the recruiting front.
And I think that’s where we see our biggest wins, is educating our people to then go out there and be able to sell BL in an organic fashion.”
Here is an excerpt on employee ownership:
“Once we understand what’s important to the individual, I think BL pretty seamlessly sells itself. We’re a firm that is so focused on relationships, on people, and I think that transpires all throughout the organization and how we’ve seen our really great retention numbers.
We don’t see a whole lot of people leave BL, and a lot of that ties back to the ESOP and the fact that they have that extra cushion of financial savings. And so people really want to see that through throughout their career and want to be a part of a company that supports them at every stage of life.”
Listen to the full episode here, or wherever you get your podcasts.