As a contractor, sales person, strategist and leader, Sasha Reed has seen more facets of Construction than most. At Procore.org, Sasha is able to apply that experience and perspective to the hardest problem of all: culture change in an era of rapid demographic, technological and industry demand changes. Sasha shares how she sees things now, and how they are changing in the coming years.
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Procore Data in Construction Series
Sasha Reed
Hugh Seaton: [00:00:00] Welcome to Constructed Futures, I'm Hugh Seaton. Today I'm here with Sasha Reed, director of industry advancement at Procore. Sasha welcome to the podcast.
Sasha Reed: [00:00:12] Hi Hugh. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Hugh Seaton: [00:00:15] I'm really excited about what you do. I've spent some time in learning development and culture in an earlier parts of my career, and I love that that's one of the big areas of focus for you. So I want to start the conversation by asking what you see out there now, in terms of corporate culture and generally culture in the construction industry.
Sasha Reed: [00:00:34] It's a great question. And I think that construction much like many other industries is at a tipping point, really, where the inflection of the introduction of technology has really started to create some shifts in how we look at the business.
So how do we structure teams? How do we win work, how do we close out work? How do we look at technology and create analytics to assess the work that we've done in order to do better and win more? And all of that, all of those shifts, if you will, that are impacting the business. What I'm starting to see is that business leaders are starting to look at a higher level of, almost like a Maslow's hierarchy of needs, starting to look at a higher level of what is the employee experience look like.
And that's typically done through the lens of how are we attracting talent? How are we ensuring that we're retaining talent. And especially in this last year the very honest conversations around what is that talent look like and how diverse is that talent was probably one of the top questions on the minds of leaders and the inevitable followup question, especially in the construction industry. We're not ones to ponder or contemplate our navels for very long before moving to action. And the natural next question then was, okay, what are we doing about it?
And so culture has really started to emerge. I mean, outside of tech and the buzz word that it has been in tech, in construction, I'm really seeing culture start to emerge as a business differentiator, specifically when it comes through talent, acquisition and retention.
Hugh Seaton: [00:02:21] How much do you think some of that is generational? And I mean that question two ways. One of them is a fair number of founder led companies have their founders at a place where they're looking at golf courses and succession. That's kind of one. And the second one is the ongoing millennial question and the fact that the average construction worker in the construction world is something like 48.
So I think you've got two parts of the generational question. How much does that affecting what you're talking about?
Sasha Reed: [00:02:52] It's impacting everything. And I think that shows up much like you you've mentioned here. There are firms today that have five generations under one roof. That's the reality at Procore. We have five different generations under one roof and trying to message align and create a meaningful employee experience to that diverse of an audience is a full-time job, literally a full-time job. And so when I look at construction, the conversations that I've been having most recently with leaders is, they're moving past the point of disruption, meaning: generations pointing the finger at each other and essentially saying you don't get me, and I don't get you, to really starting to make sense of these differences and start to look for ways to evolve as a business in order to compete. And it's really interesting as, I mean, most construction firms are family businesses that have just grown at exorbitant rates and become very successful at doing that thing they do. And the beauty of that is typically the culture is very strong. The employees are sometimes seen as family. This is a family business and we still treat those employees as family. But as that company starts to scale and grow and the scale of the challenges grow, how do you transition the intention of, we are a family business that cares about our people, to we are a competitive business that recognizes the new marketplace and understands that new emerging talent, and leverages the knowledge base from our founders and our existing long-term employees. And brings in and attracts that younger generation.
Those are really some of the business who are asking themselves that question and who are defining roles around ensuring the company is creating policy to align, are the companies that I'm seeing really emerging and getting this as this is going to become our competitive advantage.
And I think that's, that's key.
Hugh Seaton: [00:05:08] And you're talking about a lot of new muscles in there. Like, if you think about what you talked about, where you imagine a company that was founded in, let's say the fifties, and it's now in generation three of the founding family that's running it. And they've been very good at organizing websites and winning business and executing and so on.
But now thinking about all these new areas beyond just getting the job done beyond the core functions of pulling a building out of the ground. How is that being done? Is that, is that new hires is that, you know, senior management saying, okay, we need to go learn some new skills and perspectives.
Is it, you know, outside consultants? What are you seeing as the way that people acquire that new capability as a company?
Sasha Reed: [00:05:52] Yeah, I think it's a couple of different things. And I want to try to focus because I feel like this is a top question that I'm hearing leaders asking each other. And so the few things that I'm seeing are one, the people in the operations layer who are really tasked with the CapEx, the human capital costs, the hard costs. They're very much starting to look at the connection between employee engagement, company culture and productivity, and the output, or the quality of the output. So a lot of firms are starting to look from external, more, human resource focused roles to bring on board in order to chart this course. Procore has a new burgeoning initiative called culture academy, and it essentially was born out of construction leaders who were coming on to campus. And, it was, a way of executives from the construction firm or our potential customer, really connecting with executive leaders from Procore in order to build executive alignment.
And what, what our executives noticed was there were very little questions about our technology roadmap and a lot of questions around how are you growing so quickly? How do you hire, how do you recruit... How do you manage a distributed workforce across so many regions? And so, after so many conversations Steve Zahm, who's our chief culture officer now, he recognized that culture is really what is going to be the differentiator for Procore to grow as a company. And that frankly, our customers are trying to figure the same thing out. So how do we create, an experience where peers can come together to ask them, ask each other these questions and share the insights that they're gathering in order to grow.
And during these culture academy experiences, I've started meeting with individuals who don't come from construction, but they come from technology. They come from LinkedIn, they come from other organizations, you know, much like yourself, Hugh, with a background in learning management systems.
And they're coming on board and really helping the leaders to navigate this new uncharted territory for construction, of well, how do we recognize the realities of construction? It's a project-based, very cost sensitive business where our margins are low. We don't have the CapEx to necessarily float huge employee programs that aren't able to recognize that return on investment in a short amount of time.
So how do we navigate this? And what I'm seeing is that hiring and bringing in that external talent internally, is one of the first things that I'm seeing leaders do in order to address, "okay, before we, before we embark on that culture shift of looking at our human capital really as that investment, that becomes our competitive advantage, how do we look at where we are today and really define the ideal place we want to be and have somebody who knows what that should look like and how you measure it better."
And that's just one of the ways that I'm seeing leaders really start to take some action towards that future state of how construction companies want to be seen as an employer.
Hugh Seaton: [00:09:11] I love that. I think it's great that someone who works for a software suite or set of solutions, points out that employee engagement is a big driver of productivity. I love the irony that Procore's a massive driver of productivity on the job site, but yet you're pointing out that's true. And of course that's true. But at the end of the day, if people don't feel like working, they don't work and no software makes up for that.
Sasha Reed: [00:09:41] Yeah, exactly.
Hugh Seaton: [00:09:43] And what's interesting is, is that this is another area where the construction industry can benefit from lots of other industries that have gone through similar issues.
The idea of engagement is one of the things that CEOs across the economy, it's one of their top metrics. And they often can quote it. And in fact can quote how well they're doing this quarter versus last quarter, because it's a key driver of business results. So it's great to hear that people are realizing that, you know, it isn't about being tough.
It isn't only about being, you know, the team or whatever. It's also that engagement and thinking about what engages people.
Sasha Reed: [00:10:19] Exactly. And, you know, the culture of construction primarily has remained untouched for quite a long time. And that's just due to the nature of the business. I think it takes a certain type of personality type who is attracted to work in construction to work in the field.
And, I love that about this industry and I don't want that to be lost. I always say that people who choose construction as a career, didn't choose banker hours for a reason, and they eat problems for breakfast. So most of us who choose this industry light up around complex challenges and we enjoy the process of the diversification of all the parties playing together in orchestrated chaos. There's something about that that I think, really draws a certain personality type. However, as technology becomes more integrated into how we deliver projects and, the next elevation from that, Tooey talks about this all the time, is how we then gather the information at each of those phases of the project in order to all of a sudden now have insights into the business.
As that starts to become more and more of a reality for a lot of general contractors, there's an opportunity that just hasn't existed in the past for lots of different players, lots of different personalities, lots of different mindsets and individuals who see the world in different ways to participate in the action and the business of construction.
And I see this truly as putting the general contractor in the driver's seat of disruption, and reinventing the business of construction. I don't think any technology company can do that for the GC. I don't think any, futurist can forecast and paint this picture better than construction leaders themselves can reimagine and reinvent their companies, their organizations, and really define their legacy in this pretty transitional time facing the business.
Hugh Seaton: [00:12:30] I love that last point. I mean, I think one of the things we see in construction technology, too often, is in abstract people think they've solved the problem. And then you speak to someone in the field or someone with a lot of experience and they'll start to say, yeah, but did you think of this, or did you think of that?
There's so many interdependencies and so many consequences in construction where, you know, because of that, we're gonna, it's gonna have a knock on effect over there and we're going to have people sit around for a while and that's going to be a bunch of money or, you know, we're not going to be able to get it inspected in time or whatever it is.
So I think your point that that real change has to come from people that understand, deeply understand the complexity of construction. I think it's proven every time, you know, a startup doesn't start up.
Talk to me a little bit about something that you've spearheaded and we've actually collaborated on and that's continuing education.
How do you see that as part of culture? Is it an outcome? Is it an input? How does it relate.
Sasha Reed: [00:13:28] Yeah, it's so interesting. And it's one of the things that really attracted me to come on board with Procore, is Procore has invested in Procore.org, which is essentially an internal team that's a hundred percent focused on social impact.
And the social impact is a hundred percent focused on construction. So to me, having spent almost 20 years now in industry and more than half of that on the technology side, the more entrenched I got in understanding how the technology was infiltrating the business process and starting to shift and transform business, the more apparent and more clear it became to me that the majority of the challenges facing construction are going to have everything to do with psychology and very little to do with analytics in the sense of people. And so with people being one of the most expensive assets that the company is going to acquire. It's going to require a lot of time and attention from the business in order to attract and maintain and grow that talent.
It became really clear to me that we need more focus and emphasis. What I'll call reinforcing the weakest links in the construction ecosystem. And when I say this, I don't mean this weakest link in the sense of aptitude or ability.
I mean, this in, how many times do you pick up your iPhone or your Android, and there's an update or something is updated and something has changed, whether it's the user interface or whether it's your login. And all of a sudden you go from, I can do with muscle memory, everything on my phone, to now I have to stop and think, and I have to figure out what changed, where did I keep those passwords? Or where, how did I. I mean, unless you have a password key, you all of a sudden have to stop and really cognitively think through and navigate this new update in this new user interface.
And that's just our personal devices that we carry for mostly personal use, but also professional use. Now imagine that happening on a macro scale with all the different technologies that are serving the construction industry with all of their very successful marketing and sales teams, driving the business to integrate technology into more and more of the day to day workflows.
And then imagine that pain of the change management really being delivered down to the individual, each individual, having to go through that and navigate that. "Okay something that I used and had muscle memory around has now changed." How confident am I in my ability to actually figure this out? Do I short circuit and freak out and call my gen Z nephew, neice, et cetera, or have I, along this journey, been given the tools in order to take control of my own evolution and still be a very much a part of this transformation. And so those are the weak link areas is how can we give the individual as much control over their own learning as possible, so they participate in the transformation and aren't feeling like they're being left behind.
Because god knows, we need the knowledge that sits in the minds of those who've done this work for three plus generations in order to really meet that next generation that's coming in, the digital natives in order to meet those digital natives and make the best of the technological advances without missing years and years of screw ups and that knowledge.
So the continuing education piece of it, I was very lucky when I came on board at Procore. My predecessor had worked on, Daryl Kaiser had worked on seeing the value of Procore actually creating free on-demand certified, continuing education, not product, not product clicks, but actual continuing education that reinforces the weak link I'm talking about.
So things like soft skills, leadership development, health and safety. And not just the mechanics of it, because if you speak to anyone in safety, these days you will understand it's less about the mechanics and it's more about awakening the individual to be mindful, to be present and to be aware, to feel that they are the greatest stakeholder in their safety it's that, that really truly shifts the culture and creates the business impacts we're looking for.
Hugh Seaton: [00:18:10] And that's where you're saying the continuing education contributes to a change in culture, right? Is people change their mindset. They change what they view as being important and requiring attention. And we worked together on data in construction and in the story there, as I recall, it was like, Hey, Sasha, I think I want to do a thing on data. You said, great. Let's do it. I mean, it was so cool that you had the resources, the interest and the ability to get it out there. And then I think a couple of weeks later, we're like, we should do more than one.
It's like, yeah, let's do five. The next thing you know, there's this nice series that is as much about mastery and a sense of mastery, a sense of this isn't so hard, I can handle this. I want to know the data because it's not that hard and it's not going to take a PhD for me to understand. I just have to feel confident in my ability to understand what's happening and also feel confident enough to ask questions. When I don't know.
Sasha Reed: [00:19:03] Yeah. And this is the, this is the reality of today. Not just in construction, but across the board. The shift that's taking place is because of technology because of learning management systems, LMS, because of university of YouTube. We're essentially at a place that the information and the content and the mastery now being packaged in these very consumable, bite size bits of, of video learning content that is on demand that you can take at your pace. And, but you can still certify and say, I have taken this course. So there's still that audit there for quality. But it really is... how do we let the world know this content exists?
And if you shall choose to participate in this transformation and push yourself to evolve with the evolution of the business transformation, that's happening from digitalization, not just digitization, but digitalization, which is essentially when the digital tipping point has been hit. And now the business processes change in reflection of that. That's really the tipping point we're at. And so the ability to say, should you so choose this adventure, here are the things that we think you can use and leverage to upskill yourself to be your own Sherpa, if you will, in this journey.
And I see what the continuing education program is doing through Procore.org. We have our ear to the ground to say, what is it that's needed? And when you reached out, I was like, digital literacy is so important. Through the Procore.org board, we're working with trade unions and going and working with train the trainer for trainers within various different training unions.
And the thing that we're hearing from them is how do I not only make this relevant to the field, but how do I overcome some of the resistance to technology that has very little to do with the technology itself? It has more to do with the fact that the technology has not been positioned to show them how it will benefit them specifically.
And so with continuing education, you have a very different way of getting to that end. Do you have a very different way of saying. Here's an introductory course in data. Why your project team is mandating you hold an iPad rather than your set of drawings and navigate this new system. Here's a step back look at what that means, how it's used and how it truly can influence the reality of the work you're doing. If we get the industry to a point of leveraging as much technology as possible, to really start to get to that insight insights position.
So, yeah, we're stepping in the gap to fill that place that this is not necessarily a software company's role to educate in terms of soft skills.
But I came on board with Procore because they do see this as an extension of their partnership with industry.
Hugh Seaton: [00:22:15] And transformation of the industry, right? Yeah. So I would love to switch gears and get kind of tactical. So I happened to be speaking with a general contractor the other day, and one of their learning and development people, and they actually mentioned that they were using Procore courses. And one of the things that isn't always obvious to people that don't spend time in the learning and development world is that there are standards there too. And one of them is how you package up courses and are able to just pull them into a learning management system.
So a learning management system is exactly what it sounds like. It keeps track of people, it keeps track of the courses they've taken and the scores they've done and, you know, any number of other things that relate to a learning journey or learning sequence. So I think what was kind of cool for me to hear, cause I wasn't asking about it.
I was asking about something totally unrelated and this, this person said, yeah, we've got Procore and there was some other non-construction like leadership, source of content. So it's really cool that you're creating things that don't just live, at least in this case, don't just live in your world or in your system, but are actually able, companies are able to work with you to develop their own internal programs.
So they'll take content from you, augment it with things that are relevant to their culture, or mission, or just the skills they need. How has, how have you found that working?
Sasha Reed: [00:23:31] Really well, you know, going into 2020, I was so excited about it's a new decade. You know, the last decade was just so transformational from a construction technology standpoint, it was just a rocket ship of a ride.
So going into 2020, I was really excited as a leader to be intentional in what I wanted to be able to impact in this next decade. And I looked at the AGC Sage, they released their construction hiring and business outlook report every year. And at 2020, I noted that they had surveyed over about a thousand members and they found that one in three contractors were reported to have increased the money that they've allocated to technical education.
And many of them had plans to restructure training programs, both for current and new craft recruits. So for me, this is great news. This means that a product that my team is creating, that is available and free now has an opportunity of really saying, Hey, we can put that money back in your pocket because we have this content that's free.
If you have Procore's training center, it's fully traceable and trackable and not just your internal employees, but all of your project partners, you onboard, you can also ensure they're coming in with that same mindset, et cetera. And so when March of 2020 hit , my real excitement and optimism over what the year had ahead very much shifted and pivoted under all of our feet.
The blessing, or I'll call the silver lining because 2020 was a very difficult year, but one of the silver linings I'll speak to is, we saw over a 40% increase in those taking the continuing education courses. And that's because the world went remote and remote learning, whatever had been set up, whatever had been planned, if it wasn't distributed to the cloud, if it wasn't in an LMS or if it wasn't available on demand, all of a sudden, whatever those plans were, we're either going to go full tilt or not at all. And so we saw a huge uptick in consumption of our continuing education content. And we had just produced a brand new, Procore safety qualified course. And we decided in 2019 that our 2020 release would focus on mental health.
So viewing the field worker as an athlete. So we had a professional athlete coach talk about how to take care of yourself, how to think about, I mean, crazy stuff like bio nutrients and gut health and recovery time. Recovery time is so important. Then we talked about mental health and mental health awareness.
Then we talked about building inclusive teams. Coming ahead of 2020 there's no way we could have known what we were walking into, but I felt like what a great silver lining to such a difficult time to actually be able to point to this content and say, this content exists. It's free, you're welcome to consume it, you don't have to be a customer to consume it because we recognize it's going to take a village to get, to really get through this transformation. Currently we have around 62,000 students who take our courses annually. And that's students in school, that's existing workforce, adults and existing workforce who are just learning to get CEU, continuing education units, and credits.
And so what we're seeing now is the ability for us to really focus on listening really intently to our customers, what their challenges are so that we can leverage partnerships like Hugh, when you came to me saying, Hey, I have this idea. And I was like, that's fantastic, "yes." How do we leverage the subject matter experts in industry to capture this intel from your mind into an actual articulated course, that can be put into training content that then can be democratized and used to create a consistency of understanding.
Hugh Seaton: [00:27:38] Love it, love it. So we're getting to the end here. I want to ask two questions. One is how, how can companies engage with culture academy, and where should they go to learn more?
Sasha Reed: [00:27:50] Well, I'd be happy to give you some links to include so that people don't have to write down, but, I think we have a new culture academy that's coming up, in the fall or in the summer, in the fall. And I think it may already be booked. But you can go to Procore.com/cultureacademy,
I believe I'm saying that web web address correctly. And people can always reach out to me as well, I'm more than happy to direct them internally so that they can get in touch with the right people. But you can sign up or you can, if you're a Procore customer, you can reach out to your customer success manager or somebody who's in charge of working with you on your account.
They can always direct you. And we're currently doing them virtually, but I think we're going to start moving to an in-person model, in either the summer or the fall, so highly encourage people to look up there.
And then as far as the continuing education pieces, this is something that everyone can go to your web browser, and essentially you go to Procore.com.
Um, your course specifically, Procore.com/data-construction-series. And if you want to just look at what all courses are created, you can go to procore.com/continuing-education. And there you'll see a list of all of the courses that are appealing.
Hugh Seaton: [00:29:09] Fantastic. And the last thing I want to just reiterate is a lot of that content is available to be integrated with things that people are trying to stand up internally.
And I think one of the great things that's come out of this conversation is what a resource you've provided for contractors that are saying, we need to up our game from an engagement from a continuing education and from a culture standpoint. And there's a resource that's out there providing really world-class content.
Sasha Reed: [00:29:36] Yeah. And it's a joy to have this as a leader to be able to lean in in this way, because it truly is the differentiator I believe is all of these are, are meant to equip the business leader to put themselves in the driver's seat and really with intention redefine their culture, redefine their company values.
And hopefully in the process really re-imagine what construction looks like as a career.
Hugh Seaton: [00:30:02] Love it. Sasha, thank you for being on the podcast.
Sasha Reed: [00:30:05] Thank you so much for having me here. It was great to chat with you.