Is it just a lack of grit that causes new hires to quit?
With the arrival of new hires, our workplace has become more lively. It’s a source of immense joy to see the younger generation joining our industry. On the other hand, quite a few of them end up leaving early on.
Rather than simply dismissing them as “lacking grit,” I believe it’s important to give voice to their perspectives. With that in mind, I spoke anonymously with a new hire who left the construction industry early on.
The Reason I Quit My Job Right After Joining the Company
A To be honest, the real reason I quit so early was that I had lost hope for my future. I left the company just one month after joining. It was a civil engineering management firm, and in my department, I mainly handled safety management paperwork and site visits.
I suppose you could say I lack grit, but I simply couldn’t imagine myself working as a site supervisor in the construction industry in the future.
Day after day, I was yelled at by the craftsmen. The site manager said it was just part of the learning curve, but there was almost no training. Every day, I didn’t understand the meaning of the words or what I was supposed to be doing, and time just slipped away. The main reason was that I realized early on that I simply couldn’t handle taking on a construction site and managing so many people.
I despaired about the future, wondering if things would stay this way forever.
BI think that in this industry, everyone—whether they stay or leave—goes through a period of despair at least once. If the relationship between the site manager and the subcontractors is good, I don’t think it takes too much of a toll on your mental health, but on sites where that relationship isn’t working out, it’s really tough.
Naturally, the pressure on the craftsmen gets tougher. It’s what you might call “getting caught in the crossfire.” This is really tough—I end up caught in the middle. Since the branch manager and the craftsmen find it hard to speak frankly with each other, I step in to facilitate the exchange of opinions.
For example, even in situations where the director could simply explain the design on-site, at worksites with a tense atmosphere, communication would go through me. It wasn’t uncommon for me to get yelled at when I relayed the director’s instructions exactly as they were.
I found myself thrown right into such a toxic work environment from the very beginning, and I felt utterly hopeless, wondering if I would have to endure this kind of environment for the rest of my career.
“Unable to accept the custom that ”it’s only natural for new employees to help out with the work,”
A In my case, the gap between what I initially imagined my job would entail and the reality was a major factor. Once I started working on-site, I was determined to memorize the blueprints as best I could and learn the administrative tasks as quickly as possible.
In reality, though, I spent every day working side by side with the craftsmen on the job site. Far from doing management work, I ended up just running errands to fetch the tools they asked for. I was hardly ever allowed to do any management work at all. When I talked to my senior colleagues at the company, they told me, “That’s just how it is during your first year,” but I just couldn’t accept that in my case.
I’m employed by the company to handle administrative tasks, yet I’m stuck doing menial work on the front lines—and if I even mention it, I’m told I lack grit. I truly believe this industry culture needs to change. With the industry lamenting labor shortages due to the declining birthrate and aging population, it’s simply absurd to refuse to change these bad practices, no matter how you look at it.
A new site supervisor’s job is, after all, to manage the site—not to do the actual work. Isn’t it a problem that such a basic fact is being ignored simply because they’re new?
