At Southern Site Contractors, we understand how much inclement weather can mess up any construction company’s plans. On a rainy day, everyone in the construction industry knows they might get the call to stay at home. At most companies, that means you don’t get paid for the day. But at Southern Site, our weather day policy ensures that our people still get their regular paycheck (or at least close to it), even if rain keeps them away from the job site.
Our weather day policy is on a crew-by-crew basis because some jobs can work in the rain, while others can’t. In general, weather days are earned based on the profitability of the job site. At the beginning of every month, each foreman is given a worksheet by their project manager that outlines their profitability goals.
If the team reaches 90% of their goal, they all earn one weather day. If they get to 100% of their goal, they receive two weather days, and reaching 110% of that goal gets them three weather days. We also reserve those days during the dry months and then start paying them out in November. At the beginning of May, any unused weather days are paid out to each employee in the form of a lump-sum bonus.
For example, let’s say there’s a crew on a site that only gets 24 hours for the week because they got rained out for two days. Then, when we’re doing payroll, we will grant that entire crew weather days to try to get them as close to 40 hours as possible.
The second people hear that we offer this structure — especially those that have experience with other companies in the construction industry — they nearly universally say they’ve never heard of a construction company offering this type of perk.
We’ve found that the weather day policy helps considerably with both attracting new hires and also retaining our current team members. Once they see those weather day payouts show up in their paychecks, they have concrete proof of how much we truly care about our employees.