client score up to 89. According to James, a key part of the turnaround was the decision to host company town halls every quarter. At those town halls, he says “everybody has a voice and we go over the full strategy so everybody feels they are part of it. They see the financial side of it and where we are going and we’re keeping them in the loop. I think people appreciate that.” Furthermore, James says the company is always questioning how they can improve their Net Promoter scores. “We get all this feedback and it doesn’t fall on deaf ears,” he says. “What can we do to improve these areas? And we provide feedback to our people as well. We let them know – this is our plan for five years, for one year, this is where we’re at for this quarter, and we announce that and recap the previous quarter. It shows everybody we’re trying to stay accountable.” Being accountable and transparent is also important to maintaining solid relationships with sub-contractors and tradespeople. And because of their accountability and transparency, James says Johnston Builders has been able to build some really longstanding relationships with trade partners, and they have been able to secure some very competitive pricing from them. “We’ve got certain trades we’ve been working with from day one,” he says. “I feel we have a great following and it is one of our initiatives that we want strong trade vendors that give us the preferred price,” he adds. “We have loyalty from a number of contractors and it’s a make or break. If we don’t have great pricing from trades or the performance, we’re either not going to get the job or we’re going to lose our shirts on it and it’s going to make everybody have a difficult time which makes us look bad.” THE CONSTRUCTION SOURCE CANADA
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