Attracting Engineering Talent, with ASHRAE's Jennifer Leach and Keith Hammelman

Keith Hammelman: As Jennifer mentioned, I am a voting member on the TC 1.7, but also I'm a principal at Cannon Design. I have been with that firm for 21 years and am now the leader of the mechanical discipline across the firm, which has employees spread throughout different offices. With that, we're always looking at how we are able to bring in the talent and keep the talent and continue to develop them. So this was a very intriguing subject for us to start talking about and presenting at the ASHRAE conference

Leach: And it aligns well with the ASHRAE Presidential Theme this year: "Workforce Development." 

HPAC: Jennifer, let's start with a preview of your presentation. I know you stress that culture is what attracts young engineers the most these days. Please elaborate on that.

Leach: Sure. It's important to know who you're hiring and most of the engineers graduating now are in Generation Z. So they are different. Different, particularly, from Gen Xers like Keith and me. We're both children of Baby Boomers, so we're workhorses. This latest generation really is focused more on a work-life balance. They aren't as motivated by money as the generation before them, the Millennials. I like to refer to them as "modern hippies", because they're very focused on rights, human rights and the environment, and things like that. So it's important to know who you're hiring.

And then the flip side of that is it's also important to know who YOU are. Particularly for this generation, because they're going to do all of their research online beforehand. So any YouTube video, any social media post --whether it's LinkedIn or Facebook or X, whatever you're using-- they're going to investigate you. They're going to see what you said about yourself on your website, and they're likely going to challenge you on it.

So it's important to know who you are and how that differentiates your company from the other engineering firms. Because this upcoming generation is more concerned about who they work with than what they do. I think they want to work for a good engineering firm, but there's lots of good engineering firms out there. So what distinguishes one firm from another? The answer to that is rooted in what your culture is and what you believe.

HPAC: Okay, Keith, so once you get them in the door and hire them, how do firms retain the engineering talent? How do you keep them happy and engaged at their firms? 

Hammelman: One of the things you're always looking at is what are people looking for? We bring 'em in, we tell them what is happening, but now we actually want to show them this is what we're actually going to do. So what do employees look for? What does the talent look for? Obviously tangibles: i.e. compensation, salary; benefits; PTO; remote, work-from-home policy; how flexible their manager is; being able to know who their manager will be; things like that. And they do really want to understand and be part of the culture of the firm.

When Jennifer and I started, that meant "Great, we have a softball team." But now it's really what are the things that a company is doing that goes beyond? Will it allow them to grow in helping the environment, or in social justice, anything of that nature. It goes beyond just straight doing architecture and engineering now.

Leach: For sure. I mean, COVID changed everything. We have long had the ability to have online meetings, of course, but I think now it's probably 50:1, online meetings versus in-person meetings, because they are just so easy to do. So BR+A and Cannon are both large companies and we frequently work with people who are in other offices. So learning how to manage and be managed by somebody who's not sitting in the same building as you, that's a huge change and it takes a shift.

So the world has changed, and we can't stand firmly with our feet in the sand or else we're going to be knocked over. In order to adapt, we have to recognize where things are going. It's driven by young people and their need to embrace technology in all things. But it was also sort of for the rest of us who maybe weren't as technology driven. The owners of these companies tend to be baby boomers and Gen Xers. We were kind of forced into it. So I think that ultimately it'll be for the good, but it's going to require some changes. It's going to require checking in with people on a regular basis and having structured plans for mentoring and things like that just to make sure we aren't losing people along the way.

Hammelman: That's a good synopsis. At Cannon Design, pre-pandemic, we were actually rolling it out in a formal process, allowing remote work where we have employees spread throughout the country and we have people who have offices in their homes already. But the pandemic accelerated all that, and the realization that you don't need to be sitting next to someone to understand --five days a week, eight hours a day-- that they're working on stuff. People have lives and it's okay for you to work and have that focused time that you need at the local Panera Bread, for instance. They used to joke in the office, "Where's Keith? Which Panera is he at today?" Because I would always just say, today, I'm going to work from home and then go over there.

But I think from that perspective of how this generation helped accelerate it, how the pandemic did at my firm. It was a flip of a switch when the pandemic hit. We all went home and it was no different from a mentorship perspective. We use a lot of instant messaging, Teams, picking up the phone, texting, etc. The conversations that we're having back and forth make sure that we're having that mentorship not only of our younger generation, but also some of our older, more seasoned folks. 

Actually, I personally think a lot of people, everyone has benefited, because it's allowing you to have some flexibility in your life to deal with life challenges, and that's what people are looking for. Not only the GenZers, but also us old Gen Xers are starting to say, actually, we're enjoying this.

Leach: I think it's about seeing the person as a whole being, right? Because so much of who you are, you bring to work with you every day, you spend a lot of time there. But it's important to respect and appreciate that life is challenging. It always has been, but it gets more and more challenging and the deadlines get crazier and everything else. So what are we doing to help each other along? And I think that that's a big change in working in general is that we're much more interested in the whole being of a person.

So I want to know what you did over the weekend. I'm interested in how your children are growing or the new dog that you got or whatever. Because if I know those things about you, I know your personality better. It's easier for me to manage to that. So I think that those are all positive things like Keith was saying.

Hammelman: Every person has a different story and a different pathway, and people are looking for an appreciation of that. They want the ability to continue to grow and to grow in ways that a firm with a culture has. Whether there's the old softball team or volleyball team, or it could be displaying employee art and having art shows, or even just get-togethers to explain what you're doing in your personal life.

HPAC: With so much of everything online and remote now, are you still doing campus visits for recruiting? How much of that has changed?

Leach: We still do lots and lots of college campus job fairs, etc., because you definitely need to meet people where they are. That's an easy sort of get 'em and hook 'em because you still need that human connection, right? We have all of this technology and everything, but the human connection is important. And making that connection face-to-face is invaluable. So you're going to get your best talent if you're hiring young people out of college in that way. 

Hammelman: We do the campus visits, too, but we're also looking at what else can we as a firm give back to the campuses and the universities. So we'll say, "Hey, we want to do a presentation to a class. Can we come in and give a talk, maybe meet with some professors, meet with some students?" Those types of additional collaborations can have a big benefit, too. (Especially) when some of the presenters are coming back in two years later from the school they just graduated from. That provides value.

Hammelman: Those are always fun. On process improvement, I have weekly calls with all of my discipline leaders across the offices, and we go through staffing challenges, etc., and then I do breakout sessions with them. But they're doing the same things with their teams in order to stay connected and understand where the pinch points are, understand where an individual is.

Again, it's about how we need to communicate and the way we communicated back when I started in the mid-1990s. Then, it was 'you show up at 8:00 AM and you leave at 5 pm and lunch is at Noon.' It's a LOT different now than how it is today. And just that whole process, it's actually been fun. So this change in culture was accelerated by the pandemic, but I still believe that it was going to happen.