Miter, a leading provider of cloud-based human capital management (HCM), payroll, field operations, and expense management solutions for the construction industry, has released Employee Experience: The Key to Retention and ROI, a new report surveying more than 250 construction leaders on the programs that shape whether workers stay or go. The findings reveal a costly disconnect: the programs most strongly associated with a better employee experience are also among the least common across the industry. Fewer than one-third of construction firms offer defined career paths, regularly collect employee feedback, or formally pair new hires with mentors.
Across the eight programs Miter identified as the biggest levers for retention, spanning safety, benefits, feedback, and career growth, the average firm has only 4.9 in place. That gap shows up directly in the numbers: firms with six or more of those programs report employee experience scores 32% higher than firms with two or fewer.
“Construction is heading into one of the biggest building booms in a generation, and the contractors who win it will be the ones who figure out how to keep their best people,” said Connor Watumull, co-founder and CEO of Miter. “That's exactly what this report illustrates. It gives contractors a real benchmark instead of a guess, and a clear place to start.”
Construction firms have largely covered the basics: 91% offer benefits beyond the legal minimum and 77% provide formal safety training. However, programs further down the list show far lower adoption. Specifically, just 32% of firms offer a defined path for career advancement, 31% collect employee feedback on a regular, structured basis, and only 30% formally pair new hires with a mentor — the same three programs that ranked among the strongest predictors of employee experience in the survey.
The report puts a dollar figure on what that gap costs. Field laborers left roles at a turnover rate of 14%, several times the rate reported for supervisors and office staff, and Miter estimates that leaving a single craft seat open costs a contractor an average of $923 per week in lost productivity. A 100-person contractor with 30% annual turnover can spend $250,000 to $500,000 or more a year backfilling roles.
The full report includes a breakdown of all eight employee experience programs, a three-step framework that contractors can use to estimate their own turnover costs and audit their program gaps, and additional findings on construction's growing but underfunded interest in AI. Employee Experience: The Key to Retention and ROI is available now at miter.com/resources/employee-experience-construction-survey.
Miter is a workforce management platform built for contractors. Driven by a vision of a better built world, Miter makes it easier and faster to build critical infrastructure by empowering the next generation of contractors to strengthen their workforce, control job costs, and accelerate jobsite execution. More than 1,700 contractors run on Miter, which was named NetSuite's 2025 Breakthrough Partner of the Year, is a CFMA Elite Partner, and is backed by Battery Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Coatue. Miter connects payroll, HR, field operations, and expense management, enabling contractors to build with confidence. Learn more at miter.com.
