Granite Construction

The Client

As one of the largest diversified heavy civil contractors and construction materials producers in the United States, Granite Construction strives to provide their customers with the highest standards of quality, value, and service on every project. Granite is a company with a strong set of core values and exceptional employees who have the knowledge, experience, integrity, and commitment to build the infrastructure of the future.

Background

Soon after joining Granite Construction in May 2011 as the SVP of Human Resources, Phil DeCocco incorporated the Caliper Profile into the Granite Construction employee selection process. He later hired Renee Gallegos to serve as Granite Construction’s VP of Training and Organizational Development. Like Phil, Renee had experience in using the Caliper Profile, as the assessment was utilized at her former employer.

The Business Challenge

At Granite Construction, Renee was primarily using the Caliper Profile as an instrument to aid her in employee development. She was looking for the best way to easily access information on internal employees for coaching purposes, for high-potential employee (Hi-Po) identification, and for succession management initiatives. Moreover, she was seeking a tool that could offer an additional perspective on an individual that a standard Three Sixty assessment could not provide.

The Strategic Solution

Renee partnered with Caliper to implement the Caliper Three Sixty Plus instrument. The Three Sixty Plus combines an individual’s Caliper Profile results with performance feedback from employees, and the resulting report provides information on individuals’ strengths, developmental areas, and perceptions from peers. This tool provided her with the personality component and innate behavioral tendencies of her learners, which was the valuable data she had been hoping to find. With the information gleaned from the Caliper Three Sixty Plus instrument, she was able to better understand why 360 raters might be grading a learner a particular way.

The Results

With these additional insights into their employees’ performance and potential, Granite Construction was better equipped to identify high-potentials and offer targeted coaching to maximize the productivity of their workforce. Renee describes how the Caliper Three Sixty Plus contributed to successful coaching at Granite Construction: “For an example, I was coaching an employee who received several comments about not being an assertive leader. As it turns out, the employee had high aggressive and assertive scores but also had a really high accommodation score. The employee wanted to be more assertive but was dealing with an internal conflict between balancing their assertiveness and their need to accommodate. If I hadn’t seen the Caliper results, along with the feedback, it might have taken several sessions, or I may never have discovered the root cause of the issue, which would have led to less effective coaching.”