Paolo Bellosillo's NU12 # 10 - First Name Basis at construction project sites

Our company is a construction company. We always deal with construction workers ranging from unskilled minimum wage earners to the skilled workers. These labor force are helpers, masons, carpenters, steelmen, electricians, plumbers, tinsmith, painters, warehousemen, and foremen. These direct labor force are handled by out indirect labor force, which are the site engineers, QC engineers, safety engineers, CAD operators, project managers, and all the staff that belong in the overhead.

Having this vast range of labor force, there exists an invisible boundary between the workers (direct labor) and the staff (indirect labor). There is an inequality between these 2 groups. This is shown in how they call each other.

I have noticed this, not only in our company but in all the other construction companies that we have worked with:

    - People within the staff group call each other by their first names

    - People within the workers group call each other by their first names as well

    - People in the workers group call the people in the staff group with their first names (of course with prefixes "ma'am / sir"

    - People in the staff group call the people in the workers group with their LAST NAMES

Calling each other by their first names reflects that they are in an equal / friendly relationship with each other. However, the simple way of calling the workers with their last names poses inequality between the 2 groups and reflects their distance in terms of their works.

I am aiming to change all these in our company. I have a goal of injecting a first name basis of calling each other, whether you are a helper, a minimum wage earner, newly hired, engineer, or a manager. They are all encouraged to call each other by their first names.

This is a big goal, since we are employing about 800 workforce. With this big goal, I have to break this down into small and manageable steps.

My first step, which I did just last week, was to set a meeting with the warehouse workers and staff regarding this. I encourage them to call each other by their first names, and I received positive feedbacks from them.

I plan to have meetings with all the departments and project sites in our company encouraging them to call each other by their first names regardless of their positions.

Calling each other by their first names will demand respect on both sides of the workforce, and will promote equality and, in the long run, good working relationship with each other.  3

Paolo S. Bellosillo