Culture can be hard to define, but as the saying goes, you know it when you see it. At McGough, we believe a strong, positive culture has been one of the hallmarks of our company and a key behind our long-term success.
Measuring culture can be tricky, but for Cassie Nelson, Executive Vice President of Administrative Support and Services for McGough, employee retention rate offers an excellent barometer. So, when our internal tracking shows an annual retention rate of 90-95%, it tells her something is working.
“When we talk to people who join McGough, we find that our culture and the work we do are the main reasons they end up choosing us,” Nelson said. “Those are also the reasons they might leave, so we identified retention rate as one of those metrics that shows how we are doing as a culture.”
For years, McGough has been tracking its own retention rate and using the statistic as a canary in the coal mine for culture. And in that time, the retention rate has always been astonishingly high – 95.7% in 2023, 94.8% in 2024 – unheard of for a large construction firm.
95%: The Magic Retention Number for McGough
Construction is a notoriously dynamic industry, marked by seasonal hiring and sensitivity to broader economic shifts. To account for that variability, we’ve refined the way we measure retention, focusing on those employees who truly have the choice to stay or leave. Among that group, our excellent retention rate tells us year after year that McGough continues to be a place where people want to stay and grow.
“This emerged a decade ago as part of our Lean journey,” said Cassie. “One of our priorities is to engage and grow our people, and retention rate has become a ‘north star’ metric we constantly measure and return to. It tells us where we need to focus.”
In 2021, we set an ambitious goal: a 95% retention rate. It was based on historical performance, but we knew maintaining it wouldn’t be easy, especially while growing. Still, we’ve consistently hit or approached that number, only falling short during the height of the pandemic.
The Values Core to McGough’s Culture
McGough’s culture, Cassie says, comes through in employee surveys, focus groups and anecdotes:
Safety
We make sure that we are creating a work environment where people can go home safely at the end of every day. We are known for our discipline and our drive for that.
Valued expertise
McGough’s complex and varied projects let employees take on new challenges and be recognized as their experience grows. We never take our employees’ expertise for granted.
Open doors
Many new employees are surprised at how accessible and engaged senior leadership is. While maintaining that access is a challenge as McGough grows geographically, it remains a unique cultural differentiator.
Respect for the individual
McGough has a tradition of being a place where people are seen as individuals, not numbers. “In the past, it may have been people coming from a big pond to our smaller pond,” Cassie said. “Now we are getting bigger, but people still join us and say they are known as a person.”
Client
relationships
McGough operates as a partner with clients, not a separate silo. Employees get to engage with and know clients personally, and have influence not always granted to a construction firm. Those relationships are key to McGough’s success and a way each employee feels connected to the company culture.
Always Evolving: Guiding Culture for the Future
As McGough has grown, the topic of culture has risen in importance. “Our initiative this year is culture preservation,” Cassie said – finding the right balance between the non-negotiable, core values of the company and the unique flavor and personalities found in new offices staffed by a new generation of employees.
Using Lean methodology, Cassie is leading the charge, pulling together a working group made up of a broad cross-section of the firm to answer a critical question: “As we continue to grow, how do we preserve key parts of our culture; how do we evolve parts of our culture that need to change; are there things we’re not doing today that we need to start doing; and are there things we need to shed?”
“The fact that we are talking about culture in such a disciplined way is so classic McGough,” Cassie observed. “Being honest and looking inward, and if there’s a problem, let’s fix it. And the employees are going to be the ones who help fix it.”
Through it all, Cassie and the senior leadership team will be watching the retention rate every month, discussing trends based on exit interviews, and responding to the data to ensure McGough remains the place where the best in the business want to be.
