Want to know a secret? Continental Contractors is turning 20 this year. Of course, we’ll celebrate the milestones we’ve hit along the way (nearly 100,000 guestrooms renovated and over $1 billion in revenue!) but we want to make sure we also celebrate the people who got us here. Since day one, we have prioritized treating every stakeholder on every project fairly. That includes not only the clients, subcontractors and vendors, and amazing design and architecture teams we work with, but the employees who show up, day after day, and the families at home who support them.  

Our Continental family – and we are a family, in every sense of the word – is so important to us. This year we will strive to not only show our appreciation for hard work, but to also encourage our teams to take care of themselves. We have launched Continental’s Whole Health initiative in January, and over the next 12 months we will explore ways to help employees and their families become and stay healthy in four main areas: Mentally, Financially, Physically, and within the Communities we serve. Each quarter we will focus on one of these areas, and provide resources, training, and open conversations about how we can embrace a whole-health mentality.   

We begin in Q1 with a guest speaker who will talk with us about “Safety Under the Hardhat” and suicide prevention within the construction industry. A September 2022 ABC.org news release stated that “In 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the construction industry had one of the highest rates of death by suicide among their workers, 5,242 in 2018, which was five times higher than U.S. construction worker fatalities on jobsites.” This staggering reality is why we are starting our Whole Health initiative with a focus on mental health. The health, safety, and whole-person well-being of our team means the world to us.

In Q1 we will also introduce a new, robust Employee Assistance Plan, and will practice showing our appreciation for each other. Look for our “Team Shoutouts” on social media to see how the Continental family is showing our gratitude. 

We hope you’ll keep an eye out for our progress as we share ideas and stories from our Whole Health journey this year. Stay tuned! 

– Renee Bagshaw, Chief Operating Officer