What Makes a Mortenson Project Site Feel Different? Building a Culture of Belonging in Construction
Article Summary
What creates a strong sense of belonging in construction? At Mortenson, it starts with a culture where people feel respected, supported, and connected to the team around them. This article explores how collaboration, shared values, safety, mentorship, and everyday relationships help create an environment where people can contribute, grow, and do their best work.
Key Takeaways
- Belonging in construction starts with respect. When people feel welcomed, valued, and heard, they’re better positioned to contribute ideas, build relationships, and solve problems together.
- Strong construction teams are built through collaboration. Different skills, experiences, and perspectives strengthen problem-solving, decision-making, and innovation.
- Defining a shared commitment and set of expectations, principles, and practices makes culture actionable.
- Culture is shaped and reinforced by everyday actions. Mentorship, knowledge sharing, supporting teammates, and following through on commitments all influence the experience people have at work.
- Safety is both physical and psychological. That means creating an environment where people can speak up, ask questions, share ideas, and raise concerns.
- Relationships can have a lasting impact on a construction career. Mentors, teammates, and leaders can help people navigate challenges, pursue growth opportunities, and build connections that extend beyond an individual project, giving team members a deeper purpose.
You Can Feel It When You Arrive
Stepping onto a Mortenson project site, you might expect to be focused on the scale of the work or the day’s activity, but you'll likely notice something else first.
The way people interact.
The conversations that flow between different trades, roles, and titles. The laughter shared between tasks. The way teammates step in to help tackle a problem. The willingness to share knowledge, lend a hand, or simply check in on one another. A sense that everyone is pulling in the same direction.
That's not something people always expect to notice on a construction site.
Every construction project has schedules to meet, challenges to solve, and goals to achieve. Those outcomes matter. And for people building their construction careers today, culture matters too. The environment people work in, the relationships they build, and the sense of belonging they experience can be just as important as the projects themselves.
More than a team
One team member described it this way:
“We honestly and actively care for each other. I think people feel that when they come here--they feel it’s different. There is one Mortenson culture, and we’re all pulling for the greater good.”
Team members often describe their experience at Mortenson as something they didn't fully expect. Not because of a single program, policy, or initiative, but because of the people around them.
While that experience looks different for every team member, it often starts with something simple: feeling welcomed, respected, and connected to those around you.
Where Belonging Begins
On a project site, each and every role contributes to success. Whether someone is brand new to construction or has spent decades in the industry, our teams are expected to treat one another professionally and recognize and respect the value each person brings.
That foundation of respect creates something bigger: belonging. When people feel like they belong, they're more likely to speak up, contribute ideas, challenge assumptions, build stronger relationships, and help solve the complex problems construction projects bring every day.
Belonging’s Business Impact
Construction has always been a team sport, and the best solutions rarely come from one person alone. They come from people with different skills, experiences, and perspectives working together toward a common goal. Across Mortenson, collaboration isn't viewed as a step in the process. It's how the work gets done.
At Mortenson, we've seen firsthand how different experiences and perspectives strengthen problem-solving, improve decision-making, and lead to new ways of thinking. Belonging helps unlock a wealth of innovation and creativity in our team members and across the industry. It also improves team member engagement, experience, and retention.
That sense of workplace belonging is reflected in the experiences of our team members. More than 85% of Mortenson team members say they feel a sense of belonging and can be themselves at work.
Read more on belonging at Mortenson.
Defining a Shared Commitment
As Joffrey Wilson, Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion emphasizes, “We’re committed to creating a culture that celebrates and leverages our differences, building a place where everyone feels included. It’s the right thing to do for our team members and to drive the company.”
We’re committed to creating a culture that celebrates and leverages our differences, building a place where everyone feels included. It’s the right thing to do for our team members and to drive the company.
One of the ways we communicate that shared commitment is through common language and behaviors we call our LeadBLU principles and practices. LeadBLU came from the need to clearly define what makes us uniquely Mortenson as a decades old company. It’s a way to describe who we are, how we treat each other, how we lead, and how we approach our work. LeadBLU represents a common language we use to talk about our greatest differentiators – our people and the culture we purposefully create.
More than a set of values, it provides a shared language and common expectations that guide decisions across the organization. It shapes how we work together, the customers we choose, and the team members who join and stay.
Most importantly, it reflects a commitment to cultivating a culture where people can thrive.
In fact, our values are consistently cited by partners and customers as a primary reason they choose Mortenson when surveyed. Additionally, newer team members, customers, and partners often cite that our ‘say/do’ ratio is unmatched, based on regular team member engagement survey results. Few companies can point to such consistent alignment between words and actions, especially when decisions are hard.
Culture Built Through Actions
Culture isn't only built through shared language alone, but through everyday actions that align and affirm.
You can observe the spirit of belonging and our shared commitment across our vast organization in the way our people look out for one another. Follow-through is on display in the way leaders and other experienced team members take time to mentor and teach others. It’s in the way people celebrate successes together, support each other through challenges, and step in to help solve problems when they're needed most.
A Standout Safety Culture
Safety is perhaps one of the clearest examples of culture through actions. While procedures and training are critical, construction safety is also personal.
It's having the courage to speak up when there's a safer way to complete a task. It's taking the time to ensure thorough pre-task planning happens. It's investing in the training and development of a new hire. Ultimately, it's making sure everyone goes home safely at the end of the day.
In many ways, there may be no greater expression of care than a collective, unwavering commitment to the safety and wellbeing of those around us.
Beyond Physical Safety
At Mortenson, physical safety and psychological safety go hand in hand. Team members freely ask questions, share ideas, and raise concerns. People know their voice matters and that they're supported as they learn, contribute, innovate, and grow.
Caring for our team members also means supporting mental health just as much as physical health. We’re proud to offer standout mental health and wellness benefits at no cost to Mortenson team members and family members. This includes free therapy, coaching, work-life services, and more, delivered in a way that's fast, flexible, confidential, and personalized.
When people know they're respected, systematically supported, and heard, they gain confidence to contribute their best work. Relationships grow stronger, ideas flow more freely, and teams become capable of achieving more together than any individual could alone. That's where belonging takes root, and we accomplish more than imagined possible.
More Than Buildings
While we get to work on some of the most exciting projects in the country and across many different industries, at the end of the day, if you ask team members what they remember most from a previous project, or what has shaped their career, many will talk about the people.
They'll tell stories about mentors who invested time in their growth and success, teammates who helped them navigate challenges, or leaders who encouraged them to take on new growth opportunities. They’ll point to relationships that have continued years after that first project wrapped up.
Those moments and connections may seem small, but over time they shape how people work together, how teams perform, and ultimately the culture people experience every day. It's those connections that help transform a workplace into a thriving culture and true community. And then the already innovative and inspiring work we do for our customers becomes even more meaningful.
That's what belonging looks like. The strongest project sites aren't defined only by the structures they build. They're defined by the environment they create for the people doing the work. When team members feel respected, supported and connected to something bigger than themselves, belonging follows naturally. That's what makes a Mortenson project site feel different.
And that's why, for so many team members, working at Mortenson becomes more than they thought possible.