With the start of the busy summer construction season, several construction companies nationwide have turned to the innovative employee care program of Marketplace Chaplains to help their employees and their family members both on and off the job.

Recent U.S. Department of Census figures show an 11 percent increase in housing permits over the same time period in 2013, and a 2.8 percent increase in housing starts over the last month. As a result, construction companies and their employees are feeling the pressures of these increases.

“We consistently receive feedback from our team regarding how grateful they are for the chaplains, and we continue to look for opportunities to further involve Marketplace Chaplains within our work environment,” said J.T. Turner, Jr., President of J.T. Turner Construction, based in Savannah, Georgia. Like others in the industry, his company has seen an increase in their workload this year.

When J.T. Turner Construction was selected to work as the lead construction company to build a home for a segment of the hit television reality show, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Savannah, in 2010, Turner asked Marketplace Chaplains to join them on the site.

“To this day, Marketplace Chaplains continue to make a positive impact in the lives of our employees and their families, and we are blessed to have them as part of J.T. Turner Construction,” Turner said.

Along with J.T. Turner, other construction companies using Marketplace Chaplains, the country’s original and largest workplace chaplaincy organization, are HOAR Construction, LLC, based in Alabama, David Weekley Homes in Houston, Winter Construction in Atlanta, and Dallas-based Osburn Contractors that began using Marketplace Chaplains last year.

David Weekley Homes, with offices in dozens of cities in the US, has been named one of Fortune Magazine’s “Best Places to Work” for the last three years, an honor its chairman credits in part to the employee care offered by Marketplace Chaplains. “The chaplain program is a low-cost employee benefit that has garnered us more loyalty than our other ‘standard’ benefits and has resulted in lower turnover, improved morale and a general sense of ‘caring’ on the company’s part about our employees’ ‘well-being,’” said David Weekley, Chairman of the Board, of the 1,000+ employee company and a Marketplace client since 2003.

Construction companies are often spread across a large geographic area and many times employees must work outside under adverse weather and/or dangerous conditions, both of which are issues many construction companies are addressing through the use of Marketplace Chaplains.

“These company CEOs have seen, as have many others, that taking care of your employees and their family members is the best way to reward your greatest personnel assets,” said Richard S. De Witt, Executive President of Marketplace Chaplains.