Trained employees are the cornerstone of any successful business, including HVAC contracting companies. Skilled and qualified employees will make your business operations more accurate and efficient, and your entire company more profitable. These are just some of the reasons why training your staff is not just important, but essential.

Why is employee training important?

Employee training ensures your staff has the knowledge and skills necessary to not only tackle various HVAC maintenance, repair, and installation tasks, but to also perform them efficiently and adequately. 

However, not all business owners see employee training as a way to boost their contracting company’s efficiency and reputation. In fact, there are several common reasons owners state as the reason behind their unwillingness to invest in their employee training:

• Why invest money and time in training when my employees are only going to leave my company once they become better qualified?

• There’s simply no time to train my employees. There’s too much work, they should learn on the go. 

• The HVAC industry is advancing and changing so quickly there simply is no need to invest in training when the technology is going to become different in a couple of months. 

These excuses are not true. Training your employees will boost their satisfaction, incentivizing them to stay with your company and advance their knowledge and careers there. By investing time into training you will decrease the duration of each service your employees perform. 

Finally, technologies in the HVAC industry build on top of one another, and having employees who are familiar with the most modern innovations will allow them to quickly adopt new tendencies. This helps your business stay competitive by meeting new customer demands and offering them advanced solutions. 

What are the downsides of not training your employees?

On the other hand, some business owners rarely think about the downsides of not training their employees. And they should, as having untrained employees can seriously hurt their business in the following ways:

• Untrained staff can cost your business money. If your employees are not familiar with the more advanced concepts of HVAC maintenance, repair, and installation, they will be less efficient, increasing turnover time, making your business less productive and profitable.

• Also, not giving your employees opportunities to grow, learn, and advance their knowledge, skills, and careers will make them unhappy and dissatisfied with company culture, which significantly hampers productivity and efficiency. 

What are the benefits of training your staff?

Not only does adequate employee development and training eliminate the potential downsides, it also brings several vital benefits that will boost your heating and air conditioning business. 

Motivation

HVAC technicians, especially those who are members of the younger generations, state training and development as one of their top 3 priorities when considering a company to work with, right alongside opportunities for career advancement and their wages. Fostering training will not only motivate new prospective employees to join your ranks, but also keep your current staff satisfied. 

Feedback culture

Creating a good company culture and image is essential for improving the credibility of your company. Training provides a basis for establishing a culture of sharing and feedback, where more experienced employees are encouraged to teach their less experienced colleagues and provide invaluable feedback on their work. This would be impossible without investing in employee development. 

Reduced turnover

Trained staff performs better in the field, which boosts the overall performance and productivity of your company through reduced turnover and generally faster and more efficient service. This is essential for improving your operations. 

Better profitability

Through advancements in efficiency, turnover, and operational excellence, your company will reap the greatest benefit of all – improved profitability. Not only will your staff do a better and faster job, but your reputation will improve, bringing in new customers and allowing you to expand your business. 

How can I improve my employee training?

Deciding to improve your employee training in the long run requires outsourcing your staff development to a reputable provider of HVAC training programs. However, you can perform a couple of immediate changes that will identify room for improvement, indicate employees that require additional training, and begin to foster a culture of sharing within your ranks. 

• Test their knowledge: Testing the knowledge of your employees will allow you to establish the overall level of staff expertise and create a starting point for training and development.

• Find employees that perform well: Identifying employees who outperform their peers will grant you a chance to assess good performance practices and use them to illustrate the direction your company should head towards.

• Create a suggestion box: This allows employees to have a voice on their own, to state good and bad aspects of company culture, and provide ideas and suggestions for improvement. 

The Gustave A. Larson Company offers excellent training programs

There’s little that’s more important to the success of an HVAC contractor than the skills and qualifications of its employees. Sure, offering detail-oriented maintenance plans, paying attention to industry innovations, and boosting conversion with a slick website can help, but without trained employees to do the actual work, your company doesn’t have a solid foundation. 

And that’s exactly what the Larson Company is here to help you with. We understand the importance of employee training, which is why we have developed various in-depth training programs for employees in the HVAC industry. We will get your staff ready for anything. Reach out to us today!