Ron Smith
Contributing Writer
Ron Smith HVAC
It’s well known that the HVAC industry suffers from the inefficient use of technicians and a shortage of technicians. While the latter factor can be corrected with expensive and focused recruiting, hiring and training programs there is another method of being able to perform work and boost productivity in your HVAC business. It’s through better use of the technicians you already have in your company. You should, of course, be working on improving both factors.
The goal of this blog post is to share my decades of experience in employing technicians and helping consulting clients make better use of their staffs. What’s the end result? Significantly increased productivity! Your own business stands to see a productivity increase of as much as 20 percent — all without having to make a single hire.
There’s a reason HVAC contractors can and should first focus on improving their technician’s productivity. Better use of existing coworkers creates a trickle-down effect on every other area of your business including:
- Lowering the costs related to owning and operating service vehicles.
- Reducing inventory cost.
- Buffering other costs related to necessary overhead.
One of the key ways to boost productivity involves maximizing what your technicians do on the job. Here is only one tested and proven method of accomplishing it:
Many HVAC businesses require technicians to show up at their business site at a certain time, say 7 a.m. You are required to pay them from the time they arrive there. Most often a lot of that time is idle time but you must pay for it. You also must pay the technicians to travel to the first customer’s site. Here is an example: if a technician spends 45 minutes at your business site and 30 minutes getting to the first customer’s site, that’s a total of 1 ¼ hours of unproductive time.
A more productive approach involves having the technicians go from their home to the first customer’s site. Your technicians’ time on the clock starts when they arrive on site. This approach saves you money and increases productivity. Based on an eight hour day saving the described 1 ¼ hour results in a 16{938cd9e8dae860e800efc538277d4f7684e6f6981618ba70d1c34357a53c2e1f} improvement per technician!
For this productivity-boosting scenario to work, you’ll need a daily runner to interact with the technicians, conducting tasks such as picking up invoices, receipts and cash and delivering parts and messages. All parts used today are replenished by the runner tomorrow. The runner helps improve productivity in two other ways: First, they make all required trips to supply houses and then deliver the part to the technician. I learned to never let my technicians go to a supply house; second, they can deliver furnaces and A/C units to technicians. This runner coworker is a go-between helping your technicians remain on the job where you make money.
However, I also learned that you should arrange a method of technician social interaction. We solved that by having a productive and mandatory one hour training program each and every Tuesday morning. Of course, the technicians are paid for the training time. If you would like more in-depth information about ways to increase productivity in your HVAC business, just shoot me an email at ronlsmith2@bellsouth.net or call me direct at 615-974-9589. Also, I urge you to take a look at our website, www.ronsmithhvac.com. We’re here to help your business succeed — in every way possible.
By Ron Smith
Author of the best-selling book “HVAC Spells Wealth”