5 Ways to Build Your Best Plumbing Team
The statistical doom of the plumbing sector’s labor market is not just theoretical. Several areas of the country, and even the world, start to notice the difference. Experienced and talented plumbers are becoming very difficult to find. And here you are, starting to visualize your ideal team. You don’t want just to build a team; you want to build the best plumbing team!
It might easier to feel there’s nothing you can do as the owner or the operator to change some circumstances. However, in actuality, you can have more opportunities to take the lead. With some forward-thinking and careful planning, you can set the stage for hiring success.
For this blog, we’re about to discover some effective ways of building your ideal plumbing team.
1. Define your perfect employee
Before you start creating an advertisement or interview for your first candidate, it is crucial to have a clearer picture inside your head of what an “excellent” employee means to you. Reliability, skillset, work ethics, attitude and experiences are preferable factors to consider. You can go deeper and set your standards high. What kind of energy do you want to see from them to bring to your table? Is it even-tempered and steady, or fast and outgoing?
Also, focus on the skillset because it is one crucial factor to consider. Work experience can only be helpful if it on the right kind. In defining your perfect employee, you can do the following basics below:
During the interview conversation, prepare for a punch-list of the non-negotiable skills vs. the skills you are willing to teach.
· Write a description of your ideal employee. List everything you wanted to look for them.
· Remember that people are complicated and messy. Hence, be more realistic and idealistic.
· Realistically, you cannot find the perfect package, but you are close to finding one.
· When being hard-pressed to back down, make sure to look for the character over skills.
· As the contractor or project leader, you can only teach skills. You can never teach things like loyalty, disposition and ethics. Hence, choose character over skills.
2. Be a talent magnet
The stress-free way to attract top talents today is to be the place everybody wants to work for. Words get around. If the culture and benefits are the best in the market today, you will have incredibly talented plumbers contacting you and knocking on your door.
Take note that moment wasn’t on the list. You can resist the need to play the higher compensation game. You exactly know what you can afford to compensate your employees. In many cases, it is most likely comparable to others. There are different ways, other than compensation (money), to motivate employees further.
First, make the work environment a place they wanted to go, comfortable and safe. Second, make sure to take a genuine interest in their professional development. Overall, it is a win-win situation because these things are straightforward to do in most companies, in general, yet, they don’t do them.
3. Plan ahead
The most horrible time to look for a new employee is whenever you need a new one. For instance, you want to begin looking for a new worker about six months ahead. However, you need another one for another different project. If that looks way too long for you, take the process and the timeline into consideration. Also, be aware that it takes time to prepare everything, review resumes, do the hiring paperwork, conduct interviews, wait for the candidates to work out a notice, and then train them.
Even the most experienced plumbers need sufficient time to be trained in the actual process and even earning your trust. If you throw them to the job immediately since you want to start and end the whole thing much faster is very unfair to them. Forcing things without enough time and preparation is a recipe for failure.
Getting ideas of where your company is going after six months requires careful planning and internalization. As the company owner, do not settle only in the HR department. Instead, there should be careful planning in all areas of your plumbing business. Take into consideration the ever-changing dynamics of the market, the goals you set for your company and the past growth patterns.
Write all of these out and consider how each of them will affect each area of your plumbing business, from equipment and tools to marketing and personnel. Executing strategic plans is always a good idea, especially for various timelines.
4. Don’t jump the gun
You might already hear the phrase “Hire slow, fire fast” before. Since you cannot afford to wait for the best employee to come along, you have to plan the hiring process carefully. Before making an offer to the potential candidate, you can do a gut check. First, ask yourself if it feels right hiring them and try to imagine that candidate working on your team. Try not to ignore the voices inside your head.
However, ignoring guts is applicable sometimes. But that’s still okay, especially if you have valid reasons. Any candidates will tell you they are excellent and skilled plumbers. Skills will always speak for themselves no matter what. If you find them no good to your team and company, then cut them loose.
As the owner, if you genuinely care about all of your employees, cutting even the new workers can be emotionally hard. Everyone knows that firing is never easy. However, one rotten apple spoils the entire barrel. Good feelings to someone aren’t a good reason to risk your company’s reputation and team’s performance.
By living with this philosophy, your plumbing business and your team will be in a much better situation.
5. Train the future
The present talent shortage is getting worse over the next few years. The industry is dealing with a long-term systemic issue ever since. The four tactics already discussed above will help you improve your chances of getting ahead in the market. However, the best defense is always a decently good defense.
There are many advantages when you create apprenticeship programs for your company. However, the most relevant is that you are about to create your very own talent pool. These programs are an investment to your company, a reliable long-term strategy that has long-term benefits.
Finding the Right Skill Level for Your Plumbing Team
The best service plumber has to meet a very long list of requirements — no criminal background, clean driving record, customer service skills, punctuality, a cultural fit with your company, and the ability to pass a drug test. The list goes on. That all assumes that these employees also have the talent and experience to do the job efficiently. As being said earlier, qualified top talents are scarce.
Here’s a solution to help lessen the rising panic — experience must not always be a top priority. There’s no value in having a wide range of skill levels and experiences on your plumbing service team. That is why it is crucial to take into consideration the three industry-standard skill levels that should be available to your plumbing company.
1. Apprentices
Apprentice (helpers) will always be your least expensive labor force. These employees are at the start of their plumbing careers. Hence, they are more willing to work harder and eager for opportunities and hopefully have a healthier back.
Apprentices require more and more supervision and cannot run jobs on their very own. However, they are considered as a good investment today and tomorrow to your company. In most cases, you need another set of hands and more strength than brainpower. Let your apprentices learn more hands-on while lowering your job costs. It’s a win-win.
To supervise your new apprentice and the rest of your team in the most effective way, make sure to deploy Pro Crew Schedule — a specialized tool designed for construction crew management.
2. Journeymen
These mind-level plumbers are the backbone, mainly in all service plumbing outfits. It is the journeyman who can execute any bread-and-butter jobs on his very own. They specialize in high-profit, high-volume work.
At one point in their lives, journeyman considers that money is their biggest motivator. If you wanted to keep these professionals on your plumbing team, opportunities for advancement are vital. Let them engage with advanced training topics. Discover the future leaders among your talent pool, for they are the master plumbers of tomorrow.
3. Master
Master plumbers have done this and that. With the most qualified and skilled plumbers included in your plumbing team, they are most likely expensive. Master plumber status is the plumber profession’s peak — the biggest asset of the masters in their brain. If possible, look and hire master plumbers who have the ability and the heart of a teacher. They should be a person who has the personality and the patience to share their knowledge to others.
Master plumbers don’t need to be project managers. However, they sometimes perform other project managers’ responsibilities. As the team’s senior talent, they must be willing to showcase their leadership skills and have decision-making autonomy. Let your master plumbers act as your quality control with their vast skills, ensuring they train the younger employees properly.
Make Your Plumbing Team Stronger Using Subcontractor Scheduling Software
Your plumbing team works best when working together, never acting in self-interest but in a spirit of collaborating, teamwork, communicating and making progress toward goals. Yet teamwork doesn’t happen by accident. There’s a need to facilitate it. You have to grow it. You have to create a culture where collaboration is the norm, a company culture wherein the only way to succeed is through solid unity within the rest of the team.
Lastly, you need to invest in cloud-based tools that primarily help improve and facilitate collaboration with your plumbing team. Decisions and work can be made everywhere and anywhere, accelerating the exchange of information between team members. Thus, it improves team collaboration, reliability and trust.
Pro Crew Schedule is always ahead of the game! This specialized construction scheduling software offers everything you and your plumbing team need. So when you think you need to level up your communication and collaboration in your team, Pro Crew Schedule is the right software tool to try. Here are the other unique advantages Pro Crew Schedule offers:
· Incorporate flexibility to the team
· Crew and resource management
· Task visibility increases
· Time-tracking feature
· Faster notifications and unified workflow
· Structured team communication
· Easy access anywhere and anytime
· Project scheduling in construction
· Cloud-based storage for data and files
With Pro Crew Schedule, there’s greater accountability in many ways and a more collaborative space for your team. Explore Pro Crew Schedule for free. Click here for a LIVE DEMO.
Key Takeaways
Employees come and go due to all sorts of reasons. Hence, never get too attached to any of your plans. At the end of the day, it is a balancing act among hope, present, future, and careful planning. Sometimes, hiring people below your skill-level requirements but have the right temperament, work attitude, and personality is a great solution to fill your ideal team. Give other candidates the chance to shine since they often rise to any occasion.
