Robust integrations after an acquisition can enhance investor returns and create value, while recruiting, ramping and retaining talent can increase your revenue and decrease expenses. That’s why your business’s success hinges on employee performance and not just at the leadership level. In the HVAC industry, your technicians are essential, and you need to ensure every team member at every branch has the skills they need to help your business grow.
Here are six ways you can increase performance with skill-based technical training after acquiring a new portfolio company.
Assess Acquired Skills
One of the most important steps you can take is to determine the technical skills your newly acquired talent possesses and identify gaps. You can drill down to determine gaps by region, office or branch as well as individual employees. Once your teams have completed online skills assessments, you can create customized training paths, allowing you to pinpoint weak areas and increase your teams’ skills quickly. You’ll also be able to identify the best technicians for each job, reduce costly callbacks and increase your teams’ efficiency.
Drive Consistency
Technicians directly impact customer satisfaction, a location’s efficiency and, ultimately, profitability. All technicians need to have a certain level of proficiency, and a standardized training program with unbiased technical assessments and auditable learning paths can help every employee meet customers’ needs.
Identify Problem Areas Early
Underperforming branches, callbacks and poor customer satisfaction often relate to technicians’ skill levels and training. The sooner you identify problem areas, such as individual techs, offices or regions that are struggling, the sooner you can implement training that can help. With your investment hinging on technicians’ success, you must understand what they’re good at and identify gaps, which enables you to not only address current challenges but also get ahead of problems before they occur.
Shift Techs to More Profitable Areas
Some jobs pay more than others and focusing on these drives profits and growth. Techs should be trained on highly profitable activities, allowing them to focus on projects with the highest margins and preventing missed opportunities. As profits increase, you can re-invest that money in the business and expand your operations.
Hire the Right Skills as You Grow
Skill assessments, such as those offered by Interplay Learning, let you identify the skill sets your technicians already have and identify and prioritize the positions your company needs so you can stay successful and meet future demand. Assessments also allow you to document new hires’ skill sets and ramp them quickly to meet a certain standard.
Plus, offering training lets you widen your search and gives you more flexibility in who you hire. You may not be able to find an applicant who fits the position exactly, but you can always hire for attitude and train for aptitude. Today’s workers are also drawn to companies that will invest in their future. As experienced Baby Boomers are retiring, you need to attract younger workers, and employees increasingly want to see clear pathways for growth and guidance and mentorship from their employers.
Improve Technical Skills
When you grow your employees’ skills, you can grow your business. New skill acquisition translates directly into real dollars. Training allows you to upskill at every level and promote cross-training, which ensures you always have technicians available and aren’t left in the lurch if an employee is out sick or leaves the company.
Improving technical skills can also improve retention. Employees who are engaged are more likely to stay with their employer. A study by the University of Phoenix found that 65% of employees said they would be more likely to stay with the same company throughout their careers if their employer did more to reskill them. Even if they don’t stay throughout their entire career, 68% of employees said they would be more likely to remain at their company if an emphasis was placed on upskilling and reskilling.
Take Advantage of Skill-Based Technical Training
Training should not be a one-size-fits-all approach, and Interplay Learning offers online and virtual reality training that you can customize to each employee’s needs. With our learning system, you can quickly assess technicians’ skills, determine which training is most beneficial, identify who has completed what level of training, and ramp new hires quickly.
Consistent, quality training helps you improve customer service, expand operations and drive growth faster. HVAC firms that use us grow their business four times faster than industry peers, and 89% of our customers said they train their employees faster by using Interplay’s training.
Interplay Learning offers scalable and effective training for the essential skilled trades that helps business leaders and their teams build better companies, better careers and better lives. Interplay Learning’s immersive online and VR training platform for HVAC, plumbing, electrical, solar, hospitality, multifamily maintenance and facilities maintenance workforces includes expert-led video courses, hands-on 3D simulations, knowledge checks and custom learning paths to upskill advanced technicians and help new technicians be job-ready in weeks, not years.
