Stop Waiting for Experience - Build it Faster

By now, it’s no secret that the trades face an acute shortage of skilled labor. Experienced technicians are increasingly scarce and increasingly expensive. Meanwhile, long-tenured professionals are retiring in record numbers, without nearly enough younger workers to replace them.

This problem is exacerbated by existing training protocols. Too many contractors still rely on ride-alongs and other forms of unstructured on-the-job training, which can stretch a new tech's ramp-up time from months to years.

For contractors who need more experienced personnel, the answer isn’t to wait for it; it’s to actually build that experience faster, with a more structured and strategic approach to technician training.

Unstructured and Inconsistent

While the ride-along, shadow-based approach to technician training is surely well-intentioned, it doesn’t yield the results that contractors need. That’s because this type of unstructured training is fundamentally inconsistent. For instance, when technicians are riding along or shadowing a more experienced tech:

●      Their learning journey is not linear or sequential; they may find themselves jumping from very easy to very hard jobs, which can make it difficult to build foundational skills or to accrue confidence.

●      The lead techs doing the training vary widely in both technical skill and their ability to actually teach, and being good at the work doesn't automatically make someone good at explaining it.

●      Those lead techs are also busy with their own work, which may mean they take shortcuts. What this means is that younger techs learn to do things the wrong way and even build muscle memory around incomplete or incorrect methods.

This inconsistency means that the way contractors approach training can make it harder than it needs to be to develop a pool of truly experienced technicians.

A Matter of Time?

What’s critical to understand here is that experience doesn’t necessarily align with time on the job. That’s particularly true when training is unstructured and inconsistent. It’s possible for a technician to spend three or four years in their role and still be a beginner, if the reps they’re doing are random and unexamined.

To put it differently, an experienced employee isn’t simply someone who’s been on the payroll for a long time. It’s someone who has learned to do things the right way. It’s the technician who has been trained not just in the how, but the what and the why; the technician who not only follows simple repair and installation processes, but can also think in terms of systems, troubleshooting and problem-solving even when they encounter unusual issues on the jobsite.

Identifying Essential Skillsets

How can contractors begin to develop truly experienced technicians in a way that isn’t random or inconsistent?

A good place to start is by performing a basic job-task analysis to identify the revenue-driving skills technicians need to master.

This can be as simple as looking at a standard 40-hour work week, or even planning for an entire month, to map the tasks that take up the largest percentages of a technician’s time. Those tasks that take up huge chunks of the day are the ones where real mastery is most needed—again, not just an understanding of the how, but a deeper knowledge of the why.

Doing so can be a helpful way to identify the skills gaps where refined training is most needed. That’s a much better approach than how contractors typically handle task prioritization, which tends to be more reactive, responding to mistakes that are made and remediating problem areas.

A Better Way to Train

When it comes to developing a more effective and defined path for technicians to gain experience, a few components are mission-critical:

●      Foundational knowledge is a must; think about systems, safety, and how the tools work.

●      Applied skills are equally important; provide some practical competencies that can be used immediately, allowing technicians to build confidence through quick, early wins.

●      Mentorship and coaching help ensure technicians are learning to do things in the correct, optimal way.

It can’t be stressed enough that technicians need to be taught processes but also systems; they need opportunities to consider why things work the way they do, which is the only way they will feel confident applying critical thinking skills on the jobsite.

Simulation-based training can be invaluable here. While on-the-job training affords technicians the chance to practice a particular skill just once, sims allow them to keep running through reps until they develop muscle memory and feel real mastery. And, they get to hone their skills in an environment where they can fail without consequence.

Building a more structured training program may take time; however, there is a real opportunity cost associated with the lack of experienced technicians, including plenty of missed business opportunities. It’s worth the investment to get a solid training program off the ground. As the skilled labor shortage becomes more acute, be the contractor who invests in truly competent and confident personnel.