In January 2007, HVAC Industry Legend Ron Smith published his first book, “HVAC Spells Wealth.” This book became one of the standard guides on how to operate a successful HVAC business. Ron filled this book with ideas and systems to streamline any HVAC operation.

Over the years, many have said Ron’s first book put wind into the sails of both new and existing businesses. In his writings and teachings, Smith talked about all aspects of running a business, including how to develop and use service agreements to reduce our industry’s seasonal peaks and valleys. In fact, Smith is often credited with being the father of the modern HVAC service agreement.

Yes Ladies and Gents: HVAC Spells Career

Ron called business team members co-workers and talked a lot about their importance to the success of any business. With the manpower shortages this industry faces, it’s more important than ever to help young people understand the career opportunities this industry offers.

In this, our service issue, I thought I’d expand on Ron’s approach and talk about the incredible career potential this industry offers.

Why is HVAC A Career?

First, the HVAC industry is vital in ensuring comfortable indoor environments. It requires well-trained and well-paid people to not only do the physical work but to understand the entire system, how to test and measure its performance, and solve problems that most don’t even know exist.

Also, studies have found that young people today face accruing giant debts if they opt for college. The alternative is to begin creating their life path in the trades, earn good money, and not accumulate high college debt.

So, it behooves contractors to offer clearly defined career paths to attract and retain top-notch technicians, especially for firms that practice a system-performance approach to HVAC contracting.

Creating Career Paths

Contractors like John Boylan and Jose Montes have written for this magazine about how they create career paths in their companies, offering templates and ideas to help you. In this issue, the article “Building a Strong HVAC Workforce: Lessons from the Field,” by Dominick Guarino, shares even more insights from a panel discussion between five contractors who view building careers as vital to the success of their companies.

Among the things they talked about were the importance of creating company cultures based on learning and training, taking a family approach to communications and promotion, and offering onboarding and training for every skill level (stay tuned for future articles based on this panel).

Some other tips they touched upon to help HVAC spell career in your company include:

  • Define clear technician career paths or ladders
  • Offer as many training and development opportunities as possible
  • Assign mentors to younger team members
  • Help individuals with their own career development plans, then check in with them regularly
  • Provide clear communications
  • Provide tools and technology to help techs be excited and successful in their work.

So yes, ladies and gentlemen – HVAC DOES spell career. Ron Smith may not have said it in those words, but he indeed laid the groundwork for contractors to create environments that will help them build exciting careers for their people.

So, what are YOU doing to promote that concept in your markets?