How to Provide the Best Online HVAC Training Year Round

An HVAC contractor in Washington asked:

How do you get your techs much-needed training in the offseason?

EGIA faculty member Gary Elekes opened the conversation by explaining that you can still have paid training days for your service techs, but that in order to make it affordable for the company you can make training pay half of a tech’s regular pay rate.

“That doesn’t mean below minimum wage. If you’re paying your tech 30 dollars an hour, you might wanna pay them 15 dollar an hour for training purposes.”

Elekes then went on to explain how a business owner could budget for this easily before the beginning of the new fiscal year.

“Most contractors have several slow periods, what we call shoulder season, and the budget needs to identify those and say ‘what are our cost structures, and how do we want to approach that?'” said Elekes. “Training isn’t something you start and stop, it’s really a culture and a philosophy and it’s something that should be ongoing, even in our peak periods.”

Finally, Elekes remarked that business owners need to be careful around the cost of their employee training, adding that many times the best online HVAC training doesn’t come at a premium cost. “At some point, you’ve got to recover the cost associated with the expense,” said Elekes.

Gary Elekes is serial entrepreneur with a passion for helping others become more successful by sharing what he has learned over the past 3 decades working closely with all facets of the contracting industry. During his career, Gary has held senior management positions at Lennox and Service Experts. In 2000, Gary moved into entrepreneurship and started his training and consulting business, EPC.

Our faculty members have also answered questions on other topics related to sales in the contracting world, including What can I do to maximize the increase in opportunities we see over the summer months? and What’s the best way to manage and track employee performance?.

Hear more from our “Ask The Experts” faculty members on “Cracking The Code,” our weekly web series.

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