Cooling work peaks with the weather and depends on a few skilled technicians. Here is how to plan the season, share the call-outs and keep your best people.
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Share your requirementsAn HVAC and refrigeration contractor installs, services and repairs air conditioning, ventilation, cold rooms and chillers for offices, hospitals, hotels, malls, factories and homes. Demand peaks with the heat, when installations, breakdowns and annual maintenance all arrive together. Technicians work at height, on live electrics and with refrigerants, often in cramped plant rooms. A few skilled people can diagnose faults others cannot, so they carry the firm's reputation, and competitors want them. The firm splits between project teams that install and service teams that maintain, and the two draw on the same pool of people. See also HR for construction. What makes HR different here is the calendar. The same people are needed in the same weeks by installation, repair and maintenance, and a business that has not planned for the peak spends it arguing about who goes where. A written plan, a fair rota and a record of who can do what turn most of those arguments into decisions made in advance.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
Summer brings installations, breakdowns and maintenance together, and a team sized for the average year cannot cope.
The two or three people who can find the hard faults are overloaded and tempting to competitors.
Handling of gases and work at height depend on who trained whom, and records are thin.
Out-of-hours calls fall on the willing, and burnout follows.
Projects raid the service team, and customers on maintenance contracts see missed visits.
Trainees watch and carry, and many leave before they become technicians.
Peak help is brought in by the day with no list.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Learning and Development; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for construction and real estate, not in general.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a hvac and refrigeration contractors business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Demand by month from your own records, with a core team, a pool of trained casuals and agreed overtime rules for the peak.
What this coversHideDemand by month from your own records, with a core team, a pool of trained casuals and agreed overtime rules for the peak. The workforce plan holds it.
Pair juniors with the experts on hard faults, write up the common ones and recognise the people who teach.
What this coversHidePair juniors with the experts on hard faults, write up the common ones and recognise the people who teach. The learning and development process holds the plan.
Gas handling, height and electrical safety, with dates and refreshers, on one record per technician.
What this coversHideGas handling, height and electrical safety, with dates and refreshers, on one record per technician. The employee information management holds it.
A fair rotation, rest after a night call and an agreed allowance, in advance of the season.
What this coversHideA fair rotation, rest after a night call and an agreed allowance, in advance of the season.
Fix the AMC visits first and staff projects around them.
What this coversHideFix the AMC visits first and staff projects around them.
Name, identity, contact, dates and pay, so good peak helpers can be called back.
What this coversHideName, identity, contact, dates and pay, so good peak helpers can be called back.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A seasonal plan from your own call data, with a core, a casual pool and rules for overtime.
A way to spread diagnostic skill and keep a record of training and certification.
A look at what keeps your scarce technicians and what pulls them away.
A fair call-out rota and clear rules for rest and overtime in the peak.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in construction and real estate, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Site engineers, supervisors, crews and sales teams leave for different reasons. How to ask what shaped their decision and act on it between projects.
8 min readRead article
Hiring decisions made one request at a time, in the month the pain is worst. What a workforce plan contains and why a twelve-month view changes what you hire.
7 min readRead article
A calendar of courses, a budget spent by March and no record of what any of it changed. What a learning and development process contains when it starts from need rather than from the catalogue.
7 min readRead article
How to spot an unmanageable workload before it becomes an exit or an error, what to look at, how to talk about it and what to change, without guessing.
5 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Use last year's calls by month to size a core team, a pool of registered casuals and agreed overtime rules, and start hiring and training before the season. Planning in April for May is too late.
Pay fairly, recognise the role and spread his knowledge so the firm is not helpless without him, which also reduces his burden. Confirm any restrictive terms with a qualified professional.
Gas handling, height and electrical safety, product training and refreshers, by person with dates. Which are required depends on your work, so confirm them with a qualified professional.
By a written rota with rest after a night call and an agreed allowance. Informal sharing overloads the keenest.
Fix the maintenance schedule first and plan projects around it, with a bench for peaks.
Yes, if they are registered, briefed and supervised. Confirm the rules that apply to your arrangements with a qualified professional.
Expect questions about last season's call volumes, which two or three technicians the firm leans on for hard diagnoses, and how breakdown calls are shared at night. A good first step could be a call-out rota and a training and certificate record, ready before the next peak. Once we have talked it through, the scope is written down and agreed with you before anything begins.
Look at last year's calls by month, agree the core team and casual pool, fix the maintenance schedule, publish the call-out rota and confirm certificates. A few weeks of preparation saves months of firefighting.
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