Arkansas HVACR NewsMagazine September 2024

News Magazine September 2024

FEATURE STORY

installation woes to maintenance missteps. But what if we’re looking at it wrong? Our industry is extremely resistant to change, with business models, technical practices, and a social structure that haven’t kept pace with the rest of the developed world. As leaders of the industry, we toil daily to bring about a transition based on training excellence, but it often feels like pushing a rope. There are still too many HVAC businesses built on a foundation of assumptions, fear, and inexperience servicing homes across our country. There are still too many HVAC businesses entrenched in what has traditionally worked and not recognizing that we’re in the midst of major changes. The changes are occurring just slowly enough to not trigger immediate action, like the boiling frog fable. We seem stuck in a rut of “like for like” replacement and fixing low efficiency equipment that may be an ideal candidate for electrification. But change is coming, and we are in a short window where we have a choice: Do we continue our painful path of hiring and training, or do we stop treating the symptom and address the source of our pain – our approach?

Addressing the Labor Crisis in the Residential HVAC Industry

Jim Bergmann, measureQuick

A Framework For Immediate Workforce Solutions

This time last year, you probably read my rant about how we’ll never achieve our electrification goals without addressing the damaging approaches that run rampant in our trade. It’s easy to point fingers, and I don’t want to be that guy, so I’m trying to do something about it instead. At measureQuick, we’ve been obsessing over this problem for years, and now we’re ready to unveil our unique solution to the world. Our Workforce Woes: A Skills Gap, A Labor Gap, or… The Wrong Approach? We’re staring down a labor shortage of 80,000 and climbing. This deficit, coupled with a stark skills gap, has generated inefficiencies across the board – from

I don’t know about you, but I’m done with doing the same thing over and over again.