Kids just don’t want to work anymore.” I’ve heard it more times than I can count. They’re job hoppers. They aren’t loyal. They want too much money, they don’t want to work Saturdays and they refuse to start at the bottom. They’ll leave for another $2 an hour without a second thought.
If you own a plumbing or HVAC company, you’ve probably said — or at least thought — some version of this. And I get it. You’ve spent weeks trying to find someone. You finally get them hired, buy the uniforms, put them through onboarding, train them, give them a truck and start putting them on calls. Six months later, they’re gone. It’s frustrating.
But I’ve started questioning whether we’re looking at the problem the right way. What if the employee isn’t the problem? What if the job is?
CALLING PEOPLE “JOB HOPPERS” TOO QUICKLY
Let’s say a 25-year-old has worked for three HVAC companies in five years. Most owners see that résumé and immediately think: “Job hopper. Pass.” But we don’t know why they left.
Maybe the first company promised a career path that never materialized. Maybe the second had a terrible manager. Maybe the third company hired them as a technician but spent two years making them do maintenance because nobody actually had a plan for developing them.
Or maybe they really did leave because another company offered them more money. That’s not necessarily a character flaw. Sometimes people leave because they genuinely found a better opportunity.
Your recruiting promises become your retention problems when you don’t deliver on them.
THE ECONOMICS OF LEAVING
Let’s look at the hard math. Data consistently shows that employees who change jobs increase their salaries significantly faster than those who stay put.
While a loyal employee at a single company typically sees an average annual raise of just 3% to 5%, workers who switch companies often secure salary bumps of 10% to 20% at a time. Over the course of a decade, the wage gap between a “job stayer” and a “job switcher” can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost earning potential.
If leaving gets a technician a 15% increase and staying gets them a standard 3% cost-of-living bump or nothing at all, leaving isn’t a lack of loyalty. It’s just smart math.
We do the same thing as business owners. If another vendor gives us better pricing, better technology or better service, we switch. If another piece of equipment makes our technicians more productive, we buy it. We don’t call ourselves “business hoppers.” We’re simply making decisions based on what’s best for our bottom line. Why do we assume employees should operate differently?
THE PRIVATE EQUITY FACTOR
Then there’s the elephant in the room: Private equity. The trades have seen a massive wave of PE acquisitions over the last few years, and it is actively driving employee turnover.
When a family-owned shop gets bought out, the culture often shifts overnight. Suddenly, a technician who spent five years feeling like a valued part of a family business is now a line item on a corporate spreadsheet. The compensation structures change, the performance metrics and quotas get tighter, and the new management team might care more about the quarter’s margins than the technicians’ well-being.
When employees leave because the company they loved no longer exists, they aren’t being “job hoppers,” but they are justifiably refusing to work for a company they didn’t sign up for.
MORE INFORMATION THAN EVER
This is one of the biggest changes happening in the trades. A technician doesn’t have to know someone at the company down the street anymore to find out what they pay.
They can find out online. They can talk to technicians in other markets, check job postings, ask friends, join Facebook groups or text a former trade school classmate to find out exactly what they’re making.
The information gap between employers and employees has gotten much smaller. If you tell a candidate, “You can make $100,000 here,” they’re eventually going to figure out whether that’s true. If you tell them you have a great culture, they’re going to find out what that actually means on a stressful Tuesday in July.
THE UNINTENTIONAL BAIT-AND-SWITCH
This is incredibly common in the trades: We hire a technician because we desperately need a technician. We tell them about the great opportunity, the culture and the money. Then they start, and reality looks a little different.
The schedule isn’t what they expected. The compensation isn’t what they thought. The manager doesn’t communicate. Training is basically nonexistent. The truck they were promised isn’t available, and the career path is “we’ll figure that out later.”
Six months later, we’re sitting around the conference table saying, “These young people have no loyalty.” Maybe. Or maybe we hired someone into a job that wasn’t what we sold them.
START ASKING A DIFFERENT QUESTION
The people you most want to retain are usually the people most capable of leaving. A great plumber, HVAC tech or CSR can easily find another home service company. If they’re good enough, they probably don’t even have to look very hard.
You can’t retain a great employee with a pizza party or a company T-shirt. You retain great people by building a company they don’t want to leave.
So what actually makes people stay? I don’t think the answer is complicated. People want to know:
- What can I make?
- What can I become?
- Who am I working for?
- Do you do what you said you were going to do?
- Do you care about me?
- And most importantly: Is this place getting better?
Stop asking, “How do I keep them?” Ask a different question: “Why would a great employee stay here?”
There are plenty of young people who want to work. They want to learn a trade, make good money, buy houses, build careers and be proud of what they do. But they’re also willing to leave a company that isn’t delivering on what it promised.
So, the next time you look at a résumé and see someone who has changed jobs a few times, don’t immediately write them off. Ask why they moved. And then ask yourself a harder question:
If one of your best employees got a call from your biggest competitor tomorrow, what would make them say no?
If you have a good answer, you’re probably doing something right. If you don’t, that’s where I’d start.
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Westie Magnuson is the co-founder of HireAligned. With years of hands-on operational leadership in the trades, he has helped scale two service companies past $20 million by focusing on the often overlooked drivers of growth: leadership clarity, consistent standards and culture.
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