Have A Great Tech Team? Here’s How to Keep Them

Growing your pest control company starts and ends with a strong team of technicians. Without this, even the best sales efforts will fall short. When you consider that the cost to replace an employee equates to about 16-20% of that employee’s salary, it literally pays to do everything you can to make sure your best technicians want to stay with you.

For starters, you should create a great place to work. This includes providing fair wages and a competitive benefits package with health insurance, life insurance, and sick and vacation days. These benefits not only help attract better techs, but they can also help you keep them.

Need more proof that this is an area that definitely needs your attention? The NPMA and PCT 2017 Recruitment and Retention Survey showed that 83% of pest control companies had raised salaries for service technicians in the last three years. For 40% of respondents, their motivation was to remain competitive with other pest control companies. A tightening labor market was a factor for 22% of respondents.

Once they’re part of your team, there are other things you can do to create a place where technicians want to stay for the long haul.

• Communicate. One of the best ways to gain someone’s trust and loyalty is to show them that you value their opinions and want to hear what they have to say. Maintain open communication with your technicians, customer service representatives, and management team. Ask their opinions and encourage them to reach out to you with ideas, questions, and feedback.

• Offer opportunities. People want to work for businesses that continually help them grow. Offer opportunities for your technicians to gain additional certifications and training to handle more complex and specialized jobs – something that will benefit you, too.

• Keep up with technology. The best technicians will want to remain with a pest control company that makes it easier to do their jobs. In today’s world, that means mobile. Add easy-to-use mobile apps that simplify customer sign up, routing, and payments. These will make their job easier, more efficient, and more profitable as they earn more money.

• Appreciate them. Getting the job done often means long hours, and longer days. Adding things like occasional free food, fun activities and small perks like restaurant gift cards go a long way toward maintaining a positive environment that employees don’t mind putting in a little extra effort for.

Aside from the hassle and the knowledge that walks out the door when a tech leaves, don’t forget to consider how that loss feels to the rest of your team (morale matters!), not to mention the potential loss of loyal customers who follow them to their next place of business.

Minimizing your turnover rate will mean fewer headaches and more growth. Your entire team needs to be strong, but good technicians may be the most critical part of your success. That’s why we created this new eGuide, How to Attract & Retain Top Pest Control Technicians, to help you attract, hire and keep top technicians.