What is the Value of Each Service Technician to Your Business?

This article about the value of a single service technician in by Irene Malatesta, a Content Strategist at Fundbox. Irene is a business content strategist with Fundbox. She’s passionate about working with entrepreneurs and mission-driven businesses to bring their stories to life. Fundbox is dedicated to helping small businesses grow by democratizing access to credit.

The Value of Each Service Technician?

That may seem like a strange question. After all, no one likes to think of people as numbers. And to be clear, nobody’s saying they are! But thinking about the value of a team member is part of the everyday math that goes into running a business.

This article will discuss some of the costs and investments you make in your team to help you understand just how much each one is worth to your business. You may find that they are worth far more than you think. Be aware, though, that this article isn’t meant to replace financial or legal advice. Every business’ situation is different, so it’s always best to consult with a trusted financial advisor, accountant or lawyer if you have specific questions.

With that in mind, here are some of the key things to consider when calculating the cost and worth of your team.

Recruiting and Hiring

Some of the most obvious costs you spend on each new service technician come during the recruiting and hiring process. If you run a mobile business or franchise, you may not be hiring headhunters, but you are likely spending money to post advertisements for your positions in various locations.

Even if you don’t spend a dime on advertising your open positions, you’ll still spend time writing the job description, posting it, interviewing candidates and following up with references. That’s time you could have spent doing something else — the work that earns your business money.

Economists call the money you lose the “opportunity cost” of hiring an employee. While you may be losing money in the short term, you’ll more than make it back in the long term. That’s why you’re hiring a new team member, after all, and it’s why many businesses go so far as factoring invoices, which has many pros and cons, to get an extra cushion of funds to help handle the cost of bringing on new staff members.

Onboarding and Training

Once you’ve hired that new service technician, it’s time to get them up to speed. For example, in a cleaning business, a lot of this onboarding may take place on the job. This process is vital to increasing the employee’s value.

Keep in mind that this training process will reduce the efficiency of both team members during training. Your more-experienced mentor will need to slow down and explain procedures to the new technician. It will take even the quickest new team member a little time to get up to speed on how you like things done. Even if they have experience coming in, they’ll need to learn your way of working.

Also, some kinds of heavy-duty or specialized cleaning work  (like mold remediation, for example) may require special training and certification. In addition to the opportunity cost of the training, these certification programs often cost money. Getting them renewed every year can be expensive.

Experience and Continuity

It’s easy to think that once your team members are trained, they’ve gained all the value they can. But this isn’t the case at all.
While they work for you, he or she will continue to gain practical experience. The person will do a more efficient and effective job as they continue. An employee with even a small amount of work experience is far more valuable to your company than a fresh hire!

Finally, if your service business is like most, people will choose you over a competitor because you offer a personal touch that they trust or can’t find elsewhere. Part of that personal touch involves people your customer recognizes and likes. That’s the result of a longer-term relationship — a bond you build over time. If you lose your service technician, you have to build that bond all over again.

Staff retention is crucial for any small business. It minimizes the practical and opportunity costs of recruiting and training new team members. It also maximizes the benefits of experience and relationship-building over time. Even if your business is short on business funding, you’ll benefit in the long run from your investment in supporting and retaining your team members.

Try Service Business Management Software for Your Team

Want to learn about how to schedule your team better using service business software and get more value out of each service technician? Book a free, private demo of Vonigo.