Do You Train Your Team to Think or Just Work?
Every Monday, we hold a short training session with our team. We train on communication. leadership. & mindset. The reason being most tradespeople aren’t struggling because they can’t do the work. They’re struggling because they were never taught how to: Speak with clarity Handle conflict Lead a crew Represent the business professionally These tend to be the issues I see bottling up, either from our exit interviews or customer feed back or when things are misunderstood. Thats why I'm curious: Do you train soft skills with your crew?Painting Company here: Employees or Subs?
My Texas painting company has been operating with employees since we started. We offer benefits, WC, of course pay taxes, etc. Employees are expensive. Strangely enough, I have also found employees often are harder to keep motivated without constant oversite - they get the work done, but often not as fast as subcontractors, so that cuts into profits as well. I understand that a lot of franchises, like That 1 Painter, and CertaPro, have managers who are employees, but their laborers are 1099 subcontractors they basically treat like employees. The subs wear the company shirts, and work to the company's standards and the managers pop in here and there to check on them. This way the company avoids paying taxes, benefits, etc., and if they are low on work, they have no obligation to keep paying their laborers. This all sounds really nice. With how expensive my labor force and overhead are, I find it hard to be competitive against other companies with a subcontractor business model and still remain profitable. Any other painting companies or similar businesses - what do you guys do?
