How to Build and Manage a Successful Plumbing Team

Step 1. Define Your Team’s Needs

Before you start hiring your team, you must establish the main roles and responsibilities you require.

Identify roles

The exact combination of roles you need depends on the type of plumbing work your business executes and the scale of your intended operations.

Will you focus on residential or commercial plumbing work, or combine the two? Will you specialize in water heating systems, drain cleaning, or sewage, or offer all-round plumbing services?

Once you’ve established the services you’ll provide, assess the different experience levels you need. While the exact number of each varies, plan to hire at least one master plumber and a few journeymen plumbers to tackle the technical work. Then, you can take on apprentices to handle small jobs as they learn.

Don’t forget to assess your administrative staff needs, too. If your business is small-scale, you may not require extra staff to answer calls, manage stock, and handle dispatch. However, this is a vital consideration as your business grows.

Set clear expectations

Establishing what’s expected of your staff as early as possible is crucial for building a successful plumbing team. Write job descriptions with as many details as possible, outlining responsibilities as well as skill and certification requirements.

Here, it’s important to: 

• Be upfront about the expectations of the role. Define how each team member contributes to your plumbing company’s goals and success.

• Include clear financial offers in the job description. You can use ServiceTitan’s study of salaries to estimate what an entry-level or experienced plumber should earn. For the record, entry-level plumbers make around $49,100, and experienced professionals make $60,700 per year.  

This way, every new hire can start their first day knowing exactly what’s expected of them and how they can drive your business forward.

Step 2. Find and Hire the Right People

Getting hiring right is often difficult, and hiring the wrong people can be expensive. Not only do you risk detriment to your business if your mis-hire provides shoddy service, but bad hires cost you a considerable amount of money through wasted time, onboarding, and training costs. 

Follow the steps below to help you nail hiring on the first try.

Recruit strategically

You can enhance your hiring strategy by looking for candidates in the right places. Consider placing your job advertisements on job boards for trade school graduates and contacting local plumbing associations to promote your jobs to their members.

Here are other options you can try: 

• Referrals from your existing employees for new plumbing candidates. Encourage them by creating an incentivized employee referral program. This could be a small reward should you hire the employee’s referee,  such as a gift card or paid activity. You could also create a tiered reward system to encourage more referrals.

• Reach out to former employees to fill open roles, especially those who left on good terms. They might just be looking for a new challenge. In fact, Visier reports that 28% of new hires in 2022 were returning employees. When contacting them, share why you think they’re perfect for the position and include a link to the job. 

• Partner with trade schools, high schools, and recruitment agencies to host a hiring event. This allows you to attract top talent and discuss the benefits your company offers in detail. 

Conduct comprehensive interviews

The interview stage allows you to confirm that the plumbing candidate has the correct skills and experience for the role they applied for. 

Before the interviews, ensure your work environment is inviting and fun. Highlight what sets your company apart. Let candidates walk in and feel that they’re in the right place. 

John Akhoian, of Rooter Hero Plumbing in California and Arizona, does this by selling his company’s core values—faith, integrity, respect, service, and teamwork.

“When I’m interviewing somebody [in-person or remote], I introduce the values early on,” says Akhoian. “One of the questions I like is, ‘What do you like most about your current job? What’s your favorite value there, and tell me why?’ And we talk about it.”

Discussing these values helps him attract like-minded employees.

To get a sense of a candidate’s technical skills and proficiency in tackling plumbing problems, here are some plumbing interview questions to ask:

• What steps would you take to fix a clogged drain?

• What is your experience with tankless water heater installation?

• How would you inform a customer that their leaky faucet has caused significant water damage?

• How would you approach a sewer line repair?

• A customer calls to say they have no hot water.  How would you troubleshoot the cause?

• You’re tasked with a plumbing installation for an entire floor of an office building that involves repiping a portion of the existing plumbing system.  Where do you start?

• How do you give customers peace of mind when responding to an emergency plumbing repair?

• How do you assess plumbing needs on a home service?

• What is your approach to working with an apprentice on a plumbing system?

• How would you clear a clog from a garbage disposal system?

If possible, set up a plumbing issue simulation and ask the candidate to troubleshoot and fix the problem. This can give you a practical understanding of their skills and capabilities.

You should also assess non-technical hard and soft skills, like communication, teamwork, customer service, and sales. These skills are vital in customer-facing roles and help to ensure your plumbers provide excellent service and know how to close sales.

Verify credentials

Plumbing license requirements may vary in different states, so it’s important to familiarize yourself with your state’s regulations and the relevant governing body.  

For example, the Board of Plumbing, Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Examiners handles plumbing and HVAC licenses for the entire state of Delaware. In Kansas, licenses are issued at a local level, so Wichita plumbing businesses get their licenses from a different governing body than those in Topeka.

Broadly speaking, all plumbers (apprentices, journeymen, and master plumbers) require some kind of certification or license, and apprentices must work under a licensed plumber.

Check that your candidate has the necessary licenses and certifications for the work they will do and the correct license for their title. Ensure you check their work history, too, and speak with their references to gain a wider perspective on who they are and how they work.

Pro tip:  Check out our article on Plumbing License Requirements for All 50 States for more information.

Step 3. Onboard and Train Your Team

Providing a thorough, structured onboarding process and relevant training helps to set up your new hires for success.

Here are some key elements to include in your onboarding.

Welcome new hires effectively

The first days at a new job can be daunting, and it can take time to meet new colleagues and learn how your plumbing business operates. Creating a welcoming process can help ease the transition and get your new hire up to speed quickly.

Start by developing your onboarding structure. It may be useful for you and your new hires to have an onboarding checklist that covers the vital aspects of your plumbing business. This could include Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), safety training, and important team members to meet. 

Another helpful tool for welcoming and onboarding your new employees is pairing them with an experienced team member as a mentor or “onboarding buddy.” This person can help by answering questions and offering guidance.

Offer skill development opportunities

Learning and development (L&D) is crucial for career advancement, and providing skill development or training opportunities helps your employees become better plumbers. In turn, you’ll enhance your plumbing business and even expand your service offerings.

For example, helping one of your plumbers gain their license for gas line repairs can expand your emergency services list, and training your crews on how to use sump pumps can add to the cleaning services you offer.

Set aside a budget for L&D and invest in certifications, workshops, and advanced training programs for your crew. You can also set up company-wide training programs for new plumbing technology and techniques to give your business a competitive edge.

Encourage collaboration

Team cohesion is difficult when your employees work in silos. While this is unavoidable sometimes when plumbers work on solo jobs, it’s vital to foster collaboration between your employees.

You can achieve this through team-building exercises and by encouraging technicians to use their team when they’re stuck on a problem.

Step 4. Manage Your Team Effectively

Even the best teams flounder without proper, effective management.  Creating a strong leadership and guidance system helps your staff stay on the right track.

Here’s how you can do it.

Set goals and track performance

Keeping everybody on track and moving your plumbing business forward is difficult without clear goals.  

Your team members should have SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound) goals tailored to their unique roles. These can be set on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis—or at whichever frequency you feel works best for your company.

To track these goals, establish performance metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) for each role. This could include job completion rate, customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, revenue generated, and more.

Regularly evaluating how your employees perform against these KPIs lets you find top performers and areas for improvement.

ServiceTitan simplifies this process through its Technician Scorecards, enabling owners or managers to monitor their team's performance and provide coaching to improve performance. 

The Scorecards show your plumber’s KPIs based on completed jobs.

It allows you to view the revenue a tech generates, including their efficiency, customer satisfaction, job type, conversion rate, hours worked, and converted jobs. Simply put, ServiceTitan makes it easy to streamline employee performance tracking. 

Streamline communication

Clear communication is vital in any business. However,  it’s especially important in plumbing businesses where your field team works in various locations throughout the day. 

Holding a weekly meeting allows your plumbing team to discuss challenges, setbacks, or wins and allows everyone to align on team goals. Furthermore, you can prevent unnecessary delays and confusion by giving every team member access to a unified communication tool.  

A tool like ServiceTitan offers users a robust communication platform so office staff can easily communicate with technicians and vice versa, allowing your team to be proactive and optimize scheduling when plans and appointments change.

Organize scheduling and dispatching

Scheduling the right plumbing technicians and creating an efficient dispatch route can be complicated when done manually and with so many factors to consider, such as the skill level required, the distance between jobs, and fair distribution of assignments.

What’s more, you must be able to adjust schedules on the fly to accommodate emergencies and avoid wasted time on cancellations or last-minute changes.

ServiceTitan’s Dispatch Pro tool leverages AI technology to automatically choose the best technician for a given job. It takes into account the job’s hard and soft constraints, technician performance, and more to define the ideal schedule.

This automated approach to dispatching frees up time for your office staff to focus on other tasks while ensuring every route and assignment is optimized. It also means dispatchers can manage more technicians, making the system scalable without increasing overhead costs.

Step 5. Retain Top Talent

Hiring the best people for your plumbing company is one thing, but your efforts will be wasted if they’re unhappy and leave within a few months.

Here are some steps you can take to boost employee retention.

Build a positive work culture

Fostering a strong team culture helps your crew work better together and creates a work environment where everyone can share knowledge and support each other.

Here are some good ways to establish and build your company culture:

• Ensure every hire aligns with your company values.  

• Consider including culture-based questions in your interviews.

• Throw holiday parties (held during business hours to be more inclusive).

• Host an annual team retreat.

• Provide a means for socializing and engagement, such as a social or instant-messaging channel on your chosen communication tool.

• Encourage your team to share a “win of the week” or to publicly give kudos to a team member who helped them.

• Promote open communication, collaboration, and transparency.

• Celebrate milestones and big wins together, such as closing out your company’s 1,000th job or an employee reaching their fifth work anniversary.

Offer growth opportunities

Defining a clear career progression path for team members gives them something to work towards. This might be simpler for your plumbing technicians as they advance from apprentice to journeyman to master, but don’t leave out your office staff.

Reward employees for their loyalty and dedication to growth with promotions, raises, or leadership opportunities.

Offer learning opportunities for L&D and provide space and tools for your employees to grow into new roles.

For example, you can leverage ServiceTitan’s Sales Pro to train plumbing techs. This digital product records and analyzes field conversations between customers and techs. It shows the entire sales process—from greeting to setting up and performing the job—allowing you to identify areas for improvement. 

It works like a virtual coach, highlighting where a tech performed well, where they could be better, and how to handle future situations better. This helps techs refine their skills and knowledge and positions them for leadership roles.  

Prevent burnout

Burnout is a condition that arises from chronic stress and overwhelm.  It’s a form of exhaustion that’s particularly prevalent in high-stress jobs and it can significantly impact physical and mental health, as well as job performance.

Providing your employees with ample time off and respecting said off time allows your plumbing team the space needed to rest and recover.  Additionally, offering mental health resources and creating a supportive environment can help employees if they’re struggling.

Step 6. Utilize Tools to Simplify Management

Handling all of your business processes manually might be possible while your business is small, but it’s difficult to scale manual processes as your business grows.

Instead, you can make the most of technology to streamline your operations, allowing your team to focus on what matters most.

Use ServiceTitan for team management

ServiceTitan is an all-in-one field service management platform that provides a comprehensive feature suite for enhancing your plumbing business’s workflows and operations.  

Here are some of the top features you can use to assist with team management.

Scheduling  

Service Scheduling Software gives your office staff deeper insight into technician schedules and your job calendar. This means they can easily check that the right technicians are available for complicated jobs.

Your customer service representatives (CSRs) can categorize each job as it comes in, so your technicians have all the information they need. Users can also create custom tags to flag special tools, spoken languages, and schedule history so your crews can arrive ready to work.

Furthermore, the ServiceTitan dispatch board shows real-time updates of where each technician is in the job cycle. This lets dispatchers respond to emergencies and proactively change the schedule when needed.

Reporting

ServiceTitan’s Field Reporting Software lets users create a dynamic dashboard tailored to the KPIs and metrics that are most important to your business.

You can also track your techs’ and CSRs’ performance with performance scorecards. These reports define important metrics for your performance evaluations so you can find areas where your team members do well and where they need help.

If the pre-existing reports aren’t enough, users can also generate custom reports to gain specific insight into revenue, financial health, and more.

Take advantage of automation

Automating repetitive tasks like invoicing and payment follow-ups can reduce your business’s administrative burden. You’ll free up time so your office staff can focus on the tasks that need to be done manually and make it easier to scale your business. 

You can generate invoices automatically from job estimates and proposals with ServiceTitan.

Step 7. Monitor and Adjust Your Strategy

As a business owner, you should strive for continuous improvement in all areas of your business. The best way to do this is by monitoring your results and using these data insights to adjust your strategies accordingly.

Evaluate regularly

Holding regular performance reviews for your staff and business operations helps you identify areas of improvement before they become problems.  Plus, you get to establish your top performers.

You can use tools like ServiceTitan’s reports and employee scorecards, but you should also check in with your customers for a rounded view of overall performance.

Gaining these insights helps you to make necessary adjustments to roles, workflows, training, and more.

Stay adaptable

Industry trends are prone to fluctuation, and new technologies like AI and smart systems can revolutionize how your business operates, but only if you can adapt with them.

Keep up with trends and new technologies, and be ready to train your crew on their use to ensure you stay up-to-date. Remember, your management approach should change as needs change and as a new generation enters the workforce. Adaptability prevents you from being left behind and ensures you build the best plumbing team for your business.

Over to You

Building a plumbing team the right way is vital for the long-term success of your plumbing business.  

Once you’ve put your crew together, utilize the business tips mentioned above—like automating manual processes and providing mental health resources, to ensure you retain your staff and create a happy work environment.

ServiceTitan can help you modernize your team management processes and streamline your business workflows. Book a demo today to see how it can enhance your plumbing business.

ServiceTitan is an all-in-one home services software solution that offers plumbing businesses a suite of features that help them better manage their teams and resources.  It is trusted by over 100,000 contractors nationwide.