ControlTrends is delighted to present this Johnson Controls’ white paper written by Renee Joseph entitled “Elevating the HVACR industry: Promoting exciting careers to diverse prospects can help address staffing shortages.” This seminal piece is a profoundly informative and factual accounting that serves us all well — as the current State of the Union Address for our HVAC industry. And, for an industry “that offers abundant careers with excellent growth potential, satisfying intellectual challenges, meaningful benefits to society, and solid financial rewards,” we need to recognize that we have some urgent work to do, if we are to deal effectively with the projected shortfalls facing our HVAC Industry.
“Elevating the HVACR industry: Promoting exciting careers to diverse prospects can help address staffing shortages.” By Renee Joseph:
Employers in the HVACR sector are struggling to fill positions in a wide range of roles and skill levels. Recruitment of more women and minorities can be part of the solution. So can teaching young people and second-career professionals about the exciting opportunities and financial rewards the industry has to offer.
The heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration industry offers abundant careers with excellent growth potential, satisfying intellectual challenges, meaningful benefits to society, and solid financial rewards. And yet, businesses in the HVACR sector face shortages of qualified employees for a multitude of roles and at a wide range of skill levels. A 2015 report from the HVACR
Workforce Development Foundation cited 220,734 HVACR job postings in 2014 – twice as many as in the oil and gas industry (109,323).1 These include large numbers of middle-skilled jobs that cannot be off-shored or replaced by technology. Why should these worker shortages exist? One reason is that the HVACR industry is growing fast. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 21 percent increase in HVACR mechanic and installer jobs through 2022, nearly twice the projected growth of overall employment.2
Another is that many HVACR workers will soon leave the workforce: The U.S. Social Security Administration estimates that 22 percent of the nation’s overall workforce will retire by 2022.3 Closer to home, a survey by The Friday Group an international firm providing facilities management consulting services to commercial business and government, projected that up to 60 percent of facility management staff – electricians, plumbers, HVAC mechanics,
operations and maintenance workers and others – will retire in the next five to seven years.4
Click here, to read the rest of this white paper.
About the author: Renee Joseph has deep knowledge of the HVAC industry and associated products built on a career spanning more than 20 years in positions of increasing responsibility with Trane Company and Johnson Controls. In her current role as Vice President, Channel Sales and Marketing Operations with Johnson Controls, she leads the channel, marketing, ease of doing business and portfolio management efforts of the North American Building Efficiency business. She holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and has completed the executive MBA Leadership Program with the American Management Association.
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