Finding Talent for Service and Maintenance - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Maureen Greeves and James McDonald of Tremco WTI. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro: Welcome to Roofing Road Trips, the podcast that takes you on a thrilling journey across the world of roofing. From fascinating interviews with roofing experts to on-the-road adventures, we'll uncover the stories, innovations and challenges that shape the rooftops over our heads. So fasten your seatbelts and join us as we embark on this exciting roofing road trip.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello and welcome to Roofing Road Trips from Roofers Coffee Shop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth, and we are here today to talk about one of the hottest topics out there and that is recruitment. We, right now, need talent. We need to have all these wonderful, skilled professionals coming into roofing and so we want to know how?

Why? How does this all work? So we asked the experts from Tremco, WTI, Weatherproofing Technologies Incorporated, to join us today to kind of talk about recruiting and really what it's all about and especially in the service and maintenance sector. So James, Maureen, welcome to the show.

James McDonald: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Maureen Greeves: Thanks, Heidi. Glad to be here.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I am so excited, some of my favorite people, as you guys well know. So let's start with some introductions, for those of you who don't know you. Maureen, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do at WTI and a little bit of your history in roofing.

Maureen Greeves: Heidi, thank you so much. Appreciate being here. So my name is Maureen Greeves. I've been in roofing since 2009, so I've been with Tremco and WTI for about 15 years. And I came into roofing by accident, did not... I was recruited in, I had my resume out on LinkedIn and someone reached out to me and I never looked back. Met some of the greatest people I've ever met in my life, the hardest working people in my life, some of my best friends I've met through the roofing, of the trades. And it was just a great career move for me. It's been amazing, right?

I'm a director of field operations for WTI, and I help James implement initiatives across North America. I have 800, sometimes 900 technicians across the country and into North America or into Canada. And we roll out some initiatives throughout those groups and help support all of those technicians on a daily basis. So that's my focus, that's what I love to do and it's been a great career so far.

Live in Cleveland. Live in Cleveland, Ohio. Two kids. I'm happy I'm in Florida right now.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. Okay, I love it. James, if you could do that kind of introduction now, if you could introduce yourself and please tell us what you do with WTI and a little bit of your history.

James McDonald: Thank you, Heidi. And yeah, this is definitely going to fall a little short of that introduction, but my name is James McDonald. I'm the Vice President of WTI and WTC. As part of that job, I'm responsible for basically managing all aspects of a variety of business units within WTI and WTC. We do a variety of things here, so it's not just roofing, but of course, our core business is roofing. And as Maureen alluded to, we have roughly 800 technicians and then another plus or minus 200 mid-level management and leadership positions within and administrative positions that comprise the entirety of WTI.

I've been here, originally started with WTI in 2006. I have a little bit of split duty. I've got 28 years in the roofing industry, 18 on the contractor side and 10 here at WTI. So a little bit of diversity there, worked with some incredible companies, WTI and Tremco being one of those, of course. And just look forward to talking a little bit about recruiting today.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's so important right now to really be looking at that. But let's start a little bit overall, and I know you already told me a little bit, but just overall to give people an idea, James, of who is WTI and what do you do?

James McDonald: Certainly. So WTI is the construction arm and the construction division of Tremco Roofing. So we're looked at in many aspects as a contractor and in other aspects as a general contractor because we do go to business in both aspects. So we're roughly, probably in this fiscal, we're going to end up somewhere around $600 million and roughly 125 of that is our self-performing roofing teams that are out there executing work, patching repairs, restorations, roofing projects, things of that nature. And then the rest of it we're doing as a general contractor, prime contractor overseeing our certified subcontractors executing on those that work. So we do a little bit of both, but predominantly we are the construction arm of a very large, exceptional roofing manufacturer.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And you provide, through TremCare, an enormous amount of service and maintenance to your customers, right?

James McDonald: Absolutely. We believe in protecting our customers' assets. So our core business is restoration, protecting the existing environment. So it's basically our business model is restoration, that's where we built everything. And that's not always been the case. Of course, a decade or so ago, maybe a decade and a half ago, we wanted to re-roof the world and now we want to restore the world. And that extends to not only the roof, but we transition over the side of the building and do the envelope as well. And part of that is our TremCare offering, which helps us with our maintenance and care for our customers' assets.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, I love it. I love it. It's so important and it is the way to do roofing and building envelope, restoration across the board. But let's get back to one of our favorite subjects, why roofing, why we love roofing and why everybody, people should be getting into roofing. So Maureen, why? Why should people look at roofing as a career?

Maureen Greeves: Well, roofing is an amazing career. I think if you start and you have the right work ethic and you care about quality and you care about safety, I think your career could take you anywhere. We have a lot of different options. When you join Tremco and WTI, we have so many options in where your career is going to go. But you have to show up, you have to be dedicated, you have to make clean, nice square repairs. There's things that you have to do on a daily basis that will eventually turn into great opportunities for you.

We've got opportunities for hourly folks, we've got opportunities for our salaried individuals, but I think it's really about the career path. There's so many opportunities within this industry and so many exciting ways you could take your career. You could come into roofing as an hourly tech and find yourself in a lab somewhere doing fire testing. There's so many different opportunities when you get into this industry and so many connections. I mentioned it already, the people are amazing and there's just a ton of support for the roofing industry when you join it. You feel like a family, you feel like a group of people that supports each other.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: James, I saw you nodding over there, so why... You've been on both the contracting and the manufacturing side, kind of a combination of both actually. Why should people, and I'm going to throw kind a curve at you a little bit here too, not just why should people get into roofing, but why should parents be encouraging their kids to get into roofing?

James McDonald: I think there's been a stigma in the trades in general that is slowly eroding, right? So right now, I think more and more high quality people are getting into the trades and roofing specifically. And I think from a parenting standpoint, my son is in the roofing industry after his military career. I've got two daughter-in-laws that work for this company. I have obviously, and Maureen alluded to it earlier about the friends that you make in this industry, but I've got a lot of friends that we've pulled into this industry and that are in it. So I think from a parenting standpoint, I can just say the old white collar thing used to be that mailroom to the boardroom. And in this industry, you absolutely can excel and raise through the ranks based on energy, effort and capabilities.

And myself, I started off as a $7 an hour laborer 28 years ago. So I'm one of those guys that was a roofer on the roof, working, tearing, all dirty, coming home every day, taking two showers. And now I'm vice president of North America for a $600 million entity. So it is an industry that you can rise based on your talent and effort. And there's no timeline on that. It not like where you used to have to pay your dues. Now it's like quality people can move through this industry and really excel and we're starving for them. So we're looking for that type of person every day.

Maureen Greeves: I think another comment to Heidi about parents, having that conversation with parents and I've only been in the industry 15 years, so James, you could probably better be able to speak to this. But I think since I've been here, I've seen a huge shift in safety culture across the industry, for sure with Tremco and what Ro Lewis does with us and our culture, safety culture.

But I also think it's important to talk about technology. Roofing isn't the two showers at the end of the night anymore. When it comes to commercial roofing, a lot of it isn't, right? It's repair, restore, replace and replace is the bottom of the list. So I think technology makes a big difference too. We have drones to go up and check safety. We have so many advancements in the safety industry that I think you can have those conversations with parents.

And I always say, when I'm talking to my supervisors about hiring, "Let's talk about our EMR. Let's just wave that flag. Let's talk about how impressive that is." And that right there is your number one recruiting method, measure. You go home at the end of the day, you get your work done, you do hard work and you get to go home to whoever it is that you want to go home to.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's the key, going home every day, safe and sound. I think that is so true. And you're right, that stigma has been broken across so many different levels of what you're both talking about.
So as we're looking at that, let's talk a little bit about some of the jobs that currently, James, you said we're looking, we're looking for people. So I've got about four different jobs here that I'm really interested in talking about. One is a supervisor, one is a foreman, one's a technician and the other one is basically a technician inspector. Maureen, let's start with you. Just for everybody out there, what is a supervisor job and what does it entail and what kind of experience do you have to have?

Maureen Greeves: You have to be a leader. You definitely have to be a leader in the supervisor role. In these regions, some people, you're over an entire region, so we're broken out into regions. And a supervisor, you can have multiple supervisors within a region. But some of our supervisors can be managing 20 foremen and 80 technicians underneath them, not directly, but... So having a leadership skill is really important, being able to be a strong leader and message things out to people.

Our supervisors are really in charge strategically of hiring. So a lot of that hiring process falls on them and making sure that they're tucked into their sales reps and their sales managers to say, "What's the growth projection here? Do I have enough staff? Let's start talking to recruiting about how we can pull people in." They're overseeing jobs and scopes of work, they're putting quotes together, they're managing our employees. So they have a lot of responsibility that comes with that job.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Wow. Okay. And supervisors are working with foremen. James, what do foremen do?

James McDonald: So I just want to add one thing to Maureen about our supervisor. So in the contractor side, titles get kind of mixed up in the trades. Some people call a project manager what a project manager might do versus what he does at other companies. I'll just add this, our supervisors truly act and Maureen, that was a fantastic description of what they do, they actually function a lot like, on the contractor side, what would be classified as a department head. They're responsible for estimating, pricing, quality control, safety and they manage large books of business and large teams.

Our foremen would probably, our WTI foremen would probably classify in the contractor trades more like a actually supervisor or superintendent. They have the skill set of a traditional foreman where they could plant themselves on a project and run that job start to finish. But the overwhelming majority of our foremen manage multiple jobs at once, multiple teams at once and some of them even price work. But for the most part, our foremen manage multiple projects with teams and they too are responsible for the overall quality and safety of our personnel. They handle the customer communication from the field standpoint. But they're more closely related to a supervisor role in the industry.

Maureen Greeves: Technicians, hourly based employees that come on board with us with that do our day-to-day, right? They're our heavy lifters. They're mobilizing, they're staging equipment, they're prepping the roof, they're doing running repairs, they're chasing leaks. There's a lot of skill set in that level. But they come in as hourly technicians and they're primarily running... They're in charge on their own level for quality and safety, obviously, but they're definitely taking direction on scopes of work from our foremen to say, "Okay, today, here's the focus. Go accomplish this, get this production done." And coming back the next data to repeat that process.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: James, the inspectors or the technician inspectors, what do they do?

James McDonald: So you brought up TremCare previously. Our inspectors do a variety of different type of inspection services, but certainly executing on our TremCares. When we talk to our customers about maintaining and the TremCares that we do, these are the individuals that show up on the job site once a year, twice a year and do a thorough inspection to make sure that that asset is protected. We get ahead of any failing kind of flashes. There are a certain amount of things that are included at our cost in those inspections that we execute, some minor repairs and of course housekeeping.

Other parts of the inspection team, they do final inspections on all our warrantable work. We also execute job site inspections for ongoing work. So work in progress gets inspected for quality control. So there's a variety of things that our inspection teams execute upon.

And at the end of the day, if the inspection demand is down, they are still roofing technicians, so they can still go out and execute on our patch and repair. If we get a high volume leak demand or say a storm comes through, they can absolutely execute on the technician side of the business as well. So they're diverse group of individuals that obviously are trusted from a technology standpoint and experience standpoint to execute at a high level.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow. Those are kind of the four jobs that are so crucial to the field right now, but you have a lot of different jobs out there. Are there other types of jobs that you're looking for at WTI, Maureen?

Maureen Greeves: All the time. As we know, Tremco is an innovator and so they're constantly thinking about new products and services to push into the industry. And we have some opportunities for diagnostics technicians. So this is somebody who's very, very specialized, who's running nuclear gauges and infrared cameras, kind of a different skill level there. We've got our Pure Air business where we're going in and doing HVAC restoration and repairs there. And we've got a group that focuses on facade. Really, we do it all. So we are always looking for technician.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. The building envelope, right?

James McDonald: Right, we are a building envelope contractor, that's 100%. So yeah, roofing core business, but we are a building envelope. What we like to say is all six sides of the building. And then, of course, we throw in a little bit of HVAC as well. But it's the same approach on our HVAC business as the roofing, which is restoration is gold.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And you kind of touched on this a little bit earlier, but James, I would love for you just kind of talk about the quality. What are the qualities, the talent, the qualities of the people you are looking for to come work on the roof or the building envelope, however it is, but basically to come to work with your team? What kind of qualities are you looking for?

James McDonald: I would say first and foremost, we're looking for a cultural fit. We've created a culture here at WTI that we believe in, we know that it works. So first and foremost, the camaraderie. It's a team. We all rise together. So I think first and foremost, we're looking for excellent cultural fits.

Experience level, based on the position, obviously comes into play. But really, the cultural fit, we can find homes for any experience level as long as they're an extreme cultural fit for us. And that culture is not only how you work within the team, but the safety culture as well that Maureen alluded to earlier. So I would say that's the number one thing.
And then all the other things come into play with regard to we want driven people, hardworking, trustworthy. We want people that are curious. We want people to come into this business and just really just sky's the limit. We want them to be curious and we want them to be courageous. One of the things that you have to do in this business is really just go for it. And if you're otherwise, you're your own worst enemy.

So yeah, I would say that's it. I'd say that the traditional roofing requirements that most people are looking for are well down our list. Because we can train, that's what we do. We take good quality people and we train them to do this job, so your experience level is really... It's on the list, but it's down there a little bit.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. I love that, curious and courageous.

Maureen Greeves: I do too. Absolutely.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know. I'm going to put that on a sticky note on my computer. I love that. That's perfect. I feel that.

Maureen Greeves: 2025 affirmations right there.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, right there. Curious and courageous. Okay, so speaking of curious and courageous, as there are roofing professionals out there, experienced roofers who maybe they've been on the roof, their knees might be a little sore. They're just ready, their back's a little sore, they're ready to do something else. Where does that fit? How can WTI... You've been with a lot of companies, James, but we keep talking about we're losing talent, we're losing them off the roof. How, with the changes in technology, the changes in how we do roofing today, especially service and maintenance, where do experienced roofers fit in when they're trying to switch careers?

James McDonald: I would say that this is the place to be for experienced roofers who are looking to extend their careers. There is a shelf life, especially old school. There's a shelf life in this industry. And we talked a little bit about the inspection services. Obviously, that is not as grueling and taxing on the body as roof replacement, tear offs and installation, those long, 12, 15 hour days. There's no clock, you're done when the roof is dry, right? And sometimes that's a beast of a day, I've been there. You start every day thinking it's going to be eight hours or so, and they turn into a lot longer than that.

But so this is the place to be for experienced roofers who are looking to find a home that can extend their careers and be valued for more than just their back. That expertise comes into play in the inspection teams, it comes into play, we have roles amongst the others that Maureen's already mentioned. We have a QAQC specialist roles that goes out and inspects our projects and trains our personnel. So those individuals, this is kind of a place to be. And even if you are on a roofing crew, the restoration process is just a much less physical and arduous task than traditional roofing. So this is the home for those guys.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: This is perfect. Okay, let's switch to the other side. If you are just coming out of high school or vocational schools or you just kind of, you're just at that point, you're just starting out in your career and you're looking at roofing, let's talk about what you can do, what WTI does to help train. And I'm talking specifically about your apprenticeship and journeyman programs. So Maureen, start us off. How does that work? And I know that honestly everybody who's hired into WTI and Tremco goes through this because everybody gets onboarded in training. So talk a little bit about that process.

Maureen Greeves: Yeah, so I'll go back to the word that James used earlier with together we rise. So we have a program called RISE, it's Roofing Individuals Succeed through Education. And there are several pillars underneath that program and initiative.

One of them is our apprentice program. Every single person that gets hired in as an hourly technician gets enrolled in that program. They get access to Tremco University. It's on-demand trainings that they can consume when they're on the road, when they're at home. It's formatted for laptops, it's formatted for phones. They can move through that type of Tremco University training.

We start out with a focus on safety, as always, we lead with safety. So our first phases are about safety, then introduction of roofing. And they match up with the on-the-job training that they do. So they're really getting out there, they're going, they're working. And we track as they report their hours to get paid organically, we're tracking their experience and their OJT for them.

And we have a team that is in place here that talks about, "Hey, great job tech A. You just finished Tremco phase one and you got your 1,000 hours. We're moving you up and you're going to continue to move on."

So I do like that platform because you can come in with zero experience and then have some background training on things that you could go back and look at. And for curious and courageous people, if you're curious, that content can be consumed quite quickly and you just have to wait to move through your 1,000 hours. So that's a really great opportunity.
And when we run into experienced roofers that don't necessarily want to be foremen or supervisors, but still want to be that hourly technician, we can pull them in. We give them credit up to 2,000 hours. So you can just jump right into phase two and 2,000 hours and we give you credit for that.

And at the end of their journey, when they're done with all their phases and we throw a few little college courses in there just as a baseline, very introductory, estimating and some soft skills around computers, they end up with a journeyman card that they take with them, that we provide. And it's a pretty big accomplishment. We've had several people now who have moved through that level and gained that access to a journeyman status. And it's pretty good feeling when they do. It's hard work, but they are very proud when they meet that finish line.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's pretty exciting. And they can also, there's also opportunities for continuing education on the university level too, right? With first construction management.

Maureen Greeves: Yes. So when you're talking about maybe where do you go? You were asking that question to James. We also have a partnership with the University of Akron where we provide two degrees, an associate's degree in construction management and a bachelor's degree in construction management, fully paid for. And we help you through the whole entire process, get you connected to it, get you signed up for classes, give you the support you need. You're connected with mentors that you can talk about with the classes. You're put in groups that are with Tremco, moving through these modules.

And again, same kind of thing, on-demand, consumed at any point if you're on the road or if you're traveling or you're at home, so that you can continue to advance your career regardless of the amount of travel you might have to have in this field. And some regions travel a lot more than others, so it's a very flexible program, one that we're very extremely proud of. And there's no cost to the individual as they move into those programs.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Not only is there no cost, you have a job. What parent doesn't want this? I'm telling you right now. You have a job. James, okay, with all of these opportunities, no matter what you want to do, apprenticeship, journeyman, possibly construction management, for experienced roofers, jobs that can extend their career, that can really do some things, talk to me a little bit just overall of how this all comes together and how WTI... You told us at the beginning, eight to 900 technicians and employees in the field. That culture and this culture of onboarding and how important it is, just kind of sum us up a little bit about what you're hearing from your field, what you're hearing from people who are using these programs and really how it's changed their lives.

James McDonald: There's a few other programs that we don't have enough time to talk about all the programs. I can tell you that when you talk about how it's impacting their lives, I've met with some individuals in the field that have come through these programs and the buy-in and enthusiasm in these individuals is and again, I've been on the contractor side and I've worked for some incredible people and some incredible companies, but the buy-in and just the joy and love for their jobs that I see for the individuals coming through these programs is second to none and like nothing I've seen in 28 years.

And this company in particular, the industry's fantastic and we're here to tout the industry as much as we are WTI, but WTI is a destination wedding. So we bring people in and the benefits and the things that we do and how we treat our people. I talked about the culture. The culture goes both ways. We want people that fit our culture, but we've worked hard to build this culture and nurture this culture and we live it. So we expect that that culture is felt not only by us, but also by the people that we bring on. So it is just that the overall feel of this company when people come here.
We have the tenures, you hear it. I love sitting in meetings and when we talk about people, and that's at every level. When you talk about tenure here, we have people retiring all the time with 42 years at this company. So a matter of fact, we just had one January 1st retire, 42, 43 years. So I don't want to ramble on about that particular thing, but it's an inviting company to come to in a very difficult industry.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Yes. A difficult industry that has grown up a lot. And there's a lot of exciting opportunities around that, something that you all have embraced. And I just have to tell you, thank you. I've spent enough time there at headquarters that I feel that culture, and I feel just the differences that you all are making in the industry and what you're giving back to roofing. Really, it's a game changer. So I want to say thank you to both of you. Thank you so much for everything and for this great information today. Thank you. Thank you so much-

Maureen Greeves: [inaudible 00:29:21] appreciate that as well, and the opportunity-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: ... and you can find out all about WTI-

Maureen Greeves: ... just to talk with you a little about this industry that we love so much.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: ... and Tremco on the directories on Roofer's Coffee Shop.

James McDonald: Yeah, really, really enjoyed it and so thankful that you had us on. Thanks so much.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We have so many great webinars that we've done and coffee conversations, so much information. In fact, you have to watch the one that we just did a couple months ago on Second Chance Citizens and the culture around Tremco because I know both of you right now are in Florida, working with the corrections department to bring more people into roofing is so inspirational.

Maureen Greeves: Yes, thank you. Yeah, Malia Evans is kicking off a major initiative right now in Florida with the Department of Corrections in both the men's and the women's facilities. So we're definitely changing some lives there,

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Changing them. So check that out, check all of that out on the directories on our coffee conversations. And one last time, I'm just going to say thank you James and Maureen so much for everything for being here today.

Maureen Greeves: Thanks, Heidi. Always a pleasure.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Always. so great. Thank you, and thank you all for listening. This is the kind of information that makes such a difference to your career, to your business, to the industry overall and I have to say too, I say to the country. So stay tuned. I know, big times there. Stay tuned, we're going to have a lot more. Thank you. Be sure to check out all of our podcasts under the read list and watch navigation under Roofing Road Trips or on your favorite podcast channel. Be sure to subscribe and set those notifications so you don't miss a single episode. We'll be seeing you next time on Roofing Road Trips.

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