Why Your Best Technicians Can Go Anywhere (And How to Make Them Stay)

Geoff Farinha runs USI HVAC in the Boston area. His technicians are union members—Local 537 Pipe Fitters. They go through a five-year apprenticeship program, graduate with a license, and become highly skilled journey persons.

And then they can go anywhere.

"Once these technicians graduate, they can work for any of our competitors," Geoff told me. "What sets us apart is truly that culture."

This is the retention problem every contractor faces, whether you're union or not. Your best people have options. They can walk across the street tomorrow and get hired. The only thing keeping them with you is whether they want to stay.

USI just had their holiday party. Two employees hit 25 years. Others are at 28, 29 years—almost since the company was founded in 1992.

How do you keep people for three decades in an industry where everyone's competing for the same talent?

Servant Leadership Isn't a Buzzword

I've heard "servant leadership" thrown around in MBA programs and corporate training sessions until it lost all meaning. But when Geoff describes how USI operates, it's not a concept. It's a daily practice.

"Once you become any sort of management position within USI, you work for your crews now. Your job is to make it so that their job is as easy as possible and they can do their best work."

They don't work for me. I work for them.

That's a complete inversion of how most companies operate. Most managers see their job as directing work, enforcing standards, hitting metrics. Geoff sees his job as removing obstacles so his people can perform.

In our last episode, Ben Wespi told a story about giving a new hire a birthday card during his first week. The guy said he'd been in the industry five years and nobody had ever even said happy birthday to him.

Geoff referenced that exact story. "That truly is what sets you apart."

It's such a small thing. And that's exactly why it matters. The small things signal whether you actually give a damn or whether you're just saying the words.

The Marine Corps Connection

This resonated with me because it's exactly how leadership works in the Marine Corps. The Marines come first. You take care of your people and they accomplish the mission. It's not optional—it's required.

But in the civilian world, it's rare. Most managers never learned it. They came up through technical roles and got promoted because they were good at the work, not because they were good at leading people.

Geoff made an interesting observation about his MBA program: "The thing that almost everybody there lacked was experience leading. I had individuals that were VPs at Fortune 500 companies, SVPs at Fortune 500 companies, that had never been in charge of more than three or four people personally."

You can get very high in corporate America without ever learning how to actually lead. And then you wonder why people don't want to work for you.

The Union Advantage (That Applies Everywhere)

USI operates in a union environment, which gives them some structural advantages. The union brings labor directly to them through its apprenticeship program. The buy-in for an apprentice financially is zero dollars—they get paid while they learn.

But here's the thing: that apprenticeship structure creates meaning. First year, second year, third year, fourth year, journey person. Each level means something. You know what it takes to get there.

"It reminds me a lot of the Marine Corps," I told Geoff during our conversation. "Coming up in leadership positions, there's some level of pride and value that's associated to hitting those marks. Getting promoted to the grades meant something because you know what it takes to get there."

You don't need a union to create that kind of structure. You need intentionality. What are the milestones in your company? What does it mean to level up? Is there a path, or do people just show up and do the same job forever?

The companies that create meaningful progression keep people. The ones that don't are always hiring.

What Actually Keeps People

Every contractor I talk to in my research says the same thing: hiring is their biggest headache. Finding people who will do the job well, who you can rely on, who won't just randomly not show up one day.

But I'm starting to think hiring isn't the real problem. Retention is. If you kept more of your good people, you wouldn't need to hire as many.

And retention comes down to a few things:

Do people feel valued? Not in an annual review way. In a daily interaction way. Do you know their names? Their families? Their birthdays?

Is there a path forward? Can they see where they're going, or are they stuck?

Does leadership remove obstacles or create them? Are managers making their jobs easier or harder?

Is it a place they want to be? Not just tolerable. Actually good.

Geoff's technicians could go anywhere. They have skills that are in demand across the entire region. They stay because USI is where they want to be.

That's not an accident. That's leadership.

The Weeding Out Process

Geoff mentioned something else that stuck with me: "The people that can't figure it out don't make it very long. You tend to weed out and weed out fast if you have to."

This is the other side of servant leadership. It's not about being soft. It's about creating an environment where good people thrive and bad fits become obvious quickly.

When you're clear about expectations, when you invest in your people, when you create a culture worth protecting—the people who don't belong stand out. They either rise to the standard or they leave.

That's actually easier than trying to manage mediocrity. You just have to be willing to build something worth protecting first.

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Geoff Farinha is the president of USI HVAC, an employee-owned mechanical service contractor serving Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island. This article is based on his conversation on The Owner's Playbook podcast.