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Painting Contractors: Should you recruit or promote a production manager?

Name: Painting Contractors: Should you recruit or promote a production manager?
Uploaded: 2023-06-20T00:47:37+00:00
Duration: 44 s
Channel: Daniel Honan
Description: In this brief conversation, two speakers discuss the optimal approach for filling a production manager role in a painting contractor business. They argue…

20 Jun 2023 · 1 min

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In this brief conversation, two speakers discuss the optimal approach for filling a production manager role in a painting contractor business. They argue that promoting an existing, high‑performing crew leader into the production manager position is often preferable to hiring an external candidate. The reasoning is that crew leaders already manage individual projects, understand budgeted hours and production rates, and are familiar with the company culture and systems. By elevating them, a business gains a manager who can oversee multiple projects simultaneously while also mentoring other crew leaders. The speakers emphasize the trust, investment, and alignment that come from internal promotion, suggesting it as the ideal solution for many painting companies.

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And I say hire, but really you could probably recruit it if you're doing the employee model where you're hiring crews instead of subbing out. I've seen painting businesses hire your rockstar crew leader into the production manager role. Because if you think about it, like the crew leader, they are managing a project. They're just doing one at a time, right? So they're having to keep to a budgeted hours. Hopefully, you know, you're doing budgeted hours using production rates, but you know, they have to manage a project at a small level, but they're still managing a project. So they're kind of like a mini project manager, right? If you've been working with them for a while, they know the culture. So, you know, the ideal situation really is if you can grow your crew leaders into production managers because they know that your system, they can manage obviously at least one project at a time. And it's really just getting them to do that, you know, for multiple at a time and be a mentor to your crew leads. So that's probably, we were saying hiring a production manager, but maybe it's just, you know, promoting a crew leader to a production manager. I've seen many, many businesses do that.
I love that idea because you have someone who knows your system and you trust them. You've seen them on the job site 5 or 6 days a week for however many months or years, and you can trust them and they're invested. And it's so wonderful to be able to promote from within someone who cares about your business as much as you do.
Yeah, it's definitely the ideal situation.