Skilled Labor & Onboarding

You can’t hire your way out of a labor shortage. But you can ramp a new tech in 3 months instead of 8 — if the knowledge lives in the system, not the head.

A Spaid engineer captures your top performers’ diagnostic logic, pricing decisions, and close techniques during ride-alongs — then builds an onboarding system that compresses ramp time by 50% without a training manager.

The Real Cost of the Labor Gap

Slow ramp costs more than the shortage.

Most operators focus on finding techs. The bigger problem is what happens after you hire them. A tech running at 60% of veteran performance for 8 months isn’t just a training problem — it’s a $20K–$40K drag on your P&L per hire. That’s fixable.

Slow Ramp Costs

New techs operate at 60–70% of veteran GM and callback performance for 6–12 months. At $20K–$40K in slow-ramp cost per hire, a shop hiring 8–10 techs/year is bleeding $160K–$400K annually in below-target performance before the new hire reaches full productivity.

$20K–$40K in slow-ramp cost per new hire

Knowledge Locked in People

Your best tech knows which parts to bring on which calls. How to price the second option. How to handle the customer who wants to think about it. None of that is written down anywhere. The new hire figures it out through trial and error — at your customers’ expense.

6–12 months average ramp time to veteran performance

Training Manager Dependency

Most structured onboarding depends on one person who also has 40 other responsibilities. When that person is out, onboarding degrades. When they leave, it collapses. Knowledge delivery can’t depend on a person being available.

3–4 month onboarding degradation when training lead changes
Why Existing Solutions Fail

Generic training vs. a knowledge system.

Off-the-shelf training content addresses industry-generic skills. Your new tech needs to know how your best performers run your specific job types in your specific market. That’s a different thing.

What you’ve tried before
“Industry training certifications” — Build baseline technical skills but don’t address how your top performer prices, closes, or handles objections on your most common job types.
“Veteran tech shadowing” — Unstructured. Inconsistent. Depends on the veteran being available and willing to explain their reasoning. Not scalable to 10+ new hires.
“Generic training platforms” — Content libraries, videos, quizzes. High completion rates. Low transfer to on-the-job behavior because the content isn’t specific to your operation.
“Manager-driven onboarding” — Quality depends entirely on the manager’s bandwidth and consistency. Degrades under volume. Falls apart when the manager changes.
VS
What forward-deployed looks like
“Operational knowledge graph captures top-performer logic” — Engineer ride-alongs document how your best tech diagnoses, prices, and closes the top 5 job types — converted into a structured system, not a video library.
“Pre-job briefing supports new techs in the field” — Job-specific context before every job — parts checklist, address history, callback risk, prior pricing. New techs access veteran-level context without the veteran being on the truck.
“New hire onboarding module built from the graph” — Structured ramp program by job type — what to check, what to bring, how to price, how to handle the most common objections. Compresses 8-month ramp to 3–4 months.
“Drift detection monitors new tech ramp metrics weekly” — GM per job trend, callback rate, quote variance vs. veterans — tracked weekly so you can intervene in Week 4 instead of Month 4.
Engineer + Software

How the engineer and software accelerate ramp.

Top-performer knowledge captured in days 1–5. Ramp metrics monitored from week 1.

Operational Knowledge Graph

Top-performer logic as onboarding content

Built from ride-alongs with your best tech — documents every diagnostic decision, pricing logic, objection response, and close technique by job type. Converts uncodified expertise into structured onboarding content. New techs learn how your best performer actually runs a job, not a generic industry standard.

Pre-Job Briefing Layer

Veteran-level context on every job card

New techs see the same job-specific context as veterans — recommended parts, address history, callback risk flag, customer LTV, prior pricing at this address. Reduces the dependency on asking the veteran what to bring. Delivered via existing FSM job card, no new app.

Drift Detection Engine

New tech performance monitored weekly, not quarterly

Tracks GM per job trend, callback rate, and quote variance for each new tech from Week 1. Surfaces divergence from the ramp curve before it compounds. You see in Week 6 if a tech is tracking below target — not at the 6-month review.

CSR Coaching System

Same principle applied to back-of-house ramp

Top-CSR scripting and objection handling codified and embedded into new CSR onboarding. Booking rate variance among new reps narrows significantly in the first 60 days. Same 50% ramp compression as field tech onboarding.

Measured Outcomes

What operators measure after 90 days.

Field
50
% Faster
New Tech Ramp Time
Structured onboarding from the knowledge graph compresses 6–12 month ramp to 3–4 months.
Field
$20–40K
Saved/hire
Slow-Ramp Cost Eliminated
Per new tech hired after the knowledge graph is deployed.
Field
3–5
Pts GM
New Tech Performance Gap
Closing the spread between new hires and veterans in the first 90 days.
Back of House
10–18
Points
New CSR Booking Rate
New CSRs ramp to near-top-performer booking rates in 60 days with top-CSR scripting baked in.
Related Problems

Operators addressing labor shortage also address:

The Measured Pilot Guarantee

If we don't identify $200K, you pay nothing.

Our Full-Operation Audit (Days 1–30) maps every revenue leak — field and back of house. If we don't identify at least $200,000 in recoverable annual revenue, we refund Phase 1 in full. You keep all audit deliverables.

After kickoff, we ask for about 30 minutes a week of your ops leader's time.

Zero risk. Full-operation visibility. Founding customer pricing: 40% below standard rates.
Start Here

45 minutes. Your data.
No commitment.

We'll start with a recent export or sample call data from your FSM and call system, show you the biggest leaks, and scope the engagement. Full access happens only if you proceed to the audit.

Accepting 2–3 founding operators · $20M–$100M revenue · 40–120 techs · On a modern FSM