Gary A. Cohen, Executive Vice President, Certified Contractors Network (CCN) - April 2026
Ask any roofing contractor what keeps them up at night and the answer is almost always the same. It is not finding leads. It is not closing sales. It is finding and keeping good people. Labor challenges have become the defining issue for roofing companies across Florida and the contractors who figure out how to attract top talent and hold onto it are the ones pulling away from the competition.
The good news is that this is a solvable problem. The bad news is that most roofing companies are still trying to solve a 2026 hiring challenge with 1995 thinking. Posting a job on Craigslist, offering a modest hourly rate and hoping for the best is no longer a viable strategy. The workforce has changed. People have options. And the companies willing to invest in their people are the ones winning the talent war.
Before you can fix a retention problem, you need to understand why it exists. In our experience, working with roofing contractors across the country, the most common reasons employees leave has very little to do with money. Yes, of course, compensation matters. However, most people walk out the door because they feel invisible, unappreciated or stuck.
They leave because no one ever told them what a career path looked like inside the company. They leave because the owner makes every single decision and there is no room for them to feel empowered and grow into leadership. They leave because communication is poor, expectations are unclear and praise is rare. They leave because Friday afternoon feels the same as the first day they started, with no sense that anything has changed or that they matter to the business.
Understanding this is the first and most important step. People do not quit companies. They quit managers, they quit cultures and they quit environments where they cannot see a future for themselves.
Effective recruitment starts long before you post a job opening. It starts with your reputation as an employer. In a local market, word travels fast. If your crews talk about your company as a great place to work, you will have a pipeline of candidates before you ever need to advertise. If they grumble about chaos, disrespect and broken promises, your pipeline dries up.
The best roofing companies treat recruitment the same way they treat sales. They build awareness, they develop a compelling message and they follow a consistent process. Start by defining what makes your company a great place to work. Is it your culture? Your training? Your growth opportunities? Your pay structure? Get clear on your value proposition as an employer and communicate it consistently across your website, your social media and in every conversation you have with potential hires.
When posting jobs, be specific about what the role looks like on a day-to-day basis, what the growth path is and what someone can realistically expect to earn within their first year and beyond. Vague job postings attract vague candidates. Specific, honest, compelling postings attract people who are genuinely excited about the opportunity.
Also consider your sources. The best hire you will ever make often comes from a referral. Build a formal employee referral program that rewards your team for bringing in quality candidates. When your own people become your recruiters, it changes the whole dynamic. They only refer people they believe in, which immediately raises the quality of your candidate pool.
You recruited the right person. Now the real work begins. One of the most overlooked areas for roofing companies is onboarding. Many contractors treat it as an afterthought, handing a new hire a branded shirt and pointing them toward the crew. This is a costly mistake.
Research consistently shows that employees who go through a structured onboarding process are significantly more likely to stay with a company longterm. Your first 90 days with a new hire set the tone for the entire employment relationship. Use that time intentionally. Walk them through your company values, your processes and your expectations. Introduce them to the team in a meaningful way. Assign them a mentor or buddy who can answer questions and help them feel connected.
Check in with new hires regularly during those first three months. Ask how they are feeling, what questions they have and whether they feel supported. Small investments in attention during the onboarding phase pay enormous dividends in long-term retention.
Culture is one of those words that gets overused but the concept behind it is real and it matters. Culture is simply the collection of daily behaviors, expectations and standards that define what it feels like to work at your company. And here is the thing about culture, you either build it intentionally or it builds itself accidentally. Most of the time, accidental cultures are not ones that attract and retain great people.
To build a culture worth staying for, start with communication. Hold regular team meetings where people know what is going on in the business. Share wins. Acknowledge hard work publicly and specifically. Create rituals around recognition. Celebrate milestones. Make your team feel like insiders rather than just labor. Invest in development. Send people to training. Pay for certifications. Give your high performers a path toward leadership roles. When people see that you are investing in their growth, they invest back in the company.
None of this is to say that money does not matter. It absolutely does. Compensation is most effective when it is paired with all the other elements described here. A great culture with poor pay will still lose people over time. Poor culture with great pay will keep people in their seats but rarely produce their best work.
Review your pay structures annually. Make sure your wages are competitive for your market. Consider performance-based incentives that allow top performers to earn more based on the value they create. When compensation is tied to outcomes, it aligns the interests of the individual with the interests of the business and that alignment is a powerful motivator.
Recruitment and retention are not HR problems. They are business strategy problems. The companies that win in today’s labor market are the ones that treat their people as their most valuable asset, not just on paper but in practice every single day.
Build a culture people want to be part of. Onboard new hires with intention. Develop them over time. Recognize them consistently. Pay them fairly. Do these things well and you will spend far less time hiring and far more time growing.
Gary A. Cohen is Executive Vice President of Certified Contractors Network (CCN), the leading comprehensive training, coaching and networking membership organization in North America. Gary is also a 30-year veteran of the home improvement industry, spent 11 years at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland as a Professor of Business and served 4 years as Associate Dean of the business school. Gary has been a certified leadership coach for the past 18 years. He can be reached at gary@contractors.net.