As a result of the fact that I spend a fair amount of my day communicating
with AV industry people I notice things. Call it trendspotting. Sometimes
those trends are on a macro level, such as how the economy or new
construction is faring nationwide, or the impact that technologies are
having on system design and installation. Other times the trends are more
micro, but no less substantial. The challenge with trendspotting is
determining whether what you’re seeing is a trend because it’s actually
happening and it’s actually different from what’s come before or if it only
looks like a “trend” because you’re observing it and it “looks new” to you.

Recently, something that I’ve been noticing come up in conversations here
and there in the industry is an exodus of senior installers leaving their
long-term employers and setting themselves up as freelancers, often
subcontracting themselves back to their own former bosses.

Subcontractors are nothing new, obviously. But what makes these freelance
installers stand out to my mind is that, despite being located far and wide,
they share some common traits: they’re senior techs, often with as much as
ten years or more of field experience, they’re well-respected by their peers
for their competence, and, interestingly, according to what I’ve been told,
they all have spouses who have good jobs with steady paychecks and full
health-care benefits.
I know from experience that it’s a lot easier to be a freelancer when your
wife has a good-paying job. It certainly makes managing your receivables a
lot less stressful.

As far as the dealers are concerned this raises a couple of interesting
points. For one thing, the integrator/subcontractor relationship is totally
different, both financially and from a management perspective, with both
advantages and disadvantages. At the same time, managers and owners might be
concerned about their best installers leaving to go freelance.

More than one dealer has summarized the current labour market to me as
“crap” and I know from talking to commercial security integrators that many
of them ensure that they incent their star installers to stay. Granted,
commsec companies are often medium sized businesses of 30 or more staff,
sometimes lots more. Those companies will have deeper resources than a 6-man
small residential integration company.

The upside is that having skilled freelance installers in the labour pool
benefit more than just one dealer, and raise the average standard for
installation in the business. Let’s be frank here, the average installation
out there can always benefit from being improved.

I’m keen to know how this jibes with the observations of rAVe readers. Is
“Have testing kit, will travel” a major trend?