If you've been trying to hire an in-house maintenance technician for your commercial building, you already know the struggle is real.
You post the job listing. Maybe you get a few applications—most of them from people with questionable qualifications. You interview the promising candidates, make an offer, and think you've finally solved your facility maintenance problem.
Then reality hits.
Maybe they don't show up consistently. Maybe they lack the skills to handle your building's diverse maintenance needs. Or maybe they're simply overwhelmed by the scope of work required to maintain a commercial facility on their own.
Three months later, you're right back where you started: searching for maintenance help.
At Managed Services, Inc. (MSI), we hear this story constantly from businesses across the Twin Cities metro area. In fact, it's the number one reason companies reach out to us for facility maintenance support.
The personnel problem isn't just frustrating—it's costing your business money, creating safety risks, and impacting employee or tenant satisfaction every single day.
In this article, we'll explore why finding reliable maintenance staff has become so challenging, what happens to your facility when you can't find help, and what solutions actually work in today's competitive labor market.
Let's start with the hard truth: you're not imagining it. Finding qualified, reliable maintenance personnel is genuinely harder than it's ever been.
The facility maintenance industry is experiencing a severe skilled labor shortage. Experienced HVAC technicians, electricians, plumbers, and general maintenance workers are in extremely high demand. These professionals have multiple job opportunities competing for their attention.
The skilled trades have an aging workforce. Many experienced maintenance professionals are reaching retirement age, and there simply aren't enough younger workers entering the trades to replace them.
Technical training takes time. You can't create a qualified HVAC technician or electrician overnight. These skills require years of training, apprenticeship, and hands-on experience. The pipeline of new technicians can't keep pace with demand.
Competition is fierce. Specialized contractors, large facility management companies, and businesses across every industry are all competing for the same limited pool of skilled workers. When a qualified technician hits the job market, they're often employed within days.
The pay expectations have increased dramatically. Skilled maintenance technicians know their value in today's market. The salary ranges that might have attracted candidates five years ago often won't even get responses today.
Here's where things get even more complicated: even when you do find someone willing to take the job, there's no guarantee they're actually qualified to do the work.
We've seen businesses hire maintenance personnel who:
When you hire one person to handle all your facility maintenance needs, you're expecting them to be a jack-of-all-trades. But true multi-skilled maintenance technicians are rare and expensive. Most maintenance workers have strengths in specific areas and weaknesses in others.
The result? You hire someone thinking they can handle your facility's needs, only to discover you still need to call contractors regularly. You're paying a full-time salary plus contractor fees—the worst of both worlds.
Let's assume you do find someone with the technical skills for the job. You've cleared the first hurdle. Now you face the second challenge: reliability.
Reliability in a maintenance technician means:
Sounds basic, right? But here's what we see in practice:
When you have only one in-house maintenance person, their reliability becomes a single point of failure for your entire facility operation.
We've had businesses call us in desperation because their maintenance person stopped showing up without notice. One week turned into two weeks with no contact. Meanwhile, urgent repairs were piling up, tenants were complaining, and the business owner was scrambling to find emergency help for critical issues.
This isn't a rare scenario. It happens more often than you might think.
Here are some some actual situations we've encountered when called in to help businesses struggling with maintenance personnel problems:
A professional office building hired an in-house maintenance person who seemed capable during the interview. His resume looked solid. References checked out.
The first few weeks went fine—basic repairs, changing air filters, general upkeep. Then they asked him to replace some aging fluorescent light fixtures in the main hallway.
He removed the old fixtures. Then stopped.
He couldn't figure out how to install the new fixtures. Rather than admit this or ask for help, he simply... moved on to other tasks. The hallway remained partially dark for three weeks before management realized the project had been abandoned.
When they finally asked him about it, he made excuses about waiting for parts that were actually sitting in the supply closet. Eventually, they had to call in an electrician to complete what should have been a straightforward installation.
The cost? They paid the maintenance person's wages for the time he spent on the failed installation, plus the electrician's fees to do it right, plus three weeks of employee complaints and safety concerns about the dark hallway.
A retail facility's maintenance worker started repairs on a floor drain in the stockroom. He removed the grate, began work on the plumbing connections, and then left for lunch.
He never came back.
Not that day. Not the next day. Not ever. He ghosted the job completely.
The facility was left with an open drain in an active work area—a significant safety hazard. They couldn't reach him by phone or email. After several days of trying, they finally gave up and hired an emergency plumber to complete the repair and make the area safe again.
Total cost: lost wages, emergency plumber fees (which are always higher), potential liability from the safety hazard, and lost productivity as employees had to work around the dangerous area.
This one is almost comical, except for the month of frustration it caused.
A commercial building's in-house maintenance person attempted to repair the water heater. He worked on it for several hours and declared it "fixed."
The problem? Only cold water came out of the hot water outlet.
When asked about it, he insisted everything was fine and that maybe it just needed time to "heat up." Days passed. Still only cold water.
The tenants were understandably upset. They couldn't wash dishes properly. No hot water for cleaning. In the winter months, it was especially miserable.
After a month of complaints and excuses, management finally called in a professional HVAC company. The diagnosis? Incorrect connections and a misunderstanding of how the system worked. The fix took a qualified technician about two hours.
The damage? One month of angry tenants, potential lease violations, professional repair costs, and the realization that their "maintenance person" was in over his head on anything beyond basic tasks.
Given these challenges, why do businesses keep trying to hire in-house maintenance personnel?
Usually, it comes down to a few reasons:
"It seems cheaper."
On the surface, paying one person's salary looks more affordable than contracting services. But when you factor in the hidden costs—benefits, workers' comp insurance, tools and equipment, training, coverage during absences, hiring and turnover costs—the math often doesn't work out as favorably as expected.
"We want someone here all the time."
The thinking is that having a dedicated person on-site means faster response to issues. In practice, one person can only be in one place at a time, and they may not have the skills to actually solve the problem quickly.
"We've always done it this way."
Some businesses have traditionally had in-house maintenance, and it's hard to imagine changing that approach even when it's not working.
"We don't know there are better options."
Many businesses simply aren't aware that professional facility maintenance companies can provide the same (or better) coverage at competitive costs.
So if the traditional hiring approach is failing, what's the alternative?
The most effective solution for most small to medium-sized businesses is partnering with a professional facility maintenance company.
Here's why this model solves the personnel problem:
When you work with a company like MSI, you're not dependent on a single person's skills and availability. You have access to a full team of technicians with diverse specialties:
When a work order comes in, it goes to the technician best qualified to handle that specific task. You get the right person for every job.
One of the biggest advantages of professional services is redundancy.
When one of our technicians is sick, on vacation, or dealing with an emergency at another site, we have others who can step in. Your facility maintenance doesn't stop because someone is out or unavailable.
This is impossible to replicate with a single in-house maintenance person without hiring multiple people—which most small to medium businesses can't justify financially.
Professional facility maintenance companies invest in keeping their technicians' skills current. Building systems evolve. New technologies emerge. Code requirements change.
At MSI, our technicians receive regular training on:
This level of ongoing professional development is difficult and expensive to provide for a single in-house maintenance person. With a professional service, you get the benefit of that investment automatically.
When you hire an individual maintenance person, they're essentially their own manager. If they're not completing work properly, who holds them accountable?
Professional facility maintenance companies have management structures that ensure quality and completion:
If work isn't completed properly, there's a system in place to identify it and correct it. If a technician underperforms, the company addresses it—you're not left managing an employee performance issue.
Facility maintenance requires specialized tools that can be expensive to purchase and maintain. Professional service companies already have the equipment needed for any job:
Your in-house maintenance person might not have (or know how to use) specialized tools needed for certain repairs. Professional technicians arrive equipped for the job.
Here is a real example of how the professional service model solved a client's personnel problem:
We work with a landlord who owns several strip malls and professional office buildings across the metro area. For years, he tried managing facility maintenance with a combination of:
It was chaos. Projects dragged on forever. Quality was inconsistent. Tenant complaints were constant. He would spend 20+ hours per week managing facility issues instead of growing his real estate business.
When he partnered with MSI, everything changed:
For routine maintenance, we schedule regular visits to each property. Our technicians perform preventive maintenance, handle small repairs, and identify potential issues before they become problems.
For urgent repairs: One phone call to MSI gets the right technician dispatched to the right property. No more calling around trying to find someone available.
For larger projects: We coordinate everything—getting quotes, scheduling work, overseeing completion, ensuring quality.
His time investment dropped from 20+ hours per week to maybe 2 hours. His properties are better maintained. His tenants are happier. And his total costs actually decreased because we eliminated the waste of repeated repairs and emergency service calls.
Most importantly, he eliminated the personnel problem entirely. He doesn't have to worry about hiring, training, managing, or replacing maintenance workers. That's our responsibility.
If you're currently struggling with the maintenance personnel problem, making the transition to professional services is straightforward:
The maintenance personnel problem isn't going away. The skilled labor shortage is a long-term industry challenge, and competing for the limited pool of qualified technicians will only get harder.
You have two choices:
At MSI, we've helped hundreds of Twin Cities businesses solve this exact challenge. We provide the reliable, skilled maintenance coverage you need without the headaches of hiring, managing, and replacing individual maintenance workers.
Your building needs consistent, professional maintenance. Your business needs facility management you can count on. And you need to focus on running your business, not managing a maintenance person or managing a facility.
If you're tired of the endless cycle of hiring, training, and replacing maintenance workers—or if you've been trying unsuccessfully to find reliable help—let's talk about how MSI can provide the solution.
Contact Managed Services, Inc. today
to schedule a free consultation about your facility maintenance needs.
We serve businesses throughout the Twin Cities seven-county metro area with comprehensive facility maintenance services, including:
Let us become your facility maintenance solution—so you can stop worrying about personnel problems and start enjoying reliable, professional building maintenance.
Managed Services, Inc. (MSI) is a self-performing building maintenance service contractor serving the Twin Cities metro area. We provide professional facility maintenance services to businesses that need reliable, skilled support without the challenges of hiring in-house personnel.