But this can’t happen without the industry playing its part. 

“The ratio of Baby Boomers retiring, to workers replacing them, is 5:2; with more than 50% of the current workforce over the age of 45 and a significant number of experienced workers already retiring, the industry is losing skilled workers faster than they can be replaced,” said Dan Clapper, market director. head of learner and business outcomes for Interplay Learning. “This shortage makes it increasingly difficult to fill open roles and keep up with demand. Several factors contribute to this shortage, including a lack of awareness about career opportunities, insufficient training programs, and declining interest among younger generations.” 

With this in mind, in order to combat the workforce shortage, the industry has been working to recruit and retain new talent — and they’ve seen success with Gen Z. They’ve also seen success in retaining current talent, but none of it comes without continued industry participation. 

At the 2025 AHR EXPO, The ACHR NEWS chatted with organizations like Service Nation, SMACNA, Interplay Learning, ASHRAE, and Women in HVACR about the initiatives they’re taking to tackle the workforce shortage head-on. Initiatives that are inclusive, while focusing on bringing awareness to the industry; they emphasize company culture; provide the necessary up-to-date training; embrace technology and AI; and ultimately, bring more bodies in. 

Bringing Awareness 

This huge demand is in part due to the fact that the workforce shortage is being seen globally, in every sector of the HVACR industry.  

“Design, construction, manufacturing, service and operations, and academia … we've got an aging workforce, and we're not replacing that aging workforce at the rate that we need to replace the attrition while also growing the workforce enough to respond to the data that shows we're going to triple the size the industry over the next 20 years — going from two billion systems to six billion systems by 2050,” said Dennis Knight, president of ASHRAE.  

A lot of this has a lot to do with the general lack of awareness of the HVACR industry.  

After all, not everyone is aware of the good pay, immediate work, training, growth, or career opportunities that the industry offers. All the general public sees are long hours, manual labor, insufficient resources, and stereotypes that deem HVAC professionals “not smart enough for college.” It’s no wonder they aren’t interested — especially the younger generations.  

SMACNA and SMART are launching National Careers in Trades Week April 7-11, 2025. 

“All trades should use that week to create awareness for all the skilled trades have to offer workers of all ages,” said Tom Martin, SMACNA president. “And the Heavy Metal Summer Experience grows every year in importance to reaching young people across the U.S.” 

To further bring awareness, companies have developed best practices for recruitment, retention, organizing, onboarding, and inclusion of employees. The general is that by bringing more awareness to what HVAC can offer, masses will flock.   

“The biggest trend we see is on the technical side — having skilled technicians that are ready to diagnose in the field,” said Amy O'Grady, executive director for WHVACR. “It really starts at a middle school level — reevaluating the introduction of a skilled trade — because all they've really been taught from a counselor standpoint is: college.” 

That’s where the WHVACR ambassador program comes in. The program provides regional outreach to educational facilities and groups interested in promoting careers in HVACR. Ambassadors are volunteers who represent WHVACR in their respective regions to help increase awareness of the opportunities the industry offers at all levels — from the field, to sales, to management, and to ownership. 

“Not only are we trying to bring focus to WHVACR, but we’re also trying to bring focus to the HVAC industry as a whole,” said Laurelyn Arriaga, board member of HVACR and OEM sales manager at McDaniel Metals. 

REPRESENTATION: WHVACR’s Ambassador Program aims to bring awareness to each person who could serve in each available role presented by the industry. (Staff photo)

Anyone who is a female understands their lack of representation in the HVAC industry. So do other minorities. And today’s trends show that one of the current mindsets of the entering/current workforce is that representation matters.  

“We know that our ambassadors need to represent the possibility of a certain role, so we recruit ambassadors from every vertical within the industry to make sure that there's an even representation of what it could look like to be, for example, a woman in this industry — because not everyone is suited for the same type of role,” said O’Grady. “We want to show that there are a variety of options and it doesn't have to be manning a service truck. It can be the full gamut … every role is important.” 

Recruiting and Retaining  

To further aid in the workforce shortage, the industry is taking recruitment and retention hand-in-hand. It makes no difference to hire a worker into the industry who ends up leaving. In fact, this is where employees often fail the most.  

“This trend highlights the need for structured, ongoing training that not only builds skills but also improves retention. … One of the most significant hidden costs of failing to invest in employee development is high turnover. Lack of learning and growth opportunities ranks among the top five reasons employees leave their employers,” Clapper said referencing data from a Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) 2023 report. Additionally, according to LinkedIn’s 2023 Workforce Learning Report, 93% of employees said they would stay longer at a company that invests in their careers. 

DEVELOPMENT: Interplay Learning’s career development platform accelerates skill development, helping businesses hire talent and quickly transform them into job-ready tradespeople. (Staff photo)

Interplay Learning is tackling statistics like these head-on by equipping companies with the tools they need to recruit new workers, ramp them up quickly, and retain them longer.  

“Our career development platform accelerates skill development, helping businesses hire inexperienced workers and quickly transform them into job-ready tradespeople,” Clapper said. 

Service Nation focuses their retention and recruitment efforts around culture.  

“Culture is very important for recruitment and retainage,” said Carol Longacre, director of affiliate relations at Service Nation. “Work-life balance is what already working technicians, and incoming technicians, are looking for. Really, everyone is looking for that balance. We teach culture, we teach leadership, and we teach financials so that contractors can compensate their employees properly.” 

MODERN: SMACNA is focusing on the modern technologies and adherence to tighter project schedules that are changing the way skilled tradespeople do their jobs and deliver the best solutions for each client. (Staff photo)

Growing technological advancements have proven to improve efficiency in the industry. So why not capitalize on that, and apply it to solve labor shortage issues? 

“As the demand for skilled HVAC technicians continues to grow, businesses need training solutions that not only teach the right skills but also get workers job-ready faster while driving measurable business impact,” Clapper said. “Traditional training methods can be slow, inconsistent, and difficult to scale … but by using immersive, on-demand training, companies can transform workforce development and set their teams up for success.  

Interplay Learning uses offerings like their immersive game-like simulations to make the trades more accessible and appealing to younger workers — particularly Gen Z, who seem to learn best by doing. 

“At the same time, our skills assessments and reporting tools help companies identify strengths and knowledge gaps, ensuring training aligns to both individual growth and business needs,” Clapper said. “Beyond just getting workers job-ready faster, Interplay helps companies improve retention by creating structured learning pathways that give employees a clear trajectory for advancement. This not only helps businesses retain skilled workers but also makes careers in the trades more attractive and sustainable.”  

Investing in the Onboard  

Though onboarding processes may differ, the end result should be talent that wants to join and talent that wants to stay. 

“It has to involve letting them know what their positions are, with clarity around your expectations from them,” said Carol Longacre, director of affiliate relations at Service Nation. “Invest in them through uniforms, trucks, and education — we’re really, really for educating your people.” Basically, if from the beginning employees feel like they have the “hang of it,” they’re more likely to stay.  

CULTURE AND RETENTION: By focusing on company culture, Service Nation works to help the industry better retain workers by always keeping them in the know. (Staff photo)

To get employees to stay, organizations have also found success with mentorship programs.  

“We can pair somebody like a contractor/business owner with a new technician, and they already know how to walk that space with them,” said Arriaga. “And let's say that technician eventually wants to own their own business — their mentor has already done that, and so they can give them the guidance to get to that next level and really grow their career.” 

The incoming workforce wants/needs to feel that there is an upward trajectory — that they’ll be supported in their endeavors. Those already working in the industry want the same. For them, it involves having the necessary tools to succeed.  

“[My own firm and most of the companies I work with] are working with career and technology institutes to help enhance their HVACR curriculums,” Knight said. “Many firms are hiring adult learning experts to also create in-house onboarding and job specific training to close the skills gap between academic learning and industry-specific skills.” 

In support of this trend, at the show Martin highlighted SMACNA offerings such as school-to-work programs, vocational school programs, and those geared toward engaging former military members: Helmets to Hardhats and SMART Heroes.  

“We are working with SMART on flexibility within areas/collective bargaining agreements (CBAs); pre-apprentice language, helpers, classified workers, conditional journeypersons, for example,” Martin said.  

ASHRAE has particularly seen success in its work with local universities, and by offering co-op positions and summer internships. Decarbonization efforts have raised the profile of the HVACR industry through a focus on its environmental impacts — like improved IAQ, energy efficiency, and reduced carbon emissions — and those are all things the younger generation is deeply invested in. 

“While not unique in recruiting, the technology sector has been applying these techniques for decades — the HVACR industry has not traditionally marketed itself on the benefits to humanity and the environment, having highly skilled and competent professionals and technologists working in our industry,” Knight said.   

In support of this trend, one initiative highlighted on this year’s AHR Expo show floor was ASHRAE’s Career Conversations.  

“We’ve begun to talk about the industry not based on the tools and the technical content that we create, but the impact we have on health and well-being, carbon emissions, and energy efficiency; and what that translates to as far as benefits to humanity, to every person on the planet,” said Knight. “We're changing that conversation to attract a broader range of people who might want to work in the industry.”