Employee Onboarding That Actually Works

One rushed hire can undo years of hard-earned trust on your pool route. We break down how we train and onboard a new pool service employee so customers still get the same clean water, the same reliable routine, and the same professional experience they expect from us.

We start with a realistic training timeline (and why three to four weeks of ride-alongs is often the sweet spot), plus the mindset shift that saves your sanity: a new pool technician will have questions, forget steps, and need reminders, even if they seem sharp on day one. From there, we define “culture” in a pool service business, because the service standard you tolerate becomes the service your tech delivers, whether you run a volume route or a premium, detail-driven route.

Then we get practical about hiring in today’s market, where gig work competes for the same workers. We talk W-2 realities, pay structure options like hourly plus per-pool style bonuses, workers’ comp considerations, and the math you need to confirm you’re still profitable after payroll taxes. Finally, we outline a field-ready checklist: professional appearance, a consistent stop routine, key water chemistry tests, equipment checks, chemical safety, and the vacuuming standard that prevents the most common customer complaint. We close with a hard truth that matters: character screening can save you from a no-notice quit that leaves you holding the bag.

If you found this helpful, subscribe, share it with a pool pro who’s hiring, and leave a review so more service techs and owners can find the show.

We lay out a practical approach to employee training and onboarding that protects your pool route, your service quality, and the value of your business. We talk honestly about why new techs forget steps, how customer complaints start, and what systems keep things running smoothly.

• setting a realistic training timeline with ride-alongs and ongoing check-ins  
• defining company culture and the service standard we expect  
• hiring challenges from gig work competition and shrinking applicant pools  
• planning pay structure, W-2 compliance, breaks, payroll records, workers’ comp  
• presenting professionally with uniforms, truck signage, and basic conduct rules  
• building trust while sharing the right amount of customer information  
• teaching a repeatable pool stop routine from visual check to chemicals  
• covering water chemistry priorities and what to test weekly versus quarterly  
• inspecting equipment early to catch leaks, noise, and flow issues  
• training chemical safety and preventing common trichlor mistakes  
• setting a clear vacuuming rule to reduce customer complaints  
• requiring fast reporting of problems before customers notice  
• screening for character to reduce no-notice quitting risk  

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Hey, welcome to the Pool Guy Podcast Show. One of my listeners suggested I do a podcast specifically on employee training and onboarding, and I'll present that here for you today. And I'm going to go over some things that you of course have to make clear to the employee and some basic training that they should be out in the field with in order to be successful. Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the Pool Guy Coaching Program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support. From me, I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. Learn more at swimmingpoollearning.com. So how long you train the employee really depends on their level of experience, how fast they catch on, your comfort, how comfortable

Welcome And Why Training Matters

SPEAKER_00 1:03

you are with putting them out there on their own to do the pools, because remember, your business has value and it can affect the value of your business if you start losing accounts, if they start dropping the ball, aren't doing their job properly. So a lot of times I would say optimal would be three or four weeks of them writing with you, learning everything. And even then, they're going to have a lot of questions and it's going to be somewhat difficult in certain situations for them to overcome problems out there. So expect them to call you. Expect that you have to go out there and fix things that are pretty elementary, but they wouldn't know that. And you can't really give them everything or train them, or they can't remember everything. So you can

How Long To Train Techs

SPEAKER_00 1:44

train them completely, give them all the information for the accounts they're servicing, but will they retain and remember that? It's really difficult. And you know, as you get older, it's harder to remember things to begin with. And when you're learning something totally new, it's even harder to remember all the aspects of it because there are a lot of different aspects of pool service that go into making it a quality service or a quality service stop each time you service the pool. The first thing you want to do, of course, is introduce the pool pro to the culture you have at your business. Now, there's a lot of different cultures at these companies that hire people. It could be one of those things where, and this happens a lot out there, and the actual service is not that important to the owner of the company. It's just a numbers game. They just want more accounts, and they're not necessarily doing excellent service out there for their customers. It may not be a really competitive area, so it doesn't really matter to them how the pools look. And I've taken over pools, believe me, that were taken care of by companies that had this kind of culture where they're just looking at the bottom line and the dollar, dollars and cents of the business, and they really didn't care too much about the customer or the quality of how

Building A Service-First Culture

SPEAKER_00 3:02

that reflects on their business. Now there's the other side of the coin where you have companies that have excellent service that they provide, and they want to hire somebody that's going to maintain that excellent service. So as someone who's being hired by these companies, you also have to realize the culture you're being hired into, and it could vary at different levels from extreme where they don't really have much customer service to moderate where they're pretty good and trying to maintain their business, to the extreme on the other end, where they're hypersensitive to complaints and they want everything to look perfect out there for their business. So you have a gambit of these cultures, and it's like this at any business out there. You know, restaurant businesses like In N Out Burger and Chick-fil-A have a very high standard of their culture and how they operate. And mom and pop restaurants have a lower culture. Then you have these chains like Jack in a Box, Del Taco that fall somewhere in the middle where they have some culture of excellence, but they're not really at that level of the other ones that are at the top, and that's how it is in the pool industry as well. So it's one of those things where when you're bringing on an employee, or if you're the employee coming onto the company, you have to recognize the culture you're going into. And if you are wanting your employee to model that, you have to train them properly, otherwise, it's not going to work out. So, how do you train the employee? Well, this is where the difficulty comes in to pool service because a lot of the potential pool techs that would normally be applying for work out there or jobs out there are doing a lot of gig work right now. They're doing Uber Eats, they're doing you know DoorDash, you know, Instacart, regular Uber driving, which pays fairly good money for them. In fact, you can make really good money doing these services out there without having to do any really physical or manual labor, like in pool service. You're not learning a trade per se, but you are getting paid money, and you are utilizing your vehicle, and you're of course out there doing something similar where you're making stops and doing customer service in a way. And so that pool of workers has shrunk because of

Hiring In The Gig Economy

SPEAKER_00 5:06

this kind of gig work that's out there now, where it's easy work. Now, in my area, there's a waiting list for Instacart drivers and for Uber Eats and Uber drivers. It's not quite that easy because it's oversaturated in Los Angeles County, but there's still a lot of those kind of gig works, gig work available out there. With the increase in minimum wage in my area as well, you're getting like $18 or $19 for flipping burgers as well. So the incentive, or the not the incentive, I should say, the the amount of people looking to get into the pool service industry and work out there in the field has shrunk to a really small, finite level, in my opinion. That means that you're going to have to kind of go outside the regular way of getting employees or or hiring people that may not have the skill set that you desire for this, they may not have any background in any kind of service work or any kind of manual labor, and you have to start from ground zero with those employees. And so starting from ground zero, there are some basics that you have to explain to them. You know, customer service. They they should watch how you interact with customers, and they should, you know, make sure their vehicle is clean, not leaking oil. Now, if you provide the vehicle, of course, you're going to provide a good vehicle for them. The service pools in, and there's a couple of ways to hire employees, or there's several ways of hiring people out there. In California, you're very limited. You can't do a 1099 here in California. So you have to be a standard W-2 employee. But there are some leeways with them using their own vehicle or using a company vehicle. So you have to decide what you want to do and how you want to bring them on board. And then, of course, paying the employee to where they're making more than they would make at a burger place or Walmart is also a factor. Paying per pool is still very common, and it's one of those things that motivates the employee to get out there and do their pool route because they're getting paid per pool technically, even though it's an hourly pay, you can kind of adjust that to a per pool type thing. And it's very complicated in California to do this. Maybe your state's easier, but there are a lot of rules about wage and hour limits and taking breaks and things like that that make paying per pool kind of gray. But you can get away with it, of course, by giving a minimum wage to the employee and then using the per pool rate as kind of a bonus to do it. You can look it up online, and there's actually court cases that back this up that it's actually possible to do this, and it's one of those things where there are hours that can be exceeded and you fall into overtime, and then there's a lot of a lot of regulations on this, but paying per hour generally is not as motivating as giving them kind of a bonus as paying per pool. But regardless of how you structure it, you're going to have to make sure that you are legally compliant as a W-2 employee with all the rules and regulations of your particular state and what is required and the records you have to keep. Also, in most states, you're required to have workers' comp for the employee out there working. Here in California, you can get away with the janitorial category because you are doing a cleaning, and I would avoid a construction category because the rates are much higher for workers' workers' comp in the construction field. So besides bringing on the employee, you have to have the pay structure set up, you have to have the workers' comp set up, and the payroll, of course, and everything has to be legal and legitimate for you to do this. And so you may you might have to check your numbers and make sure that you're charging enough yourself per pool per client to absorb the cost of having an employee with the payroll taxes and also with the workers' comp payment to actually bring them on and pay them a decent rate rate and also make money in your business. So these are all factors that you should have outlined before you're even thinking about bringing on an employee and do your due diligence to make sure that you're actually going to make some profit here when you have an employee and you're not actually gonna lose money by having someone working for you. So let me go back to some of the basics now of training. First is appearance. Your company would be better served if you have a uniform that the employee could wear. This is really important, especially if you haven't had an employee before, or if you had employees and maybe they left and you're bringing out someone new. Having a uniform is a good visual for the customer to know that you know this person works for Mel's pool service or you know, Blue Crystal pool service, they know that they are your employee. That's important. At the least, you would want to have a magnetic sign for the door with your company on it so that the employee outside the property they can see that they work for your company, especially if they have to go through you know an HOA or gated community, or if you know they park out in the street. It's good for the customer to see that

Appearance Conduct And Trust

SPEAKER_00 10:15

this person getting out of the truck is your employee walking onto their property. Important to have that standard of uniform and identifying that this person works for your company. Really important, I think. You also want to make sure that their appearance is good, that they shave and that they present themselves so that the customer can see that they have you know fairly good character. You don't really want them smoking out there, and if they smoke, you don't want them smoking poolside. One of the members of my group had this problem with this person he hired, that he would have a cigarette dangling from his mouth while he's servicing the pool, dropping ash everywhere. And the customer was really offended by this, and he kind of had to tell the employee, you know, take your smoke breaks and don't smoke while you're working. So really vent your employees carefully so you don't have these kind of incidentals with customers that can be easily avoided. The employee should have some code of conduct, you should have something drawn up, pretty simple. You wear your uniform every time you visit your stops, have the magnetic sign on your truck, make sure you're not doing anything like smoking in the customer's backyard, all these kind of things that are logical, you know, address the customer with respect, all these things are important. How much information does the does the employee need to know about the customer? Well, they should have their name at least and know how to address the customer. Some companies keep everything close to the cuff and don't even tell their employees the customer's information because they're afraid they're going to steal the customer. But there is some level of trust that needs to be there with the employee so that they can have some contact with the customer and be able to address them properly when they see them at the account. It's only proper. You may not have to give them their contact information. That can be done through an app like Skimmer, but it's one of those things where basic information is necessary. And then you, of course, want during the ride along to teach the employee the routine. And this is the important aspect of training. If you stick with the routine, you're gonna have less problems out there, and they're gonna not forget as much as you're teaching them because, like I mentioned earlier, a lot of things to remember. So pick a routine that works for you and the employee. Number one, get out of your truck, get to the backyard, make sure you have all the equipment you're gonna bring back there. Open the gate, make sure you close the gate behind you so the pet doesn't get out. Make sure that you are wearing your uniform, of course. And then the first thing you do, and this is kind of the method that I use, have them look at the pool, stand there for you know 10-15 seconds and actually look at visually look at the water to see

A Repeatable Stop Routine

SPEAKER_00 12:47

if there's any kind of problems or things visually they can see. And that's kind of the first thing is to visually assess the pool. Then you want to, of course, have them do these things in steps. First thing is to check the water chemistry, and you have to let the employees know which test factors you want them to check for every week: free chlorine, combined chlorine, which is total chlorine, pH and alkalinity, and then you may have them do quarterly tests with the calcium hardness, cyanuric acid, things like that, and just go over everything that they need to test for at the stop so they're aware of it. And then you can start them with either cleaning the pool, but the first thing I like them to do after they do, after they get there, is to at some point check the equipment or turn the pool on if it's off. So they can check the water and then they can go turn on the equipment and make sure everything's running. If it's not running already, if the pool is running, I still like them to go see the equipment to make sure there's no leaks, everything is running fine, and to visually assess the equipment, and then they can start their cleaning process, skimming the surface, cleaning the tiles, vacuuming the pool when necessary, then finish with brushing the pool, and then I have the I usually add the chemicals last, so I don't forget to do that. And sometimes it's good to add add them last as well, and that way you don't run into a problem. And so just make sure that the last thing they do is visually look back at the pool to make sure they put the floater back in the pool if they're using trichlor, or if they add the chemicals, and then there's a lot of minutiae you gotta train them with with salt water systems, problems at the equipment pad. They should have a basic knowledge of what happens when you can't prime the pump, you know, the water's not going in there. Some basic knowledge of opening up the chlorinators without the gas coming out and knocking them out. These are all basic things, also safety protocols as far as chemical spills. Teach them how to handle the acid and chlorine without spilling them on the customer's pool deck, and also how to store them in their truck properly without causing a hazmat situation. If you're you have the Hasa returnable cases, don't mix the acid and chlorine in the case, things like this are basic stuff. You just want to get all the basic information you can think of. You're kind of heading off problems by thinking of things that could go wrong with the employee, and they need to have the proper training with chemicals, you know, trichlor tablets, make sure that they're in a floater or that they're in a chlorinator and not in the skimmer. Don't put the trichlor tablets in a skimmer basket, don't toss them in the pool and think they're gonna dissolve in the water. That's happened before. All these are basic things, so kind of pretend yourself that you're new and you're a rookie and what things to look for. You should have a chart and some kind of printout that you've created that they can refer to so that they know exactly what they have to do at each pool, and it'd be helpful to have them check things off while they're with you so that they kind of get this routine and learn this routine on what to do at each pool. I'll say this as well that part of the culture that the employee is going into is reflected in the equipment the employee has to use, and this is kind of an important thing if you're looking for work out there as well. What kind of equipment is the company supplying you with? Now, if it's a kind of a company that just is basic, they give you a vacuum hose and a vacuum head, a brush, pool pole, net, and then the chemicals you're gonna need for that week, that's perfectly acceptable. But I think for the more premium companies, they should equip you with really good equipment, you know, like a real high quality pro leaf rake. They should have you should have access at their supplier to buy equipment when you need it and itemize it. And a vacuum system, maybe the next level of equipment that you could supply

Tools Vacuuming Rules And Standards

SPEAKER_00 16:34

your employees, you know, the bottom feeder, the shrimp, a rip tight or hammerhead, so that they have a vacuum system to kind of become an elite employee out there using that to clean the pools with. And there has to be some specific rules that you tell the employee about as far as vacuuming goes. This is where a lot of customers or a lot of employees and customer relationships have fallout, and that is what exactly does the employee do at the pool? Now, of course, skimming and brushing the pool are basic, checking the chemicals, but the vacuuming part of the pool seems to be the biggest hang up with customers when you have an employee, especially when they're new, and if you did things differently and the employees doing things differently than you, this causes a lot of problems. So I would say have a hard and fast rule with your business that the employee should vacuum every pool that they get to. And if you have a vacuum system like the bottom feeder or the riptide or a hammerhead, this is easy to accomplish because they can drop the vacuum system in and then vacuum the pool that way, especially if there's an automatic cleaner in there already, or if you want them to manually vacuum every pool. I think that's very labor-intensive, and sometimes that bogs out of the employee and slows them down, causes some burnout as well. If you make them manually vacuum every single pool out there, to me, with the advent of the vacuum systems, is something that it's not entirely necessary to have the employees do, but you do want them to have them vacuum the pool at every every visit to keep that customer relationship. Of course, they're not going to complain if the employees actually clean the pool thoroughly at every visit. The complaints happen when they skim and brush and leave the pool without vacuuming, you're going to get a lot of pushback there, I think, in a lot of cases, and that's one of the biggest complaints customers have with employees maintaining their pool is they don't clean the pool what they think as properly. And then one of the last things you want to teach the employee is that when there's a problem, bring it to your attention right away and you'll address it. A lot of times the employees don't even know what a problem is because when you're training them, they don't see it, they don't see that problem happening, and you know, they may not know that's an issue, but certain noises the pump makes, the motor makes, water leaks by the equipment are definitely a problem. All these should be addressed and brought to your attention when there's something that doesn't look right. They can, of course, have you take a look at it and correct it. But that's one of the biggest problems as well, is when the employee is doing their routine every week and they never tell you there's something wrong with the pool, and then the customer tells you, hey, there's been a leak here by my equipment for like the past month, and no one's fixed it. Well, the employee never reported it, so how can you fix

Reporting Problems Before Customers Do

SPEAKER_00 19:16

it? And it's one of those things where you're kind of blind to what's happening out there, and it's one of those really important aspects of training the employee that they should be communicative with you whenever they see something that's not right with the pool or think that something's not right with the pool. And this is one way to prevent major problems from happening with customer relations. The biggest thing with employees is how to maintain the relationship with your customer, have the employee out there working under you and having everything run just as smoothly as when you were running the business or servicing the pool yourself, I should say. And this these things really help a lot when you talk about letting you know everything that's happening out there, dressing professionally and doing the job right, have that checklist that they have to go through and check off everything they do at the pool. And of course, there's going to be speed bumps and kind of miscommunications happening along the way with this. But really, the main thing is proper training and communication are the key to keeping these things running smoothly. And riding around with the employee for at least three weeks to a month, it's really important. Have them ride with you and learn everything they can, absorb as much as they can, learn as much as they can, but know yourself that they're going to forget things and not remember everything, and they're going to have to be reminded of things constantly. So keep that line of communication open between you, the customer, and the employee at all times to prevent any kind of things falling through the cracks, which will affect your business ultimately and could actually hurt your business reputation if you get a bad employee out there doing things that kind of ruin your business. I'll end with this. There's a pool company that was part of my group for a long time, and he had an employee that basically just called them one day and said, you know what, I'm done, and I just left the truck in your driveway and I'm out. And this is something also to consider when you hire an employee, is that they may not give you proper notice when they quit or leave, or they may get frustrated and burned out and just quit on you out there. And the danger is if you're overloaded and you have and you hired someone who has not the right character to give you proper notice and just kind of leaves without any notice at all, you're holding the bag, and that that is something that you have to consider. So hiring somebody, the critical thing is a character evaluation to avoid situations like this where

Character Quitting Risk And Wrap-Up

SPEAKER_00 21:45

you should have known when you hired them that they didn't have good character and you have these problems developing later. So really do your due diligence and check everything and make sure you hire the right person at the beginning to avoid these kind of catastrophic problems at the end. End of the relationship that doesn't end well because you didn't hire well at the beginning. Hard to do, I understand that. Really hard to predict, but there are indicators of bad character, and there you can't really avoid or overlook those things because they'll come back to hurt you later. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can find those by going to my website, sweetpoollearning.com on the banner. Click on the podcast icon. There'll be a drop-down menu with over 1900 podcasts for you to listen to. And if you're interested in the coaching program I offer, you can learn more at poolguycoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have a great rest of your week and God bless.