Upskilling for Plumbers & Heating Engineers
With many plumbers and heating engineers now stuck at home on lockdown, there's never been a better time to learn some new skills online. We've scoured the Internet in search of online training for plumbers and heating engineers, as well as materials to help you or your employees learn business skills online - use these resources to upskill during the downtime and fight off boredom.
Learn Business Skills Online
As a plumber or heating engineer, you may be involved in running a business as well as carrying out technical work, so it could be useful for you to develop skills in areas such as marketing, basic accounting, and customer relationship management. The resources below will help you to learn valuable business skills online whilst you're stuck at home.
1. Digital Marketing and Leadership Courses (Google)
The team at Google has helpfully provided a range of nine digital marketing and leadership courses that would be perfect for someone who runs their own plumbing or heating engineering firm. For digital marketing, there are courses on digital fundamentals and understanding customer needs; to help you develop into a successful leader, this course collection covers issues such as productivity, collaboration, and emotional intelligence. In some cases, free certification is provided if you complete an assessment at the end of the course (a useful addition to your CV!)
2. Online Accounting Course (Oxford Home Study Centre)
The Oxford Home Study Centre (OHSC) has provided a completely free introduction to accounting course for beginners. With 20 hours of material, this course gives you a decent understanding of accounting fundamentals and should help you with your company's bookkeeping. It might not all be relevant to you, but you can pick and choose which modules are most applicable to your particular business context.
3. How to Improve Customer Service (Dickies Workwear)
Customer service is one of the most important aspects of working as a plumber or heating engineer - working on your approach to managing customer relationships can increase repeat business and improve your firm's customer service ratings. Covering issues such as communication and handling complaints, this Dickies Workwear guide is specifically aimed at tradespeople and teaches you how to improve customer service. It's a short read and should give you lots of tips for when you do return to work.
4. A Guide to Marketing for Tradespeople (AXA)
Made for tradespeople, this AXA guide explains some really useful techniques for marketing your business and building trust with customers. It explores lots of different online and offline marketing tactics including branded signage, social media, and e-newsletters.
5. Moz Academy
The Moz Academy provides a variety of search engine optimisation (SEO) courses to help you get your company's website ranking at higher positions on search engines - the SEO fundamentals course is a great place to start. Usually priced between $49 and $199, these courses are now free for the Moz community up until the 31st May. All you have to do is sign up for a free account.
