How to Use Technology to Ease Labor Shortage Strain

By Cass Jacoby. 

Roof Hub is the contractor platform solution made specifically for roofers, right down to creating viable solutions to the labor shortage. 

In Season 4, Episode 52 of the Roofing Road Trips Podcast Heidi J. Ellsworth meets with the leader of Roof Hub with SRS Distribution Inc., Chris Hill for a conversation on how leveraging technology can help ease the strain of the current labor shortage.  

Roof Hub was created specifically for the roofing trade, designed to be the ideal tool for businesses. “We try to incorporate as much as we possibly can that anyone could use for their business to be able to enable contractors,” says Chris “We ask, we, listen, we develop it, we test it, we roll it out. We train on it, we get feedback. And it's just a continuous loop of that. And that's how we build it up and how we got from an invoice and delivery tracking app to where we are today.”  

After steeping the development of this platform in many cycles of contractor feedback and testing, Roof Hub became the resource it is today. Roof Hub now offers real-time delivery tracking, invoice history, easy online ordering, training, interactive storm maps and more! 

RoofHub can even help contractors navigate labor shortages and labor training, making the onboarding process easier than ever and making it so that day one of a new hire they can order without making any mistakes.  

“As a lot of our contractors are growing, they have to hire office staff or purchasing staff and they have to train up those people. And so a system like Roof Hub enables them to have templates built. We have AI-driven recommendations based on your ordering history,” explains Chris. “There are integrations allowing contractors to run reports that automatically fill in the quantities and waste factors So it takes from having to know all the products, know which ones to order, which colors to order, what quantities based off measurement. It just takes all that away and allows you to go in, open up a template, pull in a report, click Order.” 

In the current labor crunch the industry is experiencing, making the most of the labor you do have is critical, and technology is key to speeding up your processes and taking the pressure off of your employees.  

“It helps with retention of labor, too,” says Chris. “[Your employees want to work with] a contractor who has everything dialed in, the crew shows up the materials are there, everything's there that they need. They can knock that roof out just as fast as they can work without any lag time. They're going to want to keep working for you.” 

Learn more about Roof Hub in their RoofersCoffeeShop® Directory or visit srsdistribution.com/en/resources/roof-hub. 

Listen to the podcast and learn how you can use this technology to navigate the labor shortage smoother. 

About Cass  

Cass works as a reporter/writer for RoofersCoffeeShop, AskARoofer and MetalCoffeeShop. When she isn’t writing about roofs, she is putting her Master degree to work writing about movies and dancing with her plants.