When Justin Rechter joined Debug Pest Control as its People Operations and Culture Director two and a half years ago, one of the first challenges handed to him was a big one: fix training. The Rhode Island company had been in business since the early '90s, but most of its growth had come recently — from 10 to 15 employees a decade ago to more than 50 today. With a background building onboarding at Meta and Grainger, Justin knew what good looked like, and he knew Debug wasn't there yet.
"Training was a huge, huge gap for us," he says — the same gap he'd bet a lot of small-to-midsize companies hit as they scale.
Today the family-owned, QualityPro-certified company — a "small but mighty" team serving Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Southeastern Massachusetts from its Smithfield, RI headquarters — runs all of its onboarding through Trainual, from pest control technicians to sales to customer care. And the payoff has shown up where it counts: faster ramp times, safer drivers, and new hires who call it the best training they've ever had.
"One of the things that's always on my mind is retention and engagement — and with Trainual, I feel like we're doing a much better job of setting people up for success." — Justin, People Operations and Culture Director, Debug Pest Control
The challenge: onboarding that couldn't keep up with growth
Debug's busy season runs from late April through October, so the real crunch comes earlier — a hiring push every February and March, then a compressed window to get everyone trained and route-ready before the phones start ringing. This spring's class was the biggest ever: 12 new hires at once.
Before Trainual, that ramp was mostly "trial by fire." New technicians learned by shadowing a colleague — which worked fine when Debug was ten people and someone could observe for a month, but broke down as the company grew. A few gaps stood out:
- Leadership was learning on the fly. The company was promoting people into supervisor roles for the first time, with no structured way to prepare them.
- Training was reactive and hodgepodge. In Justin's words, they were "throwing things together" — assigning trainings on the fly, or only when something came up, instead of following a plan.
- The handbook was a formality, not training. New hires were handed the employee handbook to read and sign during onboarding paperwork — a stage when, as Justin put it, nobody actually reads it. The important information never landed.
- Onboarding depended on who was available. A new hire's first weeks looked completely different depending on which technician they were paired with.
And it wasn't just Justin's read on things. Debug's annual pulse survey kept surfacing the same theme: employees wanted better training.
"Now we had a data point," he says. "This is what our people told us they wanted."
A trusted industry partner recommended Trainual, and what stood out immediately was the usability, the fair pricing, and the support. As Justin puts it, a lot of companies struggle with knowing where to start — and Trainual filled that gap.
The solution: a system built for how their team actually works
That first year, Justin admits, they underutilized it — "we were in the thick of it." But once they sat down and built a standard path from the ground up, Trainual became the backbone of onboarding. Here's what made it click.
Training paths tailored to each person.
Instead of a cookie-cutter approach that runs everyone through identical modules, Debug customizes paths by role and experience. Some modules everyone takes; a technician with five years under their belt can skip the basics a brand-new hire needs. Same for sales and customer care.
"The flexibility and the customizability has been a blessing," Justin says.
A dedicated champion who grew into the role.
Debug hired Thomas Lohrman part-time to make Instagram reels and social content — then realized how creative he was and handed him training, something that "wasn't even on his radar three years ago." Now Debug's Media Producer & Trainual Coordinator, he owns the build. It's Justin's favorite piece of advice for other teams:
"If you've got anybody on staff with a creative brain, hand them this and let them cook. They'll surprise you — and you're building their career, too. Now Thomas can say he's built training, which is rare."
Built for a field crew that isn't especially technical.
Justin points to how cleanly Trainual embeds the YouTube videos and GIFs his team produces — the kind of content that actually stands out to people — where other tools mangled the formatting.
"A lot of our guys wouldn't call themselves tech-savvy," Justin says, "but with Trainual you don't need to be."
AI to build, Trainual to deliver — fast.
When a technician fell for a phishing scam, Justin used AI to build a cybersecurity module and had Thomas upload it within 24 hours. It's fully interactive — an HTML "Spot the Phish" game where employees click the red flags in a suspicious email — and it ran flawlessly inside Trainual.
"You'd be stupid not to" use AI to help build, he says, but a standalone AI artifact isn't something you can hand your crew. Trainual is where it becomes real training — and the feedback on that module has been some of their best.
Reporting and accountability that used to be manual.
Justin's a self-described data guy: "numbers don't lie." Trainual's reporting shows who's completed what, and automations send reminders — and alert managers — when someone falls behind. It's the same dashboard-level visibility he relied on managing at a big tech company, and it's opening the door to the incentive-linked optional training he's now planning.
An internal Google for the whole team.
Beyond onboarding, Trainual works as an internal intranet — a place where anyone can search for an answer in real time, on a job site or mid-call, with the AI assistant surfacing it instantly. "Resources at their fingertips" was a major selling point, and it's become one of the platform's most-used features day to day.
Training that sparks engagement
Maybe the most unexpected benefit: Trainual changed how people engage. When answers are at their fingertips, employees solve problems instead of stewing on them. Justin points to a technician who looked up the company's lunch policy and, rather than grumbling, came back with a thoughtful "have you ever considered this?" suggestion. "Had we not had Trainual, they just wouldn't have asked. They'd have become disgruntled and checked out."
It cuts the other way, too. When someone searches for something that isn't there, it exposes a gap. "If a person says, 'I tried to find this and couldn't' — that's on us. Now we know to update the handbook." The playbook gets better, and the team feels like they're building it.
"Trainual sparks engagement. As an HR professional, that's exactly what I want to see — curiosity, people challenging the status quo. It's let those conversations happen in a constructive way." — Justin, People Operations and Culture Director, Debug Pest Control
Buy-in was easier than expected
Debug had the same worry a lot of field-service companies do: would a crew that doesn't consider itself especially tech-savvy actually use this? "We were concerned they'd think it was cheesy, or just be turned off," Justin admits. The opposite happened — adoption was fast, even among folks who, as he jokes, don't love their cell phones.
His message to skeptics who insist their team would never use training software: you might be underestimating your people. "Folks are genuinely curious. They want to be better." And if you're not sure, ask them — run a pulse survey. "My belief is you'd be surprised by the answer. We sure were."
The results
- Route-ready in half the time — technician onboarding cut from 6–8 weeks to 3–4, getting revenue-generating techs on the road faster.
- Driver-safety scores up ~30% over 18 months, after tying a KPI incentive to Trainual-built safety training.
- ~90% of training happens on mobile — how a field team in trucks all day actually learns.
- "The best training they've ever had" — the verdict from a record spring class of 12, many coming from big national chains.
- Low turnover — and a "Best Places to Work" nod — onboarding that makes people feel set up for success.
- The handbook finally gets read — worked through on day one instead of signed and forgotten.
- One consistent experience across 3 states — no more 90-minute drives to HQ for day one.
But the moment Justin still talks about wasn't a stat. A new hire posted a PTO question in a general channel — then, before anyone could answer, followed up: "Never mind, I found it in Trainual."
"I can't tell you the chills I got. You know that scene in “Phantom Mennace” where Anakin builds his pod racer and goes, 'It's working! It's working!'? That's how I felt. This is exactly the way we wanted it to work — people with the answers right at their fingertips."
Advice for teams on the fence
Justin, who also advises other owner-operated businesses through a side consulting practice, makes the case on two fronts.
Trainual is an investment in your people — and people can tell.
"When someone joins a company with a solid onboarding structure, there's a feeling of comfort. They recognize you're investing in them." That shows up in retention, and in something he didn't expect: inbound business. Happy employees talk. "
We've had people call for a pest-control quote and say, 'I know someone who works for you, and they rave about it.' That's happened multiple times this summer."
Your employer brand, he argues, is marketing — the two go hand in hand.
You can build training yourself.
Trainual is easy enough that you don't need to be an expert to build in it — you just need someone with a good eye. The support system makes it even easier: Trainual University, a responsive team, and a Slack community his coordinator "raves" about. And unlike some vendors, Trainual actually ships the feedback it hears.
"I've worked with software companies where you give feedback and nothing happens. We've seen our recommendations show up on their roadmap."
Things the team assumed wouldn't be possible — like routing every handbook signature through Trainual — turned out to be easy.
Debug is still, in Justin's words, "scratching the surface." Next up: a handbook overhaul, deeper accountability around mandatory and optional training, and eventually a training department of their own. But the foundation is set — and for the first time, growth doesn't mean starting over every spring.
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