An Employee Engagement Focus is Critical; Can AI Help?

By Sarah Nicastro

Countless companies have turned to employee engagement initiatives to help boost morale, reduce burnout and improve retention. And, in my opinion, rightly so. It’s high-time we put proper emphasis on the crucial role our frontline teams play in the customer experience and company objectives. The question is, what’s the right way to track employee engagement?

I was interested in the findings of a recent Marketresearch.biz report on the growing market for employee engagement software. According to the report, revenue is going to reach $4.4 billion by 2033 with a compound annual growth rate of 16%. The software not only gathers employee feedback, but also evaluates performance and provides tools to encourage specific behaviors and improve engagement. These can include things like mobile learning portals, onboarding/training, streamlined communication tools, and recognition/reward solutions.

When it comes to the capabilities of AI-driven tools, though, what’s the proper balance between wanting to assess employee engagement without breaching employee privacy? I came across a write-up recently in The Hustle titled “How Companies are Using AI to Spy on Slack,” which was exploring news of how companies like Walmart, Delta, Chevron and Starbucks are using an AI tool called Aware to monitor employee messages.

While the premise of Aware and similar tools is positioned around gaining knowledge about employee sentiment (as well as monitoring for certain risks), it’s hard to determine how much tracking becomes counterintuitive to the reasons employee engagement is so important today – which is to make employees feel more valued and empowered.

We know that engagement is going to remain a critical topic moving forward in field service. In the most recent IFS State of Service report, the second-highest top concern of service organizations was dealing with a lack of skilled workers and high employee turnover. Efforts to improve engagement can help relieve some of the staffing pressure. Where should those efforts be focused? The Service Councils annual Voice of the Field Service Engineer survey provides some guidance.

That survey found that 45% of service engineers either were not planning to remain in the industry or were not sure; only 28% of those planning on leaving were retiring.

The Service Council report also digs into some areas where technicians are not satisfied with their jobs. Roughly a quarter were dissatisfied with career opportunities, mentoring/guidance, and learning and development opportunities. The survey also found that 43% of engineers did not feel like they were recognized for their results, and 42% felt they were not coached on areas where they could improve.

The Potential for Progress in Employee Engagement is Huge

What I wonder is, would those metrics be far better if not for these two: Just half of respondents agreed that their company prioritized employee engagement, cared about their personal development, or was interested in collecting technician feedback. And only around a third agreed that their employer directly addressed their concerns/feedback or rewarded them on feedback that improved processes or business outcomes.

So regardless of where you stand on the best ways to track employee engagement, the more prominent issue in my mind are the companies failing to recognize the need to do so. As I have pointed out numerous times, and others have emphasized during our podcast interviews, technician engagement is critical for pretty much every program, initiative, or technology deployment. They are not just the face of your company during service interactions, they are also the eyes and ears – they have insights you can't get anywhere else.

Software may be part of your solution, whether that’s in the form of surveys or something like the Aware tool discussed above. But it certainly isn’t the whole answer – employee engagement initiatives need to be more holistic and include not only a mechanism for taking the pulse of your workforce’s feelings and feedback, but also for providing quality training and enablement, strong leadership, career growth opportunities, and more. You also need processes in place to respond to technician feedback and show, through action, that their voice matters.

The benefits here extend beyond HR-related concerns of high turnover. Engaged, energized technicians provide better service, can help spot new revenue opportunities, and play a critical role in the success of things like digital transformation initiatives.

Have you had an experience or success with employee engagement software? I would love to hear about it; email me here.

In last week’s podcast, I welcomed back Roy Dockery, VP of Field Operations at Flock Safety for what was his fourth appearance on the podcast (making him the most repeated guest!). His insights were featured way back in episode 2, discussing the need for organizations to take ownership of the talent gap. Next in episode 147, with a fresh take on the same topic – this time with the hope leaders were more ready to listen. Again in episode 243, where he actually interviewed me about my 2023 predictions. And last week, where we had a conversation around his new book, The Art of Leading: Truth, Love and Empathy in Action.

After reading an early copy of the book, I asked Roy to speak to some of the points that stood out most to me. One of the biggest is the very first chapter of the book, where he talks about how love is imperative to impactful leadership. He says love is “a fundamental element that can empower you to excel in leadership and drive remarkable outcomes. I don’t disagree, especially if you read his explanation on why and how, but I did tell him I feel this is a bit of a “hot take.”

In services especially, there are a lot of leaders in place who might cringe, laugh, or roll their eyes at the statement that love is essential to good leadership. I think those reactions could stem from a number of things that I won’t delve into here, but I also think those reactions are what prompted me to state in my 2024 predictions that I believe this year we’ll see more and more “old-school” leaders ousted. My point in that prediction has nothing to do with age and everything to do with mentality – including the outdated beliefs that leaders who are caring, vulnerable and empathetic are “soft” and not as effective.

There’s a growing realization of course that those beliefs are, frankly, bullshit – supported by plenty of evidence on how characteristics like vulnerability and empathy actually improve leadership influence and create cultures where overall performance rises.

One point Roy made in his book that we discussed on the podcast, though, is one I hadn’t heard framed in this way before. This is the connection between love in leadership and equity in the workplace. He says, “Equity has become a popular term, but I truly believe that love is the only true path to equity. Tolerance and inclusion can easily become prisons for those in the outgroup because to be given access without true consideration is a cruel illusion.”

This was probably the statement from his book that will stay with me most – and it’s one I think we can’t reflect on too much or too often. We have so many discussions around increasing diversity, creating more inclusion, reaching equity – but are we considering how unlikely it is to really reach those goals without coming from a place of love? It’s such an important point.

Honesty, Accountability Factor In

For anyone reading along thinking, wow – this guy must be all peace/love/feelings, there’s more to the conversation than the importance of love. Roy also discusses how “love without accountability becomes enabling; honestly without tact, empathy or maturity is damaging” and gives some very specific examples of not only accountability but even harder conversations like termination, through a lens of love. While the book shares Roy’s conviction around the importance of characteristics like love, empathy, and authenticity in leaders, it’s also full of real-world examples of what these traits look like in practice, even under challenging circumstances.

So, to answer the question posed in the title of this article – is there a place for love in leadership? Yes, there is – and I believe leaders who don’t find their own authentic way to lean into that reality will struggle to connect with employees in the coming years in a way that will allow them to be successful, in their purpose or their ability to drive productivity.

Roy’s book is well worth checking out! It’s officially available the 20^th, but you can pre-order on Amazon now.

A colleague recently shared a YouTube video of Wes Roth reviewing Microsoft’s 2023 Future of Work report. I was intrigued to see what Roth had to say about the report’s contents, but after watching I found myself even more intrigued reading through the comments on the video and thinking about what I feel we need to take away from them.

The video starts with Bill Gates commenting on why everyone needs to be paying attention to AI, “AI is going to raise productivity generally and you should all pay attention because it’s so dramatic how it improves white collar productivity and later with the robotics, not yet, but blue collar productivity. People sometimes lose sight of the fact that this is the biggest productivity advance in our lifetimes.”

With the emphasis on productivity here, it makes sense why many of the comments are rooted in fear or cynicism. And I think this is a point we need to keep in mind when introducing AI-based change into our organizations – focusing too narrowly on the benefit of productivity gains (especially through the lens of the company wanting/needing more productivity) paints AI into a category of technology workers will be more inclined to resist.

I’m not suggesting we don’t have transparency around both the need for productivity gains and the ways in which AI will help us achieve that. What I am saying is that we need to temper this reality with the reassurance for employees that they are still needed, their contributions matter, and we aren’t valuing productivity at all cost.

Roth goes on in his video to emphasize a number of points that provide a more holistic view than the opening productivity comments, such as that people with access to co-pilot found the task to be 58% less draining (around 4:10). There’s discussion around how AI helps highly skilled workers become more efficient through automation, but also how it helps lower skilled workers through democratization of and access to knowledge.

Then later in the video (around 9:26) the statement is made that, “Skill like leading, dealing with critical situations, navigating interpersonal trust issues, and demonstrating emotional intelligence will be very important – until we all get outsourced to AI and then there will be no more critical social situations, trust issues, and emotional intelligence of any sort.”

While I take this (mostly) in jest, do workers consuming content who fear for their jobs, don’t feel valued by their organizations, or don’t feel supported in upskilling or reskilling as AI takes hold within their industries?

Why Fuel Fear Within a Strained Talent Landcape?

Perhaps one day this fear will become more real and acute for us all, but that day isn’t on our immediate horizon. What is, however, is the realities of a talent landscape that is already challenging without the introduction of further doubt and uncertainty fueled by the focus on how AI can or will “take jobs.” Sure, really manual, repetitive roles may be consumed by AI capabilities – but with our current challenges to fill open roles and retain talent, can we not find other areas of more value-added work for these employees to take on?

Reading through the comments on Roth’s video brings to life the fear that exists in people’s minds around the topic of AI. A few examples:

@ariesmarsexpress – “Raises productivity" is business code for we are going to layoff pretty much everyone, including ourselves, at some point.
@RogueAI – Worker: "I'm now getting twice as much work done with AI. How about a raise boss? " Boss: "Great! We're gonna fire John and give you his work. And since you're so productive we'll even throw in a 5% raise."
@xanders-game – The reality is this is going to allow corps to push fewer workers harder, with minimal pay increases to keep up with inflation. If one worker can do more than another with the technology, they are incentivized to lay off the least productive employees to preserve profits.
@christophercelmer405 – F productivity. We are humans with our own desires. Mine is not to slave away for someone else for a pittance constantly in a state of precarity so more people will work even harder or be abandoned once they are no longer needed.

To be fair, I left out some of the more extreme negative comments but there are also plenty who are taking a more positive view of these advancements. These ones speak to me, though, because they feel actionable.

What if we take the approach of honesty, but through the lens of how we augment and improve the work (and roles of employees) versus how we automate and replace?

Yes, this lens puts more onus on the company to consider what non-automated work does matter most and how to map the skills of existing workers to that work, with upskilling and reskilling as necessary. But I don’t see a short-term situation where the need for people simply disappears, and I think we need to put more focus on how we’re communicating that fact to our employees in a way that quells some of the distress they feel around their personal futures in relation to the AI wave.

What do you think of all this? How are you communicating with your employees about plans for AI in their future of work? I’d love to hear from you!

For field service organizations, predictive maintenance is the future, a fact that was highlighted in a recent report from Persistence Market Research. The firm anticipates the predictive maintenance market will reach $34.1 billion by 2030 – comparatively, last year, the firm said market revenue stood at $8.6 billion.

Technology adoption is a major enabler of this growth – the Internet of Things (IoT), big data and analytics, and other solutions have been deployed to meet the need for more operational efficiency as customer demand increases and service deadlines tighten.

Some of these technologies have been in place for quite some time. Even before the term “Internet of Things” was coined, service technicians were leveraging data from connected devices to help improve service responsiveness and visibility. Edge computing in the manufacturing sector continues to improve as processors get more powerful, and cloud-based solutions have helped companies extend maintenance and service data across multiple locations. The Persistence report also mentions predictive analytics platforms, which have integrated predictive maintenance and real-time analytics to help enable this type of highly responsive service.

AI Adds a New Layer

What is new is the rapid evolution and adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the manufacturing and service sectors, which can help further improve predictive capabilities through more granular analysis.

AI algorithms may also help technicians (or customers) on site with troubleshooting, diagnosis, and repair activities. An AI system trained on years of service data on a specific type of equipment (or a specific piece of equipment in use by a customer) can help technicians leverage existing knowledge much faster and take guesswork out of the job. This wouldn’t replace technician expertise but rather compliments it by narrowing down the scope of the problem and helping the technician get to the right solution faster.

While the promise of predictive service is immense, the report does also point to some of the challenges posed by predictive maintenance. Some of the logistical and cultural problems to overcome before we can fully realize the potential of predictive are:

Regulations: As we have seen with recent controversies around the ChatGPT AI platform and plagiarism, the data needed to feed these predictive maintenance systems may be covered by data privacy and security regulations. As a service provider, how much access to machine data at a customer site can you expect? If a manufacturer sets up a predictive maintenance contract with a customer, who owns that data? How can you be sure it won't be compromised in a data breach, and who is liable if it is? Is any consumer data exposed in these systems (as it may be, for example, with point of sales systems at a retail store)? Privacy/security issues are going to vary by industry, but they have to be ironed out for these predictive systems to work as advertised.

Data quality and cost. Predictive analytics require high-quality, uniform data, which can be a tall order for companies running legacy platforms. The upfront work to scrub and categorize data and implement the right tools can be time consuming and costly, a big hurdle for small and medium-sized customers.

Staffing. If you think field service has a problem with staffing shortages, you should take a look at the IT industry. For these systems to work, most companies will need someone on staff with a background in data science and AI, or they will need to work with a software vendor or third-party integrator that can support them.

Customer resistance. This somewhat relates to the data privacy issue, in that connected equipment at a customer site is going to look like one more node on the client network that could potentially be vulnerable to a cyberattack. Or the customer may just not want a vendor to have 24/7 access to their equipment. If the customer is in the retail, legal, defense, or medical sector, they may be prohibited from granting that type of access. In addition, shifting from a break/fix mindset to paying for predictive maintenance can be a challenge both from a change management perspective, and a budgeting perspective. Field service organizations will need to be ambassadors for this approach.

The upside remains significant: reducing downtime for customers and avoiding expensive truck rolls for the service organization, longer equipment life, and new types of service products that can provide reliable revenue streams for manufacturers and service companies. Further downstream, there could also be benefits related to improved visibility of repair/aftermarket parts demand.

For service organizations that want to restructure operations around predictive, the first steps have to be analyzing both customers' and internal needs to figure out where and how this approach can provide the most value. From there, companies will need to determine how open their customers are to that business model and address any regulatory hurdles. Where you plan for an AI component, you must be sure you’ve done the necessary work to organize the data required.

This is all before you select a partner and deploy any technology! Predictive service represents a big change for a lot of companies culturally, economically, and technologically – but there are plenty of good examples of companies that have successfully made that shift. I have written before about several of them – Husky, Makino, and TKElevator come to mind.

If your company has transitioned, or is transitioning, to predictive, I would love to hear about your experience. You can email me here.

I’m so excited for you all to hear this week’s podcast with Dan McClure, System Innovation Architect and Choreographer at Innovation Ecosystem. This is Dan’s second appearance on the Future of Field Service podcast; he was first a guest on episode 124 back in August of 2021. We all know how much has changed in the world of innovation since then, and Dan’s soon to release a book called Do Bigger Things: A Practical Guide for Doing Powerful Innovation in a Changing World (available February 13^th).

So, I knew going in there was a lot to discuss, but we quickly strayed from my agenda – real shock, right? We’d set our sights on discussing things like:

How has innovation changed in the last ten years, and how will it change in the next five?
How are technologies like AI impacting innovation? Do you see this as an opportunity or a challenge for organizations?
What’s key for organizations in navigating change/innovation well in today’s complex landscape?

While we did dig into all of these areas and more, what I want to share with you today is a piece of our conversation that’s had me thinking ever since about what innovation looks like in the service landscape and how ready companies may (or may not) be for more disruptive change.

You’ll notice in Dan’s title he refers to himself as “Choreographer” – we spend some time in the beginning of the podcast talking about what exactly this means and the hallmark characteristics. I think in some ways you can put it into a similar categorization of challengers and change catalysts – people who are excited by opportunity, who see the big picture, and who aren’t afraid of asking hard questions or sharing bold ideas.

These are my words, not Dan’s, and listening to him explain the choreographer role is well worth your time. Personally, it’s something I can really identify with – I’ve worked hard in my professional career to harness my choreographer-like traits for good, because often early on my excitement and passion was viewed more as “difficult” than creative. As an aside, and I wish I’d have thought to ask Dan about this, I have to wonder if women who have choreographer traits tend to be perceived differently than men with those same traits. I found myself early in my career being told I was “too emotional” when I’d speak up on an issue where I’d seen men in very similar situations received far differently.

Anyway, here I am getting off track! While I do resonate personally with a lot of what Dan shared about the choreographer’s role in innovation, what it had me thinking about that is relevant to you all is – how ready is service for this type of role? You hear every company speaking about how they are working to innovate, but how are they defining innovation? Are they introducing incremental improvement, or really redefining their value proposition or delivery models?

Walking the Talk

I’ve talked to many service leaders who are likely choreographers who see so much potential for innovation within their company but are stifled in not only action but even sharing those ideas because their executive leadership may lay claims to innovation but is quite comfortable with the status quo. I do believe this is changing, quickly, and that companies need to really consider how open they are to those who see the potential for change are willing to drive it.

I shared in my 2024 predictions that I believe “old-school” leaders will be ousted, and I think topic ties in. Cultures who operate in a manner where an elite few make all decisions based only on their very limited context won’t survive in the rapidly changing world Dan speaks about. Companies who recognize that innovation comes from diversity of thought and requires an environment where different perspectives and new ideas are welcomed will without a doubt take the competitive lead.

It seems many companies and leaders are following a script of what they know they should say – they are people-first, employee-centric, innovative – and so on. But is it true – is it genuine? It’s genuine when they say these things backed by a true recognition that it’s the only path to success; not in an obligatory manner.

If you identify with the choreographer description you’ll hear this week, Dan gives three options for how you can navigate a situation where you feel your ideas aren’t truly welcomed.

What does an organization who is ready for – or already supportive of – choreographers look like? A few things come to mind:

Leaders are truly open minded
Employees are empowered to share their feedback, input and ideas
Employee feedback is acted upon and communicated back
Diversity is not only deemed important but prioritized at all levels of the business
Those who show promise as the choreographer type are given opportunities to hone their skills

What would you add to this list? I’d love to hear from you!

During the Future of Field Service Live Tour in Stockholm last October, I had a chance to sit down with the team from Electrolux for a deep dive into their ongoing service transformation as part of the company’s overall customer centricity initiative. The service transformation a significant global project to replace a 40-year-old service management platform – sound pretty daunting, eh?

As you can imagine, updating such an entrenched system required a lot more than just ripping and replacing software. The Electrolux service team did not want to miss an opportunity to take a top-to-bottom look at service processes so they could really reap all the benefits of using new technology. Good on them for recognizing the reality that layering new tech on old processes won’t do much to improve operations overall.

To make an already major undertaking even more daunting, the first phase of their initiative did not go well. In 2018, the company rolled out a pilot solution in Belgium and not only did the solution not really work, but the vendor also went through an acquisition during deployment, which would have led to another major upgrade not too far along in the future.

Fortunately, Electrolux had the foresight to change paths before getting in too deep. The company decided not only to implement a new tool, but also to take a different approach.

"[T]his time we thought, ‘Let's do something different. Let's involve the actual end users and all the countries that would ever use this tool. They should be part of even selecting the vendor, selecting the tool,’” said Kristoffer Brun, Services & Repair Transformation Manager.

Electrolux also met with each potential new vendor to find out what their product roadmap would look like. With input from customers and internal stakeholders, and a future vision from the tech vendors, they slowly built a set of business requirements based on what they wanted their service operation to look like in the near-term and in the future. They also visited vendor references in person to see how potential software solutions were working.

After selecting IFS Service Management and successfully rolling it out in Belgium, Electrolux next turned its attention to Denmark. There are a lot of lessons to take from their experience there regarding change management, because as they described it, their Danish organization was very stable – with the highest average age of technicians in Europe.

That can be a huge hurdle, because long-time technicians can be resistant to process and technology changes. Electrolux took an interesting approach – they brought in an outsider to help lead the transition and serve as a change ambassador. The Danish team also met with the Belgium team in person to see the solution in action.

“We got to talk with the technicians, with the resource planners, the parts planners, the back-office team, and ask any questions we wanted,” said Peter Sandkvist, Transformation Manager. “They presented to us. And this specifically built confidence in the Danish team.”

How Storytelling Aids Change Management

Anna Mezzanotte, Service Operations Product Domain Expert at Electrolux, brought up another key strategy that Electrolux emphasized – the role of storytelling in change management.

“Because we really need to make sure to explain to all our business users why we're doing this change, of course, but also the consequence of not embracing this change. What's the opportunity cost at stake?” she said.

Just as important was explaining to the technicians what they could gain from the new system. “Make sure that you explain to all these agents that will work with the solution what's in there for them,” Anna said. “[H]ow will these new tools make their life easier and better?”

The other benefit of really understanding the “Why?” of the project and explaining it to employees affected by it, is that it also helps the implementation team better understand the project scope and its limitations.

Peter said that careful, detailed planning was another key part of their success. Not just planning who would complete what task, but also planning out communication and training in advance, and planning to establish some resilience in the project and in the team for when things did not go well. In other words, have a Plan B (and maybe a Plan C), so everyone knows what to do if something fails.

The Electrolux team also mentioned something that other field service leaders have brought up in our discussions before – the importance of having some fun and celebrating successes throughout the project timeline, not just at the end. Without those celebrations, change simply becomes exhausting.

What Electrolux did (through research, having a future vision, careful planning, and good communication) also helped build some future capabilities into the workforce and the management team. When the next project comes along that might create changes (even small ones) in the organization or the technology set, the team is better prepared to manage that process and accept those changes because a foundation of trust has been built.

As Anna noted, “If I have to pick up one of the most important lessons learned, I would say that – and again, I'm referring a lot to my IT colleagues here – remember that, [in the] end, it's not an IT project. It's a people project.”

I had a great, wide-ranging discussion with the Electrolux team. You can listen to the whole thing here.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

I am a huge advocate of the move toward a leadership style and company culture that honors the fact that they can’t accomplish their ultimate goals without their people and makes effort to truly respect, reward, and empower their teams. As such, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to interview Caroline Häggström Marklund, Managing Director and VP Customer Services Nordic at Vattenfall, at the October Live Tour event in Stockholm.

From the moment I first spoke with Caroline, I knew her statements of prioritizing a people-first culture had real authenticity and action behind them. With the correlation between employee engagement and customer satisfaction becoming clearer, we’ve fallen trap to many leaders and organizations who make empty claims of being “people-first” without an ounce of effort to back those claims up.

Vattenfall Customer Service is an example, however, of a company getting it right and its accolades don’t lie. Vattenfall won the Swedish Union's HBTQI award for most inclusive workplace, best service in the energy sector, and has earned its Great Place to Work certification. Lucky for our Live Tour attendees, they got to hear firsthand from Caroline what has elicited these awards and, more importantly, the right to claim people-first and mean it.

Reflecting back on our conversation, I see six key themes that stand out as foundational to what makes this work well rather than fall flat.

#1: Understanding & Accepting the Need

The companies making false claims are the ones who see employee engagement, satisfaction, and a people-first culture as buzzwords they “have to” care about; not as an opportunity to think and do differently that can pay dividends.

The reality is, due to the impact of the pandemic, generational ideals, talent shortages, and much more, a people-first approach is simply what’s needed today. I truly believe that companies who fail to embrace this reality will fall behind their competitors that do in short order.

“First of all, I think it's about common decency: Treat people well overall and in general, in business and in society. I think that's just what you do,” says Caroline. “But we've been through decades of automation and lean processes, and the tasks that are in our hands now are way more complex than what they used to be. In order to sort that out, people need to feel enabled and engaged. Also, when work is more and more relationship focused – relationships with customers, with the clients, within the organization, with colleagues and all of that – no matter what AI, our job will always be to sort of maintain relationships. If you're going to maneuver that world, I think you need to be given a lot of trust and freedom. It would be weird of me as a leader to say that I know exactly what all of the 400 people here in this organization need to do, because I don't. But I need to trust them that they know what to do if I tell them what the final goal is. I think a more complex environment, a more harsh overall climate in the world is leaning us towards this.”

In our complex and dynamic world, a prescriptive approach doesn’t lend itself to the agility needed and it stifles the creativity employees bring to problem-solving, brainstorming, and innovating. Like I said, the time for a new way has arrived – it’s just a matter of accepting it.

#2: Authenticity & Top-Down Support

One of the big points of caution that Caroline shared is to never, ever say you want to be people first – or, even worse, claim that you are – without being willing to do the work.

“It's about authenticity in a way, I think. That goes for, I mean, whatever culture you want to build. Sometimes I think that we don't realize that even if we don't sort of state what culture we want to have, we are still creating a culture just by acting in a certain way,” explains Caroline. “A people-first approach, to me, it's all about trust, and the people in my extended team and my closest team, they need to trust that I will put them first when the shit hits the fan and even before that. Therefore, it's about relationship, it's about trust.”

What happens when companies make the claim of focusing on or being people-first without any of the actions that make that claim a reality? They damage whatever trust they already had from their employees, and they lose respect, negatively impacting employee morale, company culture and often performance.

“If I want to earn people's trust, I have to be what I say I am, because if I'm not, it's hollow. If I state that I want to drive a people first culture and then act differently, then this is not going to have any power; rather the opposite,” warns Caroline. “In my view, it's like say that you want to do it and don't do it, it's the worst thing that you can do if you want to create something like that.”

While authenticity in the objective is critical, so too is top-down support – because an individual leader can believe in this approach wholeheartedly but struggle to take actions aligned with that belief if it isn’t shared by top-level executives.

#3: Trust the Payoff Will Come

Caroline stressed to me that there was one myth she wanted to be sure to address in our session, and that’s that a people-first strategy is soft or “fluffy,” not a path to achieving concrete, bottom-line impact. This simply hasn’t been her experience.

“Especially in customer service, it is all about relationships. If your people aren't comfortable or safe in their environment, how are they going to be able to have an open dialogue with a customer and do what is needed to do?” asks Caroline. “So, we started the journey of people and then performance because I am a firm believer, and now I also have clear evidence, that if you as a leader focus on enabling your people, setting them up for success, then the performance will follow. You need to measure it obviously, but you don't have to be ‘there’ if you're ‘here.’ Include and trust in people; it will come much easier.”

At the core, the belief is to stop prioritizing profit over people and trust that if we focus in the right ways on our people, the performance and profit will follow. Trusting this belief is something that more and more companies are beginning to do.

Caroline shared a story that illustrates how Vattenfall really built the momentum with this in her session. If you’d like to listen to the full story, you can find it on our podcast – but to summarize, early on in this initiative there was a problem with performance tied to staffing that needed resolved. Caroline took the steps she felt would resolve the issue, and it did not. The teams looked at her questioning what she’d do next, and she stated simply that she didn’t know – she needed them to tell her what they needed to succeed. This was a point where they realized her intent was genuine and that she wanted their input. They weighed in, she delivered what they needed, and the measurable results spoke for themselves in this approach being effective. Moreover, this was a turning point for building the trust that is necessary for the people-first model to work.

This piece can be tough for a lot of leaders who are pressured to make numbers and hit short-term goals. That’s understandable and something that needs to be navigated, but the example Caroline shared of what happens when you trust the process paints a clear picture of what’s possible.

If you missed our podcast with Venkata Reddy Mukku, Vice President Worldwide Service & Support Organization at Bruker Nano Surfaces & Metrology, it’s another conversation that deep dives into not only his believe in a people-first strategy, but details on how he executes and what the benefits have been.

#4: Create – and Enforce – a No Assholes Policy

This next one might raise some eyebrows, but it has to be said – to make good on a people-first strategy, you must create – and enact – a no-assholes policy. To be honest, this is one area where I feel a lot of organizations with initially good intentions fall short.

The excuses start to feel like reasons, and next thing you know it’s – oh, we can’t get rid of them, they are a top performer. Yes, they are causing some issues with morale but they’re so-and-so’s hire, so we’re sort of stuck. Yikes, they aren’t effective but it’s a really delicate issue.

No. Just, no. For this to work, really work, you have to eliminate the toxicity that exists among the ranks – and that means all the way from frontline to top levels. As Caroline mentions, this is not only not easy, but it also requires executive support.

“At first I needed to do a little bit of a structural change and move leaders that stood for the former culture basically. It was also clear that they were not willing or able to be authentic in the new world or however you want to put it. That was one thing. It was important in order to really establish this culture of people first, I wanted to make it really clear that harassment or any kind of demeaning behavior to others is absolutely unacceptable,” explains Caroline. “We needed to move away from if you were a brilliant mind that created a lot of business, but in the process of doing so, you belittled others or stepped on others or were even mean to others, you were still sort of like a high performer. In my world, that doesn't add up. A high performer is a role model as well as delivering business value.”

This initial wave of change gave way to the formal no-asshole policy. “That's when I introduced the no asshole policy. If you're an asshole, you will not be promoted. If you act in that way, you will not be seen as a high performer. You need to be both. That was quite effective I think, but you need to then act on it,” she urges. “To stand behind what you say, then you need to have, when someone brings up that they have been harassed or have been in an incident or something, you need to dive into it quickly and deal with all the things that come your way then and not try to move past it. This was not easy. I mean it was a lot of discussion also in my management team when we did performance evaluation like, ‘But he's so great and then he does all of this.’ It was a shift. It was not easy.”

Not easy, but we all know sometimes the most important changes are the hardest ones.

#5: Confident, Vulnerable & Humble Leadership

Putting in place a people-first strategy or culture isn’t possible without not only authentic but adept leadership. And the leadership skills that work well in a people-first world are often different than those that worked well in a command-and-control type environment. So, what’s important?

What I took from Caroline’s retelling of her efforts at Vattenfall is that she’s confident but humble. She believes in the approach, she believes in her ability to lead well in a people-first environment, but she’s aware that she doesn’t have – or need to have – all the answers and must welcome and embrace the input of her teams. “My ambition is to have a people-first culture, but that doesn't mean that I will always make the right choice, right? I'm only human and I can make mistakes and I can communicate things in a way that doesn't make sense and absolutely doesn't feel people-first. Therefore, it is really important to me that people talk to me when they feel that. We want to get to a full-on people first culture, but I don't claim to be perfect and there will be mistakes along the way.”

She also stresses the importance of being genuine: “Don’t try to be something that you aren't because you will never be able to fake it in people's mind. Self-leadership and self-knowledge are super critical. If you want to lead a people first culture, you need to make sure to know what kind of culture you are actually driving or developing just by being who you are. If it is what you want it to be, then that's fine. If it's not the culture that you want, then you probably need to change your behavior first. Ownership of your own behavior I think is important.”

I don’t see this as being about abandoning what feels sincere, but rather finding out how to be you while also being willing to grow as a leader, evolve, and adapt your strengths to what works well in today’s world.

You do have to reconcile that it’s really tough to be people-first without getting personal. “I want to know my organization and I don't want to know it by PowerPoints. I want to be able to greet people and recognize them. It's getting more and more difficult the more we get, but at least meet the people in their onboarding and talk a little bit and get a connection to lower the bar for people to come to me if there's something going on that I would need to know. Getting to know people, show that you actually care.”

Building the relationships that make this approach work demands leaders to be a bit vulnerable. “You can't build a relationship based on facts, you need to build it on feelings,” says Caroline. “That doesn't mean that you have to be emotional in a sense that you're crying or raising your voice or whatever, not that kind of emotion, but just be aware that there are feelings all around. I don't think that's soft. It can be uncomfortable because you have to show who you are as well and what you are thinking or feeling about things, but you can never build a culture if you don't show who you are. That's been a journey for me personally as well.”

#6: Reflect & Course Correct

As Caroline pointed out above when owning that she won’t always get things right, the goal in becoming truly people-first isn’t perfection, it’s intent and progress. This means that reflecting often on the state of things and being constantly willing to course-correct is imperative.

“The feedback culture, the feedback loop is so critical for us to move past obstacles that come our way and for me to learn and be better. It's not just about the organization developing and growing, I need to develop and grow as well,” says Caroline. “If you're not humble or willing to receive feedback, you will not get it. If you never get feedback, I think that's a red flag.”

As you reflect and course correct, Caroline suggests coming back to your core values. “If you wonder what kind of culture you are driving at the moment, go back to your core values. What are the things that are really important to you, that have basically always been important? You were taught this when you were a kid or by a role model at school or whatever. That is a process to get close to your core values,” she explains. “If you don't really know or you aren't really sure, which is pretty common, then reflect over the things that makes you really, really mad. When something ticks you off to the end that you get really mad or frustrated about it, then you've probably met someone or something that shows the opposite of what your core value actually is. You can turn that around and do some self-reflection. I think that is a good start in self-leadership and then driving culture.”

Caroline’s point about reflecting on what makes you mad reminded me of talking with Cait Donovan of the Fried Podcast when she was a guest – she talks about how there’s power in resentment, because it’s telling you something so important. This example of self-reflection shows, again, how leadership is evolving and the thinking that lends itself to really progressing a people-first strategy.

In addition to an individual leader maintaining an open feedback loop with their teams, it can be really helpful to combine that with a company-wide assessment of employee engagement, satisfaction, and feedback to make sure that a people-first approach isn’t being adopted in just one area of the business but across the board.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Field service organizations are struggling with several staffing problems simultaneously. The workforce is aging, and experienced technicians are retiring – taking valuable institutional and technical knowledge with them. Younger workers entering the labor market often lack the technical skills needed for field service work, or viewed by some potential employers as too demanding when it comes to pay, scheduling flexibility, and work environment.

For companies on a growth path, an inability to resolve these issues can stymie your ability to take on new business or even to deliver quality service to existing customers. But by leveraging some creative thinking and the right technology, service organizations can address at least some of these labor challenges by developing an upskilling or development program.

Setting up an internal training or career development program can seem daunting, particularly for companies already struggling to hire enough people, who are short-staffed and feel there’s already too much to do. While an investment of time, a well-designed upskilling initiative can pay dividends when it comes to attracting and retaining workers.

First, it helps the company stay on top of technical training. Whatever industry you are in, servicing your customers gets more complex every year. Products are always changing, along with the environments in which they are installed. A good field service operation should already have an education/training program in place so that technicians are up to date; the upskilling program can piggy-back on that.

Second, a focus on upskilling can help attract new hires and keep them around. Competition for technicians means that many companies are going to have to hire relatively green employees with non-traditional backgrounds and provide a lot of upfront training to get them up to speed. By providing training and certifications not only at the beginning but on an ongoing basis, field service organizations can become more attractive to their pool of potential employees and have more success retaining existing talent.

Upskilling Increases Employee Engagement

How? Upskilling and career development keep employees engaged. We know that there’s a correlation between employee engagement and customer satisfaction, so this is a worthwhile effort. It also provides employees a path for growth within the company, empowering employees to strive at their pace toward advancement and better pay, while sending a message that the company is invested in them.

Finally, these programs can potentially help keep retiring workers around a little longer by offering them opportunities to shift their work responsibilities as they age. You can also ask older employers to stay on, perhaps on a part-time basis, to help run these training programs.

Training is labor intensive, but technology can help. A number of solutions and applications have emerged that can bolster training/upskilling programs without the need for hiring more trainers:

Augmented/virtual reality tools allow technicians to virtually diagnose and repair equipment. There is no substitute for hands-on training, of course, but this type of 3D virtual instruction can accelerate the process.
Virtual collaboration tools leverage this type of AR/VR interface so trainers can work with new employees (or even techs operating in the field) remotely. A handful of trainers or senior technicians can support new employees (and each other) from anywhere.
On-demand training assets can be accessed by technicians on their mobile devices. This can reduce some classroom time, which can help keep the training schedule manageable. This type of flexible, self-directed training can be appealing to younger workers.

I wrote recently about the importance of career development, and interviewed Jennifer Morehead of Flex HR about how these programs can benefit service organizations. An important theme that came up was that you must consider taking care of your employees needs in the same way you look at providing good service to your clients. If your technicians are not happy or they don't feel like they have the right tools to do their jobs, that will eventually affect client satisfaction.

That element of workforce development also came up in my conversation with Gyner Ozgul, former President and COO of Smart Care Equipment Solutions. In describing the Smart Care training/development program – which provides opportunities to become managers, trainers or sales reps – Gyner told me “We've been very clear to map out each one of those for our technicians, so they feel that this is an organization that no matter what path they take, they can feel supported and be successful.”

How has your company approached upskilling and development? What challenges have you faced, or opportunities have you created? I’d love to hear your experiences.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

The Harvard Business Review published an interesting piece recently on project management approaches and the debate between people who prefer the structured waterfall method and those who have embraced agile management methodologies.

Most of you are likely familiar, but to recap, the waterfall approach is a more traditional way to manage a project with clear steps and milestones that must be met before moving on to the next phase. For example, a simplified model for a software installation would have a product selection phase, followed by a test/pilot, and then a full rollout.

Agile, on the other hand, emerged from software development projects and focuses more on group collaboration, rapid iteration, and continuous change. So, for companies that were writing software, the idea was to deliver a product quickly, and then work with beta users and clients to work out bugs, identify new functionality, and provide upgrades and patches fairly frequently.

Because agile was pretty successful in the software industry, other types of businesses began adopting that approach for other types of projects. As you can imagine, this much different style was not enthusiastically embraced by everyone, but it offered some clear value in terms of time-to-market, and in addressing the weaknesses of traditional project management – namely, rigidity, an inability to adjust to changing conditions, and late discovery of problems that resulted in costly rework.

In field service, agile has been deployed not just for specific projects, but also as a general business practice that can help companies respond more quickly to changing customer, staffing and financial realities.

The Pros of a Hybrid Approach

The HBR piece suggests a hybrid approach that combines some of the rigor of waterfall (having clearly defined goals and good documentation) with the flexibility of agile (being able to pivot based on stakeholder input or new information). That basic premise fits field service well, particularly when thinking beyond project management. Service is an industry where technicians need to rigorously adhere to service level agreements, safety requirements, and other processes/practices, while also being able to creatively solve problems, adjust schedules, and respond to volatile levels of demand with a workforce that may have varying skill levels.

That's why agile as a mindset instead of a methodology is more valuable in this environment. A few years ago, I spoke to Amanda Moore at Schneider Electric about that company's adoption of agility. She also emphasized that you need structure and buy-in – there has to be a clear understanding of where you want to go and what type of organization you want to be, as well as an alignment across groups.

Luckily, field service technicians have long embraced agility, whether they would refer to it that way or not. Even when arriving to conduct fairly straightforward repairs, they always have to be prepared for the unexpected – a problem they were not expecting, an environmental condition that could make the repair take longer, or some other type of issue that they couldn't anticipate.

Further up the chain of command, agility has become increasingly important. Field service organizations need to be flexible enough to respond to changing customer demands that, in some cases, could significantly shake up their business model. Instead of break-fix service, clients may want preventive maintenance contracts or guaranteed uptime. You may need to incorporate remote service to address staffing shortages or invest in training resources as equipment becomes more complex, integrated, and connected.

It also helps to have a technology platform that enables that type of flexibility. Field service management platforms not only need to provide flexible and responsive scheduling, but also equip technicians and managers with tools that can help them report new conditions or customer needs, and then use that data to provide better service or create new offerings to take advantage of emerging opportunities.

An agile approach to field service provides companies with the ability to adapt in what has become a rapidly evolving market. For companies that have implemented agile methodologies for projects, consider the successes you've seen there, and how they can be applied more broadly across the company – from the way technicians respond to events in the field, to how management sells service to new and existing customers.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

We have talked to a lot of different management consultants over the past several years about ways our audience may be able to improve leadership effectiveness, their management style and team interactions. Among these conversations, trust and open communication are always key considerations for improving team interactions.

Eric Papp is a management consultant, trainer and motivational speaker based in Florida, who has written a number of books on effective management approaches. He speaks often at industry conferences, including the recent Mechanical Service Contractors of America conference in October. His latest book, Manage Promises, Not People : How To Create A Self-Managing Team, is focused on trust building that can help teams be more effective. I spoke to him recently about how some of these principles can be applied in field service organizations, particularly since so much of what service does is fulfilling promises – not just the promise of doing your best work within a field service team, but also the promises companies make to their clients in their service agreements.

Can you explain the concept of promises in the context of the workplace?

Promises in the context of work are what an employee would tell their manager. So for example, the employee promises they will be at work at 9 a.m. What happens if they are late? The manager sees a potential conflict. Do I let it go? What you can say is, “You showed up at 9:20. Do you know what impact that had on me as a manager? I had to call someone in, or we had to be at Ms. Johnson’s house at 10 and we didn’t make it.” Then you set future expectations. Will you send me a text if you are running late? You help them raise their awareness level.

It’s the same thing on a field service job. The technician goes out and takes care of the problem, but the customer calls and says they left mud tracks throughout the house and didn't put their booties on. What is going on? You don’t want to make the employee wrong, but you want to elevate their level of power. There are always gaps between what people say and what they do. Managing the promise instead of the person helps you identify those gaps, get better at it, and as a manager you should look in the mirror and recognize when you do it, and then come from a place of humility and growth. There has to be a level of trust.

In field service, employees frequently work remotely, in some cases do not physically see their managers more than once every week or two. What are some of the challenges that remote work places on this way of trust building?

This is why it’s so important to manage the promise and not the person. If you don't see someone for a whole week, and they are on their own, it’s more crucial. You want to have that level of trust that they are doing what they say they are doing.

In the book, you make some points about overpromising. In our industry, that is often more of a management or corporate-level problem when setting terms with a client about service that will be delivered. The field technicians wind up paying a price for that. How can organizations scale back that impulse to over-promise just to win business?

You all have to be on the same page. If management over promises, the technician has to do their best to fulfill that promise. Then it’s up to them to have that conversation with a manager, so they know what you ran into that made it exponentially more difficult. As a manager, you have to be open to that input.

You see customer trust start to erode when someone comes out to the site and does something completely different than what was promised, or they contradict the promise. That’s when you lose the customer's trust and you don’t get a call back.

You also need to do some reflection. What did I set out to do today, and what percentage of that did I actually accomplish? A lot of people fall into the optimistic fallacy, where we truly underestimate the time and effort something is going to take, and then overestimate our ability to accomplish it. It’s part of being human.

Where are some areas you see a lot of managers can make improvements on ability to lead, rather than just manage, and how the idea of honoring promises can be worked into day-to-day interactions.

Coaching conversations are really important. If you manage promises, that lends itself to better coaching. That is what you are really called to do, even though so few managers are able to do it because they are bogged down with administrative tasks. But your job as a manager is to improve outputs. How do you do that? You look at your employees that are out there doing the work, and figure out how you can best support them. Have meetings with them, and use those coaching conversations to get them to the next level.

You also have talked about the gap between having knowledge and being able to use it effectively. In field service, technology has given us a lot of information about equipment performance and technician activities, but that can lead to micromanagement.

If you are managing a promise, then micromanaging is not happening. You have trust and communication.Sometimes having more information can be paralyzing. I see that in sales, where people think they have to have all the research done before they pick up the phone and do any business development. You should be focusing on the right touch points. You may have data on gas mileage, or break times, but it really comes down to a few key touchpoints. In field service, that may be how many clients did you see, and are they happy with your service? What is your track record for getting called back again by those customers?

The more information you look at, the more you can get lost in the weeds.

I have spoken to a few consultants and authors about workplace conflict, and I wanted to ask you to discuss healthy versus unhealthy conflict, and why that is important for good management.

Healthy conflict is being able to talk about what matters without people getting offended. We can talk about performance, and not focus on personality. In a lot of organizations, they don’t talk about problems until they are so painful they have to do something. As humans, we are trained that conflict is bad. You have to navigate healthy conflict at work like you’re in a marriage. You don’t see eye to eye on everything, but how you approach those issues and talk abou them can mean the difference between bringing the team together or putting a chink the armor.

If you don’t address things, that leads to unhealthy conflict and builds resentment. People may harbor these things for years. Conflict makes people uncomfortable. As a manager in a coaching conversation, if you don’t bring up these issues earlier then your team thinks what they are doing is okay. “I’ve been operating this way for months, and you're just now bringing it up?” Things can really fester.

That ties into another point you made in the book about the value of clarity in management.

Clarity is power. If you know what you want, it's much easier to get what you want. As a manager you want to be clear on your standards and not be wishy-washy when communicating them to your employees, or going back on what you said. Having that consistency goes a long way to being effective as a manager, because employees know what the expectations are and what kind of support they are going to get.

Clarity also impacts delegation. There are times when we get inundated with decisions and you can be hesitant. If you aren’t clear on the end result when you are delegating things, you may not get what you were looking for. People who are good at delegation know what they want and can articulate that. Where we run into issues is when we don’t really know the end result we are looking for, and then you can’t communicate it.

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