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January 8, 2024 | 4 Mins Read

Field Service Upskilling: Opportunity or Challenge?

January 8, 2024 | 4 Mins Read

Field Service Upskilling: Opportunity or Challenge?

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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.

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An Agile Mindset vs. Agile Methodology

December 18, 2023 | 3 Mins Read

An Agile Mindset vs. Agile Methodology

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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.

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Q&A: Manage Promises, Not People

December 11, 2023 | 6 Mins Read

Q&A: Manage Promises, Not People

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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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How Flexible Can Field Service Be for Technicians?

December 4, 2023 | 4 Mins Read

How Flexible Can Field Service Be for Technicians?

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Here is something that a lot of people who shifted from office-based to remote work during the pandemic won’t find surprising – a new study from Censuswide and Fiverr International (a freelancer service) found that a lot of workers are most productive outside of normal business hours, and a majority of respondents said their current work arrangement/schedule was not working for them.

A few caveats, of course. The survey is mostly focused on office-based and freelance workers, so field service managers may look at this data and (justifiably) say, “So what?” But the data points do point to a general dissatisfaction with the way work is scheduled, and given the staffing and retention challenges faced by the industry, we should all be looking for innovative ways to balance employee scheduling needs with customer demands.

So, some data from the research:

  • About a third (32%) of respondents said they prefer to work from home, or to at least be able to choose where they work each day.
  • Somewhat counterintuitively – given all the complaining about how demanding Millennials and Gen Z employees are – Baby Boomers were tops in preferring remote/work-from-home scenarios (40%), while just 29% of Millennials and 32% of Gen X respondents cited remote work as their preference.
  • 28% of Millennials who said they preferred remote work said it was because of childcare needs.
  • A little more than three-quarters of respondents said they could complete their current workload in a 4-day week.
  • The big one, though, is that 76% of respondents said their current work arrangement did not meet their ideal preferences. Entry level workers were about 20% less likely than the most senior employees (directors) to report their job met their ideal work preferences.

Field service businesses, of course, usually pride themselves on a service-anytime-anyplace approach to stay competitive – stuff breaks outside of normal business hours, and peak demand can be tough to predict in a lot of markets. But technicians face personal scheduling obstacles, too, and a lot of them are not necessarily preferences and are outside of their control. For entry-level and middle-aged technicians that have kids, childcare is not only expensive, but in some cases just unavailable. 

In fact, there are 100,000 fewer childcare workers than there were before the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. School schedules do not map well to work schedules in most cases. A lot of current scheduling practices are holdovers from a time when one parent stayed home, but those days have been gone for decades. Employers are going to have to reckon with how their employees juggle work and family time, or they will continue to lose good employees.

In addition, a lot of younger employees have not bought into what is sometimes referred to as Hustle Culture. They prefer to put hard barriers between their personal time and work time and are not as willing as older workers to put in extra hours, for example, to move up in an organization. (Gallup has data on this, but there are plenty of articles about the phenomenon, including one I wrote here.)

Balancing Always-On Service with Employee Satisfaction

But how flexible can field service really be for technicians, given that customers often require or demand service on weekends, service in the evening, or may need technicians working at their facility for more than 8 hours to repair critical equipment?

I would say service organizations probably can’t offer the same flexibility that an office-based role can, they can most definitely be a lot more flexible than they are now. It just requires an openness to accept that circumstances have changed and lean in to creativity and technology to figure out how. 

We’re beginning to see examples of companies leading the charge. My favorite example was shared by Mitie Fire & Security at our Birmingham, UK Live Tour event in May. Mitie uses IFS Planning & Scheduling Optimization, an AI-based engine that was put in place to automate scheduling and dispatch but is also being used to give flexibility to the technicians. The company has begun allowing technicians to choose their own start and end times since PSO will simply factor that in as another criteria and optimize accordingly. This allows technicians to feel more in control of their days, the company has experienced no negative impact and shared that it’s only helped with employees’ mental health. 

Plenty of service companies dispatch from home – technicians take their service vans/trucks home every night, and head straight to their first assignment from their own driveway. Rotating schedules can help provide some time off during hours that techs may need to tackle childcare (or eldercare for their parents). Organizations can be more flexible about breaks to accommodate childcare — it's not uncommon to see plumbing trucks or taxis in the pickup/dropoff line at some schools. When you start allowing yourself to think differently, you will begin to see opportunities to increase flexibility for your teams. 

It wouldn't hurt to ask your technicians what kind of schedule they want. That doesn't mean you have to give them exactly that, but by mapping their requests to customer requirements you could probably come up with at least slightly more workable schedules. Don't forget that your technicians are people, first and foremost. What do they have to schedule around? Is it childcare? Family illness? Hobbies? If you can find a way to work with employees when something comes up (a sick child, for example), it is ultimately a more productive approach than the shift-swapping or loss of paid hours that the technician has to organize on an ad-hoc basis. 

Have you had any experience trying to increase the flexibility of your field service organization when it comes to work-life balance for employees? Drop me a line and let me know what you did.

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Where Does Human Touch Fit in Our AI-Powered Future?

November 20, 2023 | 4 Mins Read

Where Does Human Touch Fit in Our AI-Powered Future?

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

This Spring, I wrote about my less-than-happy travel experience flying from Cleveland to London. During that multi-day odyssey I experienced both the upside to automation (the impressive United Airlines app) and some of the downside effects on human interactions that these automated systems can have. 

With AI conversations taking place at every turn, I keep thinking about that balance between automation and the human touch when it comes to service. I came across this Harvard Business Review (HBR) piece that has a fairly optimistic take on how workers can maintain their relevance as more companies evaluate AI tools like ChatGPT to take on everything from online service chat functions to writing marketing copy and even creating art.

The crux of the article is that AI is automating intellectual capital in the same way that machinery automated physical labor during previous eras. Just as machines, for example, allowed us to lift heavier and heavier things, AI helps us solve more complex problems because it can evaluate a lot more data than a mere mortal, and throw gobs of computational power into coming up with new solutions.

There are limits, though. AI is not thinking so much as analyzing an immense amount of information, and most of the information was created by flawed, biased people, which means those same biases can creep into the results – and in the case of automated service systems, programmers are often trying to restrict solutions to a fairly limited set of known scenarios. 

Once you exhaust those scenarios, the human factor comes into play – a real person must intervene and evaluate the situation. This is where another AI risk surfaces – the limitations of the automated system can start to seep into how employees deal with customers. Service representatives start looking at problems through the lens of what the automated system allows them to do, rather than using their own knowledge to come up with solutions.

The HBR article touches on this, too. For real people working in tandem with an automated service system, it is important to remember the qualities that humans bring to the equation that AI lacks – creativity, empathy, and emotional intelligence.

Creativity, Empathy and EI Remain Critical in Service 

Creativity is already critical, both in the call center and in the field, but will be even more important as AI-based systems handle most of the straightforward customer interactions that can be easily solved or routed via automation. When exceptions occur, we will rely on the knowledge of our people to apply a level of curiosity to the situation that AI systems just don't have. 

Empathy and emotional intelligence are another story. We know that today’s definition of good service is not just about fixing a given problem, but also being able to effectively connect and communicate well with customers and, in many cases, play a role in driving their business outcomes. 

If an automation system is in place, by the time a customer gets through to an actual employee they are usually pretty frustrated (this was true with my own travel experience last month). Their problem has not been addressed through the AI layers of service capabilities. The call has been escalated, probably right along with their blood pressure (speaking from experience). Making sure employees know how to recognize that frustration and respond accordingly (even if it means going off script) is critical to achieving high levels of service. Active listening and empathy at this stage goes a long way to helping the customer feel like their needs are being understood and addressed, even if the employee involved in the engagement cannot solve their problem right away.

This is why service organizations really need to understand that automation and AI are not an end unto themselves; they are tools that work best when they are put in place to unencumber frontline workers from menial tasks, democratize knowledge, and enable the irreplaceable human touch to be applied in the times it’s truly warranted. 

Service leaders face immense pressure related to the challenges to hire capable workers at the same rate their most experienced technicians are retiring. AI and automation present a huge opportunity here to take some of the burden off these teams and organizations – these systems can not only manage mundane, repetitive tasks, but can potentially help technicians become even better at their jobs. But the human touch is always going to be the difference maker when it comes to customer satisfaction. 

Last week at Field Service Connect in Denver, event organizer Mark Scherzer told of a billboard he’d seen that said, “AI took my job…to the next level.” I believe we need to put teams minds at ease about the risk of AI to their livelihoods; there’s plenty of work to go around. AI is here to uplift those teams, to make service more streamlined and seamless, to eliminate wasted time and efforts and focus truck rolls and in-face time to value-added activities, and to make knowledge it takes to help the customer accessible at the second it is needed. AI is here to take field service to the next level; the importance of human touch shouldn’t be in question. 

Have thoughts on this issue? Please share your own experiences and thoughts on AI and how you see it innovating field service.  

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An Organizational Scientist’s Take on Team Building

November 13, 2023 | 3 Mins Read

An Organizational Scientist’s Take on Team Building

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

On a recent podcast, I spoke to Dr. Josh Elmore, Principal Consultant at Court Street Consulting and Adjunct Professor at both Columbia University and the City University of New York, about how industrial and social organizational psychology affect leadership and team building efforts.

We talked about the history and evolution of organizational and industrial psychology, and how the focus had shifted from managing environments to understanding motivations and incentives among employees and team members along different tiers of interaction. When it comes to getting teams to move in one direction toward an organizational goal, this type of analysis can be helpful in terms of finding ways to achieve buy-in and avoiding burn out.

I asked Josh about the concept of team facilitation, which in his work as a consultant often involves getting leaders to regularly check in with team members and really listen to what they are saying about new policies, workflows, communication, and decision-making processes and roles. This is especially critical for teams that may be working remotely or in a hybrid environment.

Leaders also need to give team members space to talk about some of these issues that are not part of their daily work processes. 

“Oftentimes that space needs to be intentionally developed,” Josh said. “[H]aving some support and having the ability to get folks together and start coordinating your effort and building that continuous practice of just checking in and making sure that … you're all heading towards the same destination [is important], and also creating space to where people can think creatively and bring up challenges as they come along so it doesn't build up.”

Josh also outlined some best practices for what he calls team hygiene. Leaders need to make sure that teams are coordinated, that there is sufficient communication, that members are delivering on their agreed upon goals, and that no one feels like the effort is not evenly distributed. 

The Importance of Continuous Listening

He also described a model for change management built on continuous listening. That means team members have the ability to provide feedback while the change is ongoing. This builds a conversation and gradually helps everyone get on the same page. 

“However you frame your change management initiative, you're always going to have pushback,” Josh said. “Where are you going to have resistance? Where are you going to have folks that are on board and championing the change? And as you build out this apparatus, this scaffolding for the organization, which is out of your leadership in change, you can test ideas.”

In many organizations, there is seemingly constant change and evolution as companies innovate and reorganize around those innovations. Josh recommended that leaders reframe the environment as fluid and dynamic, so that everyone can come to terms with the non-stop evolution. 

“It doesn't necessarily make sense to frame things as stable if they're not,” he said. But instead of having that instability make the team nervous or anxious, it can be presented as an opportunity for growth and innovation. “Things are happening here, and it can be exciting. It could be a motivator as opposed to something you should be afraid of.“

As a lot of other experts I have spoken to emphasized, Josh said that regular communication is critical to this process. The more you involve team members and employees in the process, the more you (as a leader) are going to learn to improve how you introduce and deploy new procedures and technologies. 

“I think being in that process of evolution is not easy. And if it's not easy for you, it's not easy for everyone else,“ he said. “And so if you're a leader, how do you make it easier for everyone else, or at least make them feel bought into the process?“

You can listen to the entire podcast here.

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The Importance of Field Service Career Development Strategies for Employee Retention

November 6, 2023 | 6 Mins Read

The Importance of Field Service Career Development Strategies for Employee Retention

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By Sarah Nicastro, Future of Field Service

Gone are the days that field technicians would gladly stay in their same role for ten, fifteen, even twenty or more years. Today, retention of talent is increasingly important – and the approach must be far more intentional and layered than what retention demanded in years past. When we talk about what is imperative for retention in today’s talent landscape, one of the topics that often arises is career development strategies. 

Career development strategies can help to keep employees engaged, give them opportunities for promotion or growth so that they see a future with the company beyond what they’re currently doing, and allow your business to map various talents, skills, and drive to not only different roles within field service and service at large, but throughout the company. In fact, many organizations have begun using field service as a way to bring in and nurture talent to feed into other areas of service as well as sales, product, operations and beyond. 

A focused career development program can attract younger workers to an organization because it makes them feel empowered to take the lead of their own career journey. I spoke to Jennifer Morehead, CEO of human resource outsourcing and consulting firm Flex HR, about ways companies can improve career development initiatives, even at smaller service organizations that may not have a lot of traditional paths for promotion.

How do you define career development?

I think that when you are looking at a job description and you hire someone for that job, you want to be continuously mindful of all the elements that are required within that job. That way, you can train and continue to train your employees for all the different elements mentioned in that job description. 

Look at the organizational chart of your company and think about who shows promise in terms of perhaps moving into management at some point. Think about what may be ahead for them and train them on those duties as well. That really gets to career development. Honestly, if an employee stays on a fairly similar track in your company, and maybe they stay in one position for a long time, there are a lot of changes in every industry in terms of technology and how we work with clients. There are things they need to be trained on even if they are not moving up, or if you need them to stay where they are.

What are some mistakes you see companies make when it comes to career development?

Mainly it is not offering development. The new generation of employees coming to our workforce is very interested in training. They want to know more, and they want to learn more.

That's a challenge for people running a business. It is already challenging to meet the needs of your clients. It's easy to get into a mode of thinking an employee is doing a good job, and you don't need to train them anymore.

I would challenge business owners to say no, your employees really want that training and will look for it one way or another, so it might as well be you providing that training to them.

What are some ways you have seen organizations successfully embed this idea into their company culture?

I think the process that allows for it to happen includes one-on-one meetings with every manager and their direct reports on a regular basis, ideally weekly. You have a meeting to understand where the employee is, their mindset, how happy they are in the company, what they do need in terms of development, where do they feel like they are not being trained enough. That cycles up to an executive manager meeting that should be once or twice a week.

Look at who is ready for a promotion. If we need this person out in the field because they are so good, how do we get them into a training role where they are training their coworkers? In a small company, anything under 200 people, there are a lot of opportunities where you can create these positions for people that are incredibly customized for them, where they can feel like they have more responsibility or have more autonomy in what they are doing. 

Let’s have this person train his colleagues in customer service, maybe give them a bonus to do that. There are lots of ways to be creative in terms of career development in a small business. It may not be as vertically aligned as in a larger company, but you can be creative in terms of ways you give leadership opportunities to your people.

How do you incorporate development into performance reviews?

I would nominate a few people in your business to put the performance reviews together. But a performance review is less important than the one-on-one meeting where you are giving feedback specifically and in real time.

We are not in an economy as employers who are desperate to find employees, where we can sit there and go a whole year and give them a two out of a five score and expect them not to quit. You have to be nuanced about it. The real feedback comes in the regular meeting where most of the time should be spent focusing on positive feedback. You talk about what they are doing well, and then point out what they can improve on.

You need to acknowledge and appreciate all the things they do right. Employees really want to be seen. They want to be acknowledged for the good work they are doing. 

How can companies identify candidates internally for promotion or advancement? 

I think a lot of people in a small organization who are going to be promoted potentially are not going to have had management experience. Just because they are a good employee doesn't mean they are automatically going to be a good manager. The person promoting them needs to understand that. Things you are looking for are the ability to be comfortable while being uncomfortable. You have to step outside of your comfort zone. You have to think on your feet and look for a problem-solving attitude. While you are teaching your staff to be problem solvers and investigators, you watch to see who is really showing that talent. Look for employees who are bringing new issues to you with solutions attached. That is someone who can succeed well in a manager role.

What about employees who are happy in their roles? How do you encourage development, when promotion really isn't part of their plan?

I think you have to look individually at what makes them tick. What motivates them? If it motivates them to work a straight-eight and go home and not think about anything outside of work., that's a great employee in 2023. They enjoy doing what they do, do a good job, but don't have aspirations for growth. You can still get in front of them with different ideas or maybe you create on your own a customer service training program. 

When we talk about walking into a customer's home in 2024, what's new? A lot of people are working from home. How do we get in there and provide service without disturbing them? Be mindful and thoughtful of what we are seeing out there and how we can coach our people with this, so they aren't left in a lurch when they are on a job site.

What is important for them? What gets on their nerves? We can be proactive and get in front of that before they quit in a year. They might want to see nice solid wage growth if they do a good job. Maybe they don't want to deal with issues outside of working hours. You can continue to sell to them, so they know there are growth opportunities available to them if they are interested down the road, while letting them know you are happy to have them where they're at right now from a work standpoint.

You can also find responsibilities outside of the main technical work they are doing where they can have some leadership – like organizing charitable work or company events.

You can also have company-wide employee engagement meetings where you ask what kinds of training they would like. What do they want to see? Just having that open communication with employees can uncover a lot of opportunities.

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Is It Time to Internalize Change Management?

October 30, 2023 | 4 Mins Read

Is It Time to Internalize Change Management?

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

One of the themes I have revisited here at Future of Field Service over and over again is that service organizations are faced with what feels like perpetual change – digital transformation is never a one-and-done project (or it shouldn't be). Changes – both technological and operational – are constant. They can also be hard on field service teams, or at least some members.

Change is a key focus for Sara Smith, Director of Global Service Change Enablement at Waters Corporation. Waters is a leading specialty measurement company (they are big in liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry), and service accounts for about a third of the company's revenues annually.

While many companies rely on outside consultants and vendors to help them with project-based change management, Waters made a point to create a long-term, internal position to lead their change management efforts. Sara's background is as both a field service technician and a manager, and she transitioned into the change management role after working with an outside consultant on a technology project.

To help the Waters team navigate big changes, Sara said she relies on a few different management approaches. One of them is ADKAR, an acronym created by Prosci that outlines the five states a person needs to achieve for a change to be successful - Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement.

The awareness component is a critical first step, because it helps team members understand why a change is occurring. “Have you ever been sent to a training class, and you have no idea why you're there?” Sara said. “I bet you didn't retain much from that training class. We need to understand why we are here and what's the goal.”

Desire requires that team members get to a place where they want the change to occur, while the knowledge phase involves training and educating the team. Ability refers to the capacity for team members to actually put their knowledge into practice.

The final piece, reinforcement, is one of the most important, and the element that often falls apart if a company doesn't have a long-term change culture in place. “We need to reinforce that positive behavior and make sure that it sticks long term,” Sara says. 

Sara said the company takes other approaches depending on which team members are involved. Senior leadership, for example, usually has the Why are we doing this? part down, but often need some help communicating their vision to the rest of the team. She also said that celebrating short-term wins was important for successful change management, as well as understanding how change can affect employees emotionally.

I also asked her about change fatigue, since new projects and initiatives seem to be coming at field service organizations at a much faster pace.

At Waters, Sara said two things that have helped are, first, acknowledging that change is exhausting and if everyone seems tired of it, that's okay. She also said that the company uses quarterly surveys to gauge how well employees are adapting. The employees appreciate the opportunity to be heard.

“That alone has created such a positive influence,” she says. “Just the fact that they have an avenue, they know somebody's listening and somebody cares. It speaks volumes to employees to have their voice heard and actually have someone follow up with them as well. It's huge.”

Experiences As a Female Field Technician

In addition to her change management strategies, I also talked to Sara about her experiences as a technician and manager in a largely male-dominated field. She’s faced some common challenges – having coworkers or customers question her proficiency, for example. But a bigger challenge is really communicating where women in the field might struggle and getting coworkers and leaders to understand the negative experiences women can face in the field.

“I think there's a lot of areas that some of our colleagues don't realize where women struggle,” Sara explains. “There are the kind of more obvious things, but there are these examples where you're just like, "Really? That happened to you like, oh my gosh." Throughout my career journey, I've had people ask me for a lock of hair. I have had people photograph me because they thought it was funny that I was pregnant while being in the field.”

I recently spoke to author Lauren Neal about ways to bring more women into the service industry (and retain them). Sara said that there are some more local ways to encourage and support women in the industry. Those include raising awareness with peers about some of those challenges and engaging with the community. “I'm a big proponent of getting in front of our younger generations and normalizing women in service, women in field service roles,” she said.

As you can tell, we had a pretty wide-ranging conversation; take a listen to the whole thing on our podcast.

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Expert Advice to Engage and Elevate Women in STEM

October 23, 2023 | 5 Mins Read

Expert Advice to Engage and Elevate Women in STEM

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

With service organizations struggling across industries and geographies with staffing and recruitment, creating a more diverse workforce is a critical step just to make sure there are enough technicians, trainers and managers on the team to keep up with demand. Moreover, companies who understand diversity as the driver it is for greater creativity, innovation, and customer appeal recognize that the reasons to put it (and keep it) in focus goes far beyond meeting today’s staffing needs. 

Yet as it relates particularly to the area of gender diversity, field service seems to struggle. Organizations remain largely managed and staffed by men, with what seems to be an agreement that recruiting and retaining women in service jobs is key but challenging. Leading organizations are getting creative in not only reflecting on their role definitions, job descriptions, and recruiting practices but also in some cases re-imagining what the role could look like to increase appeal. And they are, of course, always open to advice and insights to help their efforts. 

Lauren Neal

To that end, we’ve asked some advice from UK-based engineer, Lauren Neal. Lauren has recently published a book called Valued at Work: Shining a Light on Bias to Engage, Enable and Retain Women in STEM and is also the founder at Chief Programme Creator of Valued at Work. Lauren has worked in the energy sector since 2005 offshore, onshore and onsite, most recently at bp.

After her years of experience, she feels strongly that gender equity is far from where it should be. Her book shares real stories from women working in STEM and presents a look at some of the challenges women face as well as advice for strategies for managers to help improve things. 

Here Lauren shares some insight about retaining women in STEM and technical professions as well as field service.

For background, can you explain what led you to engineering, and how your experience working in that field shaped the writing of this book?

I always enjoyed math and computing at school and finding solutions to problems. I studied Electronic and Electrical Engineering, specialising in computer engineering, at university, then as I lived in Aberdeen, I ended up working in the energy industry. Now I’ve worked in energy for over 18 years and while I have had my share of experiences with bias and behaviours, it wasn’t until I started opening up to others that I noticed trends, particularly when people from under-recognised groups hit mid-career. I decided I wanted to use my voice to raise the profile of this issue as so many aren’t aware it is still happening today.

What are some of the elements in traditionally male-dominated STEM and technical fields that make recruiting and retaining women challenging? Are those things changing as we shift from one generation of managers to another?

I think recruitment can be challenging due a lack of women role-models at different levels – it’s difficult to see a career path for ‘someone like you’ when there isn’t anyone like you there. Retention is another issue entirely. Women face disrespectful comments on their competency, bias on their behaviours (even if they do the same as a man would), and often gate-keeping from other women! You can have the most confident and competent women joining organizations, but if they aren’t included in their teams, they will leave. I don’t think these things are changing very quickly, as too many aren’t aware they are happening in the first place.

In field service, there is a staffing struggle in general -- there are not a lot of young men entering the field for a variety of reasons either, so organizations are trying to cast a wider net. What are some ways organizations can adjust their recruitment/retention strategies to make the field more attractive to women?

Illustrating clear career paths and progression would help. If it were me, I would want to know where my career could take me (i.e., is there travel?), what typical roles could I get now and next, what are my options for moving forward – can I change disciplines, can I lead or manage others, etc.? I would like to hear from others about their biggest challenges and successes in their roles. Also, listing a likely salary along the career path would also help.

The majority of managers/leaders at these types of companies, today, are men. What are some of the challenges in shifting the mindset and processes at organizations to take a new approach to recruitment/retention, or even recognize there is a problem in the first place?

I think most people have experienced being excluded – say if you’re trying to order a drink at the bar and the bartender continues to ignore you. It’s not a great feeling. I have met some brilliant men in my career who were completely oblivious to the experiences of women, sometimes in their own team. Women don’t often speak up about it as they wonder if it's ‘just them’ and definitely don’t want a label saying they are ‘difficult’ or ‘noisy’. Without being told about an issue, how would you know it’s happening?

What are some key strategies for retaining women in these fields once they have been hired?

For any change, it starts with acknowledging the real issues – these are the behaviours they experience (from both men and women), whether women are utilized for only admin or their specialist technical skills, and hindrances in their career development to leadership roles. And the best place to start? Have real conversations with these women to find out what they are experiencing, and acknowledge that it will be different from your experience.

Diversity efforts can fall prey to not being well designed or executed, or face pushback.  How best can a company frame these efforts to get buy-in and gain traction?

I like to start with why DEI efforts are required – for example, sharing the studies that show diverse teams perform better and are more profitable for the business. Showing the cost of recruitment to replace people who have left the company and how poor behaviours can contribute to this. I also like to get everyone involved. Lots of companies have safety observation quotas to meet (e.g., one observation per month) but I would love to see inclusion observations being recorded. This is something very simple to get everyone involved and start testing how well they understand inclusion.

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What Leadership Lessons Can We Learn from Non-Profits?

October 16, 2023 | 4 Mins Read

What Leadership Lessons Can We Learn from Non-Profits?

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By Sarah Nicastro, Editor, Future of Field Service

I have spoken to a lot of experts over the past few years about change management, digital transformation, and important leadership qualities when it comes to team building and innovation in service. I recently saw an interesting article in my inbox about lessons that leaders can take from the non-profit sector and reached out to author Dr. Te Wu to learn more.

Te is an associate professor at Montclair State University and the CEO and CPO of PMO Advisory, a project management training and consulting firm. A few years ago, he did some research on business execution capabilities, and noticed that certain non-profit organizations were outperforming other non-profits and most other for-profit businesses when it came to executing projects.

Why? According to Te, those high-performing non-profits combined business acumen with a strong vision and understanding of their mission. I asked him to explain some of those findings, and what lessons other types of organizations can take from that data.

What are some of the key differences you have observed between for-profit organizations and these high-performing non-profits when it comes to project management and leadership?

Well, first, non-profits have a bit of self-selection bias when it comes to mission. Non-profits in general pay less than for-profit organizations, so people are there either for the more relaxed atmosphere or they believe in the mission and are willing to make a percentage sacrifice in their possible income. Second, non-profit missions and vision are fairly easy to communicate. Even people who do not work there will know what the mission is, just by the name of the organization.

For-profit organizations have more complicated missions or may have less exciting missions. My first job out of college was at Nabisco. I love snacks, but they are not as exciting as saving lives. At the end of the day, a for-profit mission is either making money or something that is not that exciting. I think for-profits are always going to suffer from that, but you can still put together a high-performance and empowered team. That does require having them head in the same direction. It is worthwhile to get as excited as possible about that mission.

What are some lessons companies can take from how non-profits approach team building and project management?

Non-profits have a more consensus driven culture and are more participatory. Even if they are very hierarchical, they at least attempt to look like they are listening to people. The benefit of that is in having the ability to listen to employees early on. You get to know the problems and conflicts, and the different perspectives. You spend more time upfront, but you can get buy-in from the team or at least get them to understand why you made a decision that may be contrary to their recommendations.

For-profits tend to race against time and have stricter constraints around the schedule or budget. Because of that, they don't have a tendency to listen to anybody else as they execute. You find out about problems and conflicts as you go along. The team shows up to work, but they may not be as excited. That can make things take longer. These conflicts show up later and can be like death by a thousand cuts. People are not as excited, it takes longer, and you probably don't get the project done as well as a well-run non-profit. 

The biggest mistake people make is to equate initial speed with quality of execution. For most projects, you are probably better off getting those feelings and disagreements out early on.

As you mentioned, non-profits tend to have more energy around their vision because they are often focused on very positive missions. How can you translate some of that energy into a for-profit business where the mission may not be as superficially compelling?

There are plenty of things you can do. Speaking from personal experience, I usually have a bunch of team leads that work with me on a project. I try to understand why they are on my team. What excites them? Different people have different reasons to be on projects. Some are looking to learn new skills. Others may look at this as a checkmark on a resume. Other people may just like working on projects.

I try to understand what makes them tick. Then I try to make sure that I shape how I work with them and how decisions are made to help meet some of their goals. We have open conversations about expectations of performance, and what you are looking for.

I remind people that it is okay to disagree with each other and have conflict. If you don't have conflict, then either the project is too simple and you are going into overkill, or the team members are not paying attention. Conflicts can bring out the best in the team. What you don’t want is to have conflicts spiral out of control. 

It is difficult to replicate the energy you find at a non-profit. My first major experience at a non-profit was almost magical. I could see people huddled together working late at night, still going through design elements, and trying to solve problems. I have never seen that level of enthusiasm at a for-profit, but you can still build very good teams and successful projects. On a scale of one to ten, a good non-profit can get all the way to a ten; a for-profit can still build a good team and get to an eight on that scale of execution. 

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