Tag: podcast

August 2, 2023 | 30 Mins Read

Is the Soft Skills Gap Growing?

August 2, 2023 | 30 Mins Read

Is the Soft Skills Gap Growing?

Sarah welcomes back Lauren Winans, CEO & Principal Consultant of Next Level Benefits, to discuss the factors that are contributing to service organizations’ mounting concern over finding and nurturing soft skills and sheds light on what steps can be taken to ensure the soft skills gap doesn’t widen.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. We talk a lot on this podcast and across industry resources in service about the importance of soft skills, and the increasing challenge of finding new employees with soft skills, upskilling and reskilling existing employees to grow their soft skills. Today we're going to be talking about, is the soft skills gap growing? I'm excited to welcome back to the podcast Lauren Winans, who is the CEO and principal consultant at Next Level Benefits. Lauren, welcome back to the podcast.

Lauren Winans: Thanks for having me. I'm very excited, a great topic too. I'm looking forward to chatting about this.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, me too. For anyone that doesn't recognize Lauren, she was on the podcast for the first time, episode 132. I will link that in the show notes for everyone. That episode, we were talking about building a compelling employee value proposition. Lauren is I would say, in the nature of people I interview on this podcast, close enough to call a neighbor. She's in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is where my husband is from. So just two hours or so down Interstate 79. Lauren, before we get into our topic for today, just tell everyone a little bit about yourself, your background and Next Level Benefits.

Lauren Winans: Sure. I kind of grew up in the HR industry. I was in HR leadership roles for about 20 years. Worked at a variety of different companies like General Nutrition Center, American Eagle Outfitters, Consult Energy. When I left the corporate world to start my consulting business about four years ago, I really had the intentions of focusing on employee benefits projects. But we quickly have scaled, and now are focused on projects related to all areas of HR. Next Level Benefits is really a resource to you for any sort of HR expertise.

We staff a variety of different HR experts that have at least 20 years of corporate HR experience. We can really be tactical as well as strategic advisory, or really just jump in and help you accelerate projects. That's what we've been doing lately. I'm really happy to say that I'm coming up on a four year anniversary here, and it's been wonderful. I always love having a chance to talk with you, Sarah. I'm super excited about our topic today, because it's a good one.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, I'm excited as well, and happy you're back. To your point, even though you started with the focus of employee benefits in mind, you really have not only practiced in the corporate world, but in your consulting firm work with companies across really all sorts of HR and talent issues.

Lauren Winans: Yes.

Sarah Nicastro: So there's a lot of different things we could talk about. When Lauren and I chat, we end up, we could brainstorm 10 podcast topics. The reason I wanted to focus on soft skills today is because, in the conversations I have at the different Future of Field Service events that we've had across the globe, it's kind of a growing concern among service leaders. On one hand, the need for soft skills seems to be increasing still, right? It's I think on an incline starting a number of years ago, but continuing still to increase.

Being able to find those skills among employees, whether that's existing employees, and looking for ways to nurture that in people, train people, upskill people, or whether that's looking for soft skills in employees that are coming into the workforce. It just seems to be that the demand is growing, the ability to find or create those skills is increasingly challenging. So I think it's a good area to focus on, because it's a pain point that we're hearing about a lot. First, what I want to talk about is, in the HR or talent world, how do you define soft skills?

Lauren Winans: It's a good question. I think everyone kind of comes at it from a different place. I kind of look at soft skills as almost like the intangible pieces of someone's skillset. How good are they at communicating? Do they have any sort of emotional intelligence that they can deploy in a certain situation? How good are they at problem solving? Are they adaptable? Do they work well with their team? Can they resolve conflict? These are all kind of examples of soft skills. It's really, it's not just about tactically can they do the job. Technically, do they have the skill, the experience, the degree, the certification.

It's really around, can they provide more of a well-rounded experience to customers and other employees, coworkers that they're working with? How good are they at that? That is what I look at as soft skills. It's those intangible talents that not everyone necessarily has, because they're harder to teach. Some people just innately and naturally can incorporate them into how they work, and others really need a little bit more of a prescribed roadmap of how to incorporate that into their daily professions.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm. I think that intangible nature is part of what makes it so challenging. When you're thinking about, do they have this certification, do they have this much experience? Those are things that are very easy to assess. Whereas soft skills, the fact that it is less black and white makes it a lot tougher. In our industry specifically, part of what's kind of creating this growing need or gap, if you will, is historically a lot of the jobs... And I'm generalizing for the sake of conversation. There's obviously industry-to-industry differences, but in general, a lot of the jobs historically were very technical in nature. The work that was being done was very much, a customer calls with a need. The technician is deployed to go and do that technical work, and resolve the issue.

Today with the digital nature of a lot of the assets and equipment that people are working on, in many industries, the technical aptitude is actually, the need is decreasing. It still has to be there in the sense that they are able to do what needs to be done, but it's a lot less programming or really these super deep skills. However, service is also evolving to be more predictive, proactive. A lot of times subscription-based, where the importance of relationship, i.e., soft skills, comes into play and is increasing. So you have the challenge of these existing workers that were really good or are really good at that technical piece, but not necessarily good at, or maybe even interested in being good at the soft skills piece.

Then the other part of that we're hearing a lot of is that companies who are recruiting in younger workers, they're lacking some of these soft skills. They don't want to have real conversations. They would rather text or whatever. So it's kind of a challenge that is being created from many different angles. All right, so I think one thing is companies need to think about, while these traits are less tangible than some of the qualifications or certifications that they're looking for related to the industry, they probably need to work on putting language to it to some degree, or defining what it is that is important for their roles, I would think. Right?

Lauren Winans: For sure. I think what's challenging about today's job postings it is very, "Hey, this is what we're looking for." It's a very measurable attribute or characteristic, or piece of experience or certification that they're looking for. Then what is expected is, once you bring that person into the role, then the expectation is, "Oh, okay. Well here's all the things you said you can do. Yep, that's part of the job. Now we want you to also interact with the customer in this way." Or, "Now we want you to manage this team of people." What's happening is-

Sarah Nicastro: It's almost like an afterthought.

Lauren Winans: Yeah. The articulation around the expectations from a soft skills perspective is really not incorporated in the job posting. Therefore, then there are leaders and/or other folks within an organization that then get disappointed with someone's performance because they don't necessarily have something that was not articulated during the recruiting process to begin with. I wholeheartedly believe that job postings are really that first step of ensuring that you're getting the talent that you need, you want, you deserve. If you don't fully articulate what it is that the job entails, and what you need to be successful in it, then you're naturally going to end up with someone in that role that's not going to fit the bill.

I'm very much a proponent of being very clear and upfront about incorporating soft skills as a part of the job posting. I've even seen some that show hard skills, soft skills, experience, and then also what does it take to be successful in this position. I think most people out there are realistic about their shortcomings, and what they're willing to do and what they're not willing to do. I think if you lay it out there, you really are going to weed out the folks who probably are not the right fit. You might find some folks that are kind of on the fence, but that's really what the recruiting process is for, is to fully vet them out and then determine who rises to the top.

That being the starting point I think would make things so much easier as you bring on new talent into the organization. That doesn't explain away some of the upskilling that might need to happen with some existing talent, which I'm sure we're going to talk about today. But I think when you think about new talent coming into an organization, you've got to be clear about what your needs are. That means, as an organization, you have to know what you need out of this frontline technician, or even your leaders. You need to know what you need out of them in order to articulate it, in order to find it.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm. I should have thought to look this up before we started chatting, because I'm not going to remember who to attribute it to. A while back, I think I actually wrote an article on a post I saw on LinkedIn. It was a video, and the person... It was an author, I think, I just don't remember who it was. It might have been Adam Grant, was saying, "We need to stop calling them soft skills and start calling them human skills." I think it's interesting, because the point you're making is that we have this need for these skills. We have this challenge of the need increasing, and the ability to find them becoming more complex.

Yet we're probably not prioritizing articulating that in the job postings. So we're continuing to allow it to be an afterthought, because it wasn't a need before. It's similar to when we talk to companies who are putting in place a new technology. The biggest challenge they always have is change management, always. I've been doing this for 15 years. That has always been the answer. It is still the answer, yet we're not getting ahead of it. Do you know what I mean? It's the people part that is always complex, so we need to stop letting it be an afterthought, and start putting more focus on it from the beginning.

The other thing I wanted to ask about is in the recruiting process. As companies are bringing new talent in, we talked about making sure that we are articulating appropriately the expectations in a job posting. I could ask you 20 more questions on that, but I'm going to not let myself do that, for the sake of getting through some of the points that we wanted to get through. In the recruiting interviewing process, what are some of the questions, tools, tactics that companies can use to determine if a candidate either has the soft skills they're looking for, or would be successfully able to be trained and equipped with those skills?

Lauren Winans: There's a variety of different tools out there, and I'll just kind of lump them all together by calling them assessment tools. There's ways that you can assess someone's just natural personality, as well as what they deem to be important, and an important part of their job, by asking them a variety of questions in a survey format. If you do that during the hiring process before you've even extended an offer, it does make it easy to kind of identify. This person is really technically sound, and they will be able to do this job with their eyes closed. However, based upon our assessment, they might not be a great leader. So if we bring them in, we need to know that upfront. And we need to know that the career development path for this individual is going to include leadership training, if they do indeed want to move forward in the organization.

These assessment tools, I mean there's a variety of different ones. There's StrengthsFinder, there's DiSC, O A D. There's so many different ones that you can deploy. Really, they all ultimately end up doing the exact same thing. They have a different delivery method, and of course, there's different ways that you can interpret the results. As an organization, I would recommend if you're not using one of those assessment tools, it's absolutely worth it. Do you need to use it for every single open role? You don't have to. You could, and it absolutely is helpful in determining right fit, and what blind spots that you might run into with that employee, should they be part of your organization. But you could even just focus it on a particular role or position, that you want to ensure you have a balance between that technical and those human skills that are really necessary to complete the job.

Those types of assessments I find are probably the best tools out there, but there's also different things you can do in the recruiting process. You could do some sort of role play or simulation, where you can determine how would this person act in this particular situation. You can even go through different types of modeling and training that would help to kind of show... There's something called storytelling modeling, that can really help inform exactly the thought process that a person goes through during a certain situation. If this person is a tech who is installing a certain piece of equipment in someone's residential home, you present these different problems that might occur. And really assess problem solving, communication with the customer, all these different things that you can kind of incorporate into that model to see how they do.

I think that there's just, we want the hiring process to go so quickly, because we're all competing for talent. We don't necessarily take the time sometimes to find out if that person is the right fit for us. So we want to put that offer out there before it's too late, before someone else has snatched them up, before they've accepted another offer. While I can understand the competitive nature of that, I do think that is a really big risk to organizations, who then end up on the flip side of this. Which is, now I have these people as employees, but they're not necessarily performing the way I want them to. Now what do I do?

Now how do I get this person who's technically sound, but has no interest in having a dialogue with anyone, whether it be a coworker, a leader or customer? It's interesting, because the tools are helpful to a point, but you as an organization need to develop a process and an understanding around them, that then allows you to take what you've learned from the tool, and then decide what you're going to do about it, and who you're looking for. Because you're never going to find the perfect candidate, but you can always find someone who's almost there. And who just needs that little extra bit of training or coaching to get them to the place that is helpful for the team at large.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. On that point, the next question I wanted to ask you is, are there I guess best practices, or suggested programs, methods that are known to be effective in training and developing soft skills?

Lauren Winans: To be honest with you, no. I think that's part of the conundrum that we're in. There's a variety of assessment tools out there, like I mentioned. I even mentioned a few names. I feel really comfortable that, given the right circumstances, you really can use those assessment tools in a way that does help you kind of read between the lines to leverage it for soft skills. And identifying what soft skills may be there, may be present, may not be present. But I have yet to come across a tool dedicated specifically to soft skill assessment, and have it be something that is really an effective means of making decision making for recruitment, and even for identifying areas of training that's necessary for an existing employee.

Because of that, it doesn't mean they're not out there, it just means I haven't come across them. I haven't had the experience of using them, of leveraging them, or having a client that has done so. That's part of the problem. What I always recommend, because of where we're at in this whole conversation, is leverage the tools that you have and make sure that you have some talented individuals. Whether that's in your HR team, or whether it's someone in your recruiting process, maybe it's someone, a consultant contractor, maybe it's a vendor. That you can put in place in that process that can help take the tools you're using and be able to read between the lines to create something that is important and integral to identifying soft skills, presence or not.

That is probably the bandaid that we are all going to have to operate within until there is a really great model out there, a structure or tool, what have you that is doing this better than everything else that's out there. Also, you can think about soft skills as being, it's hard to measure. It's more of an art than it is a science. We all know, I mean at least in my opinion, humans make the best art. I do think that it's going to be a while before there is a soft skill generator out there, that you could just type in your profile and figure out which soft skills you're great at. It does take a little bit of teasing and pulling, and assessing and analyzing to really come to the right conclusion. Particularly when you're deciding whether or not to hire someone, or whether or not to put them through training.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Now what about the training itself? Are there recommendations on soft skills trainings that work, in terms of whether it's a new hire or continual improvement or upskilling existing workers?

Lauren Winans: Yeah. I'm always a proponent of identifying your internal talent. Sometimes people are just in the wrong job. There's opportunities to provide them with a development course, some career coaching, emotional intelligence training, or some sort of management around mindfulness, stress management. Sometimes all it takes is a little encouragement, a little coaching. A little bit more of an exchange with them to identify what really is the roadblock to their success, or to them being able to rise above their peers. I believe that through partnership with human resources teams that you have at your disposal, there can be a great internal push for identifying talent. Maybe the first line of this is reaching out to all leaders within an organization to identify that technical talent.

Who's best technically? Now, can we take this a step further, and identify who might need a little bit of coaching and/or training to get to the next level? What does that look like? Is it, these four individuals need some conflict resolution training, and some training on how to lead a small team. This individual needs more open communication skills, and so let's send them to training related to communication. I know that takes a lot of time and effort. It really, really does. But if you're dedicated to really creating a culture that is inclusive and supportive and focused on career development, you can make that work. It does. It can be done.

That's usually my default is, can you promote from within? Can you meet with these employees that you've identified as high potentials or strong stars, and identify maybe some areas of opportunity, that you can then really isolate what the training would be that would be helpful and impactful to them? That's what I believe is probably, well I shouldn't even say probably, because I know it is the best way to elevate the talent you already have in the organization. It's also the less costly way to do it. Because with turnover, and the more people you're having to bring in, and then find out they're not the right fit, and have to separate them and rehire more. It ends up being actually more costly and more challenging than to just upskill your people.

When it comes to training, though, some things that I really rely on when we're working with clients is some of the things I mentioned around role playing. Emotional intelligence training is something that's really starting to take off in the training space. It's just a trend that is something that people are looking more for, not only to be great leaders, but also to know how to interact with either clients or customers, regardless of what industry you're in. That is something that, if you're not already offering something like that, that can be something that's very beneficial. Because that really does incorporate how to assess a situation, identify your own emotions, identify someone else's emotions, and quite frankly, it leads to conflict resolution.

It also leads to better understanding your role in a process, which allows you to know what authority you have and autonomy you have, and what you can bring to the table. There's so many different things you can explore, but I am definitely of the mindset of trying to customize it to the different employees that you've identified as talented individuals. Then I know I'm probably going off a little bit on this, because this is one of my favorite topics. I also feel that, if you have a larger workforce that is all doing the same thing, creating some sort of mentorship program is also a great way to start to bring some folks along through the process, without having to invest a ton of training dollars in them immediately.

I also think developing some sort of, I'm going to call it like an internship program, but that's not really what I mean. I mean more of like a development type program. You can also create stuff like that, that allows employees to maybe kind of round-robin and understand, here's what my job really is, and this is how it interacts with this person. Okay, now I'm going to go over for a couple of weeks, and act like I'm doing that job. How does that interact with me? What would be better for me to be doing with that person to get a better efficiency in working on this project, or this client or this account or what have you? There's so many different ways you can take it. It really just takes some time and effort to develop a game plan, and figure out how you're going to execute it, and what's the best way to position your employees for success.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. No, I like the point you made about individualizing coaching or training of high potential employees, that you want to upskill based on their specific strengths and areas of opportunity. I know that companies in the service space, a lot of them are starting to offer soft skills training proactively and regularly. But I'm thinking maybe it would be interesting to sort of poll them and see what are they using? Are they doing it themselves, and if so, what sort of methods or whatever? The round-robin point you made is interesting too. At our event in Paris this year, Culligan was one of the speakers. The conversation was around the partnership between business and IT. But we ended up talking about how, in service, it's so important for everyone to understand the perspective of the customer.

Which obviously that understanding is part of soft skills, having empathy, et cetera. I think they set a customer centricity month, where employees from all different functions and areas of the business spend time with, shadow, work alongside customer-facing roles. It might even be interesting, I love that idea. It's a way to, I think, give those frontline employees some recognition of their importance, but also give people perspective of what comes up, and the scope of their jobs, et cetera. You could even do that within the service function, though, as a way to expose people to different things and that sort of thing.

Yeah, I mean there's certainly no easy answer or one-size-fits-all approach. But I do think that the takeaways so far, thinking about not allowing the need for this to be an afterthought when you're posting jobs, when you're in the interview process. Using some assessments, but then not only training at whatever degree you incorporate training for all employees, but the career pathing essentially. So finding ways to really maximize the value of the employees who are inclined to do more and advance and grow. Yeah, it's interesting.

Lauren Winans: It is. I wish there was an easier answer to all of this. I'd be so curious to hear what those who might be using some soft skill training are doing. I would venture to guess most of them are probably doing some sort of hybrid version. Maybe leveraging some assessment tools they're already using, and maybe some training partners that they already have, and building a bridge would be my hunch. I do know that some of the assessment tool providers are starting to dig deeper into the soft skill space to incorporate more questions related to that into their surveys.

Then also to train those who are facilitating these surveys to dig deeper and to analyze that information in a more thorough way. It's on the doorstep. It's so close, but unfortunately this is all about critical thinking in terms of piecing all of these parts together to develop something in the immediate that's going to be useful for your company.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. It's interesting. One of the reasons I mentioned the decline in the need for this really advanced technical capability, and the increase in the need of soft skills, a lot of that has to do with technology. And the fact that as different equipment and areas that service organizations are working in have become more sophisticated, the need for those deep technical skill sets in some industries has reduced. I also think that evolution is why the need for soft skills is so, so strong, because we have to somehow balance out the use of technology and AI with humans.

I remember a few years ago being at a conference with a woman from IBM who shared a lesson learned, in terms of they went too far with automating in customer service, and really learned the hard way that they needed to pull back. It worked, but customers weren't happy with it. I don't know. What are your thoughts on how technology and automation are maybe growing or exacerbating the soft skills gap?

Lauren Winans: I mean, it's definitely playing here. It's definitely a factor. It's definitely something that, if we don't kind of get a handle on, it's going to maybe get out of control a little bit. I feel pretty passionately that particularly when it comes to the service industry, it's so important to treat people with the respect that you feel that you should receive. There's certain companies that I've had wonderful experiences with, and I will continue to frequent them because I feel good when I'm interacting with someone who works there. I think that is naturally going to be the competitive edge that's going to start happening here. Because the competitive edge is not going to be who has the best AI. It's going to be all the same.

It's going to all be relatively the same tools we're going to be able to solve for some of those issues that we're really struggling with now that we're spending a lot of time on. So you're going to naturally have to figure out, how do I compete, and how do we set ourselves apart? I think what has been a learned trait for decades, but particularly probably became more apparent especially over the last handful of years, has really been a customer is not going to have the same level of loyalty that they may have had in the past, because they just have too many options. They're looking for something that fits with their lifestyle, with their schedule, with their price point. What can you do to set yourself apart? I really do believe soft skills is going to be important, like really, really important.

If you're not able to find ways to get ahead of what technology... I mean technology might leap up way too quick, and we might be having to play catch-up regardless, but I think now is the time to think about what type of soft skill training do we have? What type of gaps do we have? Can we do something that's even a little baby step towards getting us towards a bigger goal of training everyone within this particular position with this type of emotional intelligence training? I just feel really, part of me is scared. Part of me is nervous, with the evolution of technology and AI, that even some of the most loved brands and companies that I frequent are going to fall behind in treating customers with the utmost care, because it's going to be too hard to juggle all of it.

But I feel really compelled to believe that there are leaders out there, there are companies out there that are intending on getting ahead of all of this. And intending on thinking about even younger generations as they start to enter the workforce, and the type of training and necessary development that's going to be required. Because we're going to be bringing in generations into the workforce that have known nothing but the technology that we have today, and the AI that we're going to have tomorrow. It's natural that we're going to have to evolve. We've done it before. We'll do it again. It's not like it's going to be a hurdle that's going to be insurmountable, but I do think that now's the time to start thinking about it, and putting some game plans in place.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. No, that's a good point. I mean, we've gone through an era where technology was the competitive advantage. But as it reaches functional parity and things sort of equalize, the human piece will likely be the competitive advantage again. So not losing sight of that. No, it's a good point. A few months ago, maybe not even that long, I wrote an article about an experience that I had traveling with United. I waited a few weeks before I wrote the article, because when the situation happened, it would've come off a totally different way. I try to be fair. I try to be fair. I've been flying United for a few years. I'm the highest level of United status, so we know I fly a lot. I started by talking about the fact that the work that they've put into the intelligence in their app is tremendous.

I remember what it was a few years ago, what it's like today. Genuinely in most scenarios, waiting in line at an airport to speak to a United agent at this point is a waste of your time, like 90 plus percent. If you have the app and you use it, they've probably already texted you the solution to the problem you're waiting to speak to someone about. It's really, really good, really good. Baggage, all of it, it's great. But in this situation, things escalated to a point where I really did need actual human customer service, and it was horrendous. The fact that, if the AI and the app is that good, and I've gotten to the point where I actually need someone, I've gone through quite a bit. I mean just the lack of empathy. I mean, it was just atrocious. It's a really, I think, storybook example of exactly what we're talking about.

They've put so much effort into this piece, but then maybe at the detriment of paying attention to, well when someone does get through to an agent, how are we treating that person? Yeah. I think it's definitely something to be cautious of, because the reality is you have to be good at all of it. You can't pick or choose. I mean you really have to do it all, and that's just the way it is. When I reached out to you to do this podcast, I shared with you a study that I thought was interesting. It was about how more and more companies are using AI in their hiring process. That made me think, "Well, interesting." If we're talking about soft skills, i.e., human skills, how would that work? I was just curious. I'm interested, are you seeing a uptick in the use of AI in recruiting and hiring? What risk is there in that, I guess related to soft skills specifically?

Lauren Winans: I'm seeing a lot of intrigue as it relates to using AI in the recruiting process. Not necessarily anyone fully deploying it, or leveraging just AI to source candidates or get interviews taken care of. None of that. It's not to say it's not happening. I'm certain it is happening. My position on that is really around, I can see AI being helpful to take out the mundane tasks that are part of the recruiting process. Which would then free up the recruiter and/or hiring manager and/or interview team to really focus their time and effort on vetting the employee that's coming in. That is what I envision to be the dream scenario, but I know that's not necessarily going to pan out for every organization.

They're going to use AI to maybe cut some corners, to get offers out faster, and potentially to even reduce their recruiting staff in order to do it. I don't think that there's a lot of companies that have jumped in both feet at this point. But you have to also think about some of the applicant tracking systems that we're using today are even kind of weeding out some really fantastic candidates, just simply through keyword search. A version of it's already existing within our recruiting processes today that could be really overlooking some talented individuals that you would want to be in that process. I'm hesitant with using AI in the recruiting process, but I do feel that if used and deployed in the right way, it will actually provide you, you meaning whoever's a part of the process, more time to fully leverage.

"Okay, let's get this person taking this tool. Here's what their results were. I have four follow-up questions now. I want to go back and schedule some more time with them. Oh, look. They might need this additional training. Let's incorporate that into their first 60 days within the organization. Let's update that in the onboarding process for this particular person." There's so many ways, when you free up that time, that you could be using it in a better way. I just hope that the right tasks in the recruiting process are tackled by AI, and not necessarily the human components that should still exist.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Which I think very much parallels what we would say about service as well. I mean, it's an incredibly valuable tool that companies are using. There's many, many areas that they could grow in their use of, all with the goal of automating the mundane. Not even the mundane, but the manual non-value add tasks that really don't warrant a human's attention or time. All in an effort to give those frontline employees more time to spend with customers to do the things that people care about. I guess it's the same sort of idea of balancing where can it help, while still allowing us to achieve our outcome? Where does it crossover into diminishing the result of what we're trying to do?

Lauren Winans: As for anything, especially technology, I would venture to guess that we will go too far on the tech side, and learn the hard way and pull back. It's probably just something we should expect. But if we're in a position to be able to affect change in that way, I hope people take the opportunity to do that.

Sarah Nicastro: It's interesting that you say that, because this is why... Again, this would be a separate conversation. This is why leadership is so important, and soft skills and empathy, because it all comes back to the eye of the person that is driving the strategy. If it's, can we cut our recruiting staff by 50%, you're going to get a different outcome than, could we use a tool to vet our job descriptions, and make sure that we're casting the widest net or we're doing X, Y, or Z? It makes me think. IFS has a planning and scheduling optimization tool that is AI based, and it's really cool to see how it works. It takes into account all of these different factors, and just runs all the time to get people to the best possible place given all of those criteria.

But at our event in the UK in May, there was a gentleman there from Mitie Fire & Security, who they had just recently put the tool in place. I had never heard this come up, but he said, "Oh, one of the biggest benefits we've seen from PSO is we've used it to allow our technicians to set their own start and end time every day. Some want to drop their kids off at school, and they might want to start at 9:00 or 9:30, but they want to be done at this time. Others want to come in earlier, be done..." He was like, "The impact it's had on their mental health."

I just thought, what a positive use of that technology, to put power back in the hands of the employees. To use it in a way that still allows the company to achieve its outcome of efficiency and productivity, but gives them the ability to say, "Yeah, I want to start my day at 9:00 and end at 5:00." Or, "I want to start at 7:00, end at 3:00," whatever. I just thought that was such a good example of technology used well, because the person in charge has that human lens to it. It's not just about, how can we get two extra trips out of every person per day? Also, how can we use this in a way that helps our employees and makes their lives better? I just thought that was such a good example.

Lauren Winans: Mm-hmm. That's the perspective too of a leader or a strategist who is focused not necessarily on driving the top line, but is focused on minimizing expenses. Because the turnover that you will have if you don't think about employees as human beings is going to cost you so much more than if you just look at each tool, each piece of technology, each process, each policy, and think with the lens of, "Will this help or hurt the employee?" Because the employees are what's going to drive your business. They're what's going to be there to provide whatever support is necessary to your clients or your customers.

Until further notice, there's no robots walking around. So it would be in your best interest to leverage technology in a way that is going to get you the most out of your employees, while providing them with something that makes them want to stay, that makes them want to be there every day working for you. It's really something when someone's doing it right, it's really an aha moment. Hopefully, more people will take advantage of using the tool just like that.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. All right. I know we are just about out of time. Anything else, any final thoughts for companies that are concerned about the soft skills gap growing?

Lauren Winans: My encouragement here would really just be, start the conversation, if you already haven't. Make sure that this isn't something that catches you by surprise. It needs to be something that's talked about, so that it becomes an organizational goal, so that there's more cross-functional partners that are working together to realize, "Hey, we've got to make some changes. We need to be prepared to deepen our skillset when it comes to soft skills, in addition to maintaining the expertise on the technical side."

If you take anything away, I would say, start the conversation if it's not already been started, and deepen it if it's already been started. There's so much to do in this space, and it's going to take time, effort, and energy from a variety of different sources. Not just an HR team, but HR should be able to play a very valid and competitive role in helping you determine the best way to tackle this.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm. Good advice. All right. Well, Lauren, thank you so much for coming back. I appreciate it. It's always a pleasure to talk with you.

Lauren Winans: Thank you. I appreciate you inviting me. Always willing to talk about something people related. I love it.

Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely. We'll do it again sometime.

Lauren Winans: Awesome. Thank you.

Sarah Nicastro: You can find more by visiting us at futureoffieldserviceref.ifs.com. While you're there, be sure to sign up for the Future of Field Service Insiders, so that you can stay up-to-date on all of the latest articles and podcasts. The Future of Field Service Podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

Stay Connected

Most Recent

May 5, 2025 | 5 Mins Read

4 Crucial Considerations for Defining Humanity’s Future in an AI-Enabled World

April 30, 2025 | 1 Mins Read

Field Service Palm Springs 2025: Event Highlights

April 28, 2025 | 3 Mins Read

A Plea to My Fellow Business Travelers

Sarah welcomes Anthony Billups, North America Vice President of Sales and Market Development at Comfort Systems USA, for an open discussion on some of the historical thinking and practices that are holding field service industries back from success in today’s landscape and what needs to change in terms of a fresh approach.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today we're going to have a conversation around some of the outdated thinking and maybe historical binds that might be exacerbating the talent gap, keeping us from moving forward in field service the way that we could or should. So I'm excited to welcome today to the podcast for that conversation Anthony Billups. Anthony is the North American Vice President of Sales and Market Development at Comfort Systems USA. Anthony, welcome to the podcast.

Anthony Billups: Thank you for having me.

Sarah Nicastro: Thank you for being here. So before we get into it all, tell everyone a little bit about yourself.

Anthony Billups: Yeah. Man, Anthony Billups, born and raised out of New York City, went to school up in Boston, studied engineering, electrical engineering, and mathematics, went to grad school, Arizona State University, for a degree in applied math and statistics. Wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I was always really good in math, obviously, as well as people interaction, so knew I wanted to work in corporate America, but wasn't sure what I wanted to do. Sold at a lot of different levels. In high school, I sold sneakers. I sold cars in college. I sold houses when I first graduated, so I was always really good at sales, and I wanted to figure out a way to merge sales with the technical background that I had, and I had an opportunity to join the HVAC industry roughly 16, 17 years ago, and it's been amazing.

I've always loved buildings. I've always loved technology and downtowns, obviously, being from New York City, and everywhere I travel, I'm like, "Take me downtown so I can see the buildings and see what it looks like." And even as a young age, I remember traveling with my family and always wanting to see downtown, wanting to see whatever city had to offer. So it makes sense now years later that I'm in a construction, and buildings, and services industry.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, that's so cool. Just a quick aside, so I'm in Erie, Pennsylvania, which I would be shocked if you've ever been. It's not really a destination per se. It's a small city though, right? And we just took our sons, who are newly eight and six and a half, to New York for the first time the weekend before last.

Anthony Billups: Nice.

Sarah Nicastro: I love New York, love it. I know people that aren't from New York, you either have people love, love, love it, or it's not for them. You know what I mean? I'm the former, but I didn't know how they would react because they've never seen a city that big. You know what I mean? And we had so much fun. They loved it. They got to see a cockroach and a rat, so I felt like we gave them the real experience.

Anthony Billups: Oh, man.

Sarah Nicastro: And you'll find this funny because you're a native. So we were on our way to Brooklyn when we were getting on the subway, and we saw the rat down on the tracks, and my kids also love animals, right? So we get in the train, and we're sitting there, and my son goes, "Mommy, I sure hope that rat is okay." And everyone looked at him like, "What?" It was so funny.

Anthony Billups: Yeah, yeah. The rat is definitely okay. The rat is definitely okay.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I'm like, "No, honey, he's under the tracks. The train didn't run him over. He's fine. He's doing his thing." But anyway. Okay, so here's one question I thought of as you were talking about some of the things you did when you were young and through school, et cetera, and then getting into the HVAC space about 16, 17 years ago. How did that initially come about? And what I'm really curious about, because it's going to lend into our conversation we're about to have, is when that entry into this industry first happened, what was your perception then of what the HVAC industry or field service space were?

Anthony Billups: Yeah. No, great question. So I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, and I had a buddy of mine that was... It's always our friends, right? A buddy of mine that was working in the elevator industry, so he worked for Otis Elevators. He had done his co-ops and summer internships at Otis Elevators and had gone back to do that throughout school. So I saw what he was doing as a sales engineer and his ability to connect with customers. I remember he took me to a game. We went to a game with one of his customers, a Knicks game, and I was just like, "Man, you get paid to take customers out and to engage." And even while at school, he had phone numbers of technicians and customers, and people would reach out to him. And just that ability to apply the technical with the personal, I was like, "Man, that's like a dream job. The fact that you get paid to do this just seems weird, right? It seems like it's fun."

So for me, it was more about how can I utilize my skills in an industry and/or profession that I knew nothing of, right? There's not a lot of conversation at the college level or high school level talking about sales engineering, right? You think about all the different type of engineers that are out there. Most of the time they don't talk about sales engineering. So this idea to get an engineering based salary, but also get commission from what you sell. So it was like the best of both worlds. So for me, I wanted to work in elevators because I just assumed that was where I wanted to be, and I was at a conference recruiting. There was a bunch of companies there. I had an offer from Boeing to work as a systems engineer, and I had other opportunities that I was exploring, but I knew I wanted to be a sales engineer.

So at the time, Otis wasn't hiring. United Technologies had owned Otis and both Carrier. Willis Carrier invented air conditioning. A guy by the name of Doug Wiggins, he convinced me that air conditioning was cooler than elevators, and the rest was history. So that's how I ended up in the HVAC space, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, versus the elevator space.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, okay. So one thing I want to point out too is in this conversation, you're in a sales role, but what we're talking about really applies also to service technicians and service sales, really the industries as a whole that make up sort of field sort that are lesser known that people, like you said, they're not talked about as much in high school or in college. When you're in elementary school and people say, "What do you want to be when you grow up," they might not say, usually don't say, "HVAC, field service." Right? They're saying, "I want to be a teacher," or, "I want to be..." the things that are visible to them, right?

So I meant to look before we recorded this today, but years and years ago when I was still with Field Technologies Magazine, I wrote an article that field service has a branding problem, right? And I've done some follow-up on that since, and I can share that with this podcast. Everyone today is talking about the talent gap, right? And I think there's a lot of different layers to what that challenge consists of and what the potential solutions are, right? But one of the things I want to talk about is this idea of that branding problem, that these opportunities, these careers are not ones that kids grow up knowing, being able... I think even for folks that work in the industry sometimes it's hard to articulate what the industry is, what the role is. I know even for me, when someone says, "What do you do," I'm just like, "It's hard to explain." You know what I mean? It can be really hard to come up with an easy pitch or what have you.

So what are your thoughts on that aspect of it? I know when you and I connected to talk about doing this podcast, one of the points you made that I really love that I think correlates is how do we create more excitement around the trades? So why do you feel creating excitement is an important aspect of this, and then what are your thoughts on how we might do that?

Anthony Billups: Yeah, I think the first part on excitement is bringing awareness, right? So I had made the comment that I didn't know anything about call it sales engineering. So I think when you have these exciting careers and these professions, it's important as a leader to go back into your community and to talk about what it is that you do, right? Talk about kind of what is your day in the life, talk about the things that made you excited about the role, right? I travel all of the time for the role, and it's tough from the family dynamic, but personally, I love the ability to be in different places, right? Someone who loves architecture, and buildings, and cities, and I don't want to see the same city all the time, right? I want to be able to explore, and see different things and how it's built, and be a part of that build.

So I think communicating and being able to share what it is that you do is important because what do kids see growing up? They see what's on television. They see what's in the movies, right? The generic, "I want to be a lawyer, a doctor." Maybe you'll hear a couple engineer or architect conversations, but for the most part it's, "I want to be a celebrity. I want to be an influencer on Instagram and an entrepreneur," and all of these other things that are now bubbling up, but the reason behind it is what people see. It correlates to if you're someone who grows up without money, then no matter what you pick, you want to pick something where you're going to make the money to do the things that you really want to do in life, right? And I think that's an important piece that you have to hone in on, right?

I do very well from a financial perspective because it's a career that others are just not flooding to be a part of. So what that does is it not only creates an opportunity for me, but it also gives me a chance to be promoted, to be a leader, to run businesses. So when you have that success, it allows you to take that route, and I think that's what's excited me the most about the industry is it's an old industry, right? Willis Carrier invented air conditioning over 100 years ago, 120 years ago. So this industry has been around forever. So the people that are in it are closer to retirement. We've got a lot of baby boomers that are getting ready to retire, so an emerging industry that will always be around air conditioning, especially when you think about technology and all the things that are coming. You're going to need to cool those spaces. You're going to need to have control of those spaces, so this industry will always be around.

So for me, when I go and talk about it, I talk about thinking about emerging industries that will continue to be around forever. It was around for 100+ years for a reason, and it will continue to be around. So that's important when selecting a career. It's not just the new fad that someone wants to do. It will be around, and then that's how you start to sell it because you talk about careers, not just jobs, and I think that's another piece that doesn't get talked about enough, right? Let's talk about what does your career look like in a services industry in the trades, whether it's a technician and what is that roadmap, or whether it's on the sales and business side, and running operations, running the full business, and leading that business, what does that look like? And here goes a roadmap. So I think that's a piece of it as well.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, what's interesting to me is I really liked that you used the word excitement, and I agree, part of it is awareness, but I think there's more to it than that, and I think you kind of intuitively understand that because you're in sales, right? But I think one of the challenges as an industry, and I'm talking about field service industries overall, right? Maybe we have recognized that we need to create more awareness, but I don't think we're storytelling. I don't think we're selling it. I don't think when kids are learning about what a doctor does or what a teacher does, no one is in the background pointing out all of the cons, right? They're leading from the front of you can help people, you can make people feel better, you can teach people, right?

So I think one of the challenges we have is, and also when you talked about how you got into HVAC and through your friend at Otis, I think one of the things is as a whole we're not doing a good job amplifying the positives. We're not doing a good job getting creative about how to articulate the things that will draw people in. We're focused on either regurgitating the job descriptions we've been using, or we're focused on giving a list of requirements, not giving a list of opportunities, or incentives, or sharing those stories that will get people excited about, "Hm, I want to look more into this." Right?

And I think there's a number of reasons for that, but I think awareness is part of it, but what exactly we're creating awareness of I think is really important for companies to be thinking about, because we know that the traditional method of putting out an open job and expecting people with experience is just not going to work. So we need to create more interest in order to create excitement, and we need to do that by selling it better, by creating that brand story, right? And then figuring out how we align the right skills to the right jobs. Do you know what I mean?

Anthony Billups: Absolutely, Absolutely. And when I talk at different schools and whenever I get an opportunity to be a part a podcast and communicate, because that's a way for us to tell the story and get things out there, one of the things that I say is, "So what are some of the jobs that are cool? What do people want now?" Right? People want to go work at Apple. People want to work for Google. They want to work for Meta. They want to work with TikTok. Whatever you're using, that's what you want to go be a part of because you see that as being fun, and innovative, and the future, and you want to be a part of that.

So what I do is I say, "Think about what it means to work for Apple, right? First off, think about how competitive, and I'm not talking about working at the Apple store, right? I'm talking about going to work in the Bay Area or at one of the facilities helping design, and build, and whatever it is that you want to do to be a part of that, marketing, whatever it may be. Everybody wants to go there. So the amount of competition to get to these places, and whatever you define these places, right? It could be an athlete. It could be sports and entertainment, right? Think about the competition that wants to go there and how many people want to be a part of that, and how small of the number that make it through."

And then what I say is, "From a services perspective, from a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning perspective, I've done work with Apple." Right? I don't think I'm allowed to talk about that, but I've done work with these Silicon Valley companies, these industries. I've sat in meetings with their strategic growth individuals focused on carbon reduction and focused on better ways to build their facilities, and I walked in through the back door. I walked in through the mechanical room, right? I sold at a level. Now I'm managing and leading at another level. I run the whole business, but now I have teams of people that are there, right? In my book of contacts, I have these industries, these folks that I work with.

One of the biggest projects that I was a part of was a large stadium, the Ram Stadium out on the West Coast in LA. Right? I was on that project. So yes, when I was younger, I wanted to be in the NBA, and then I stopped growing. So I'm 5'9 1/2, and I wasn't going to the NBA. It wasn't happening, right? My game just didn't translate well, so now I have to come up with another dream, but I had a chance to work on stadiums and arenas. So with the love that I have for that, I was able to find that through the services industry, through heating, and ventilation, and air conditioning, through controls. And now I'm in those buildings.

So that's what I talk about to sell, because again, it's easier to get in through the mechanical room than it is through the front door, and I think that's when we want to change the narrative of the profession. We need to start with the end in mind. We need to start where these individuals want to be a part of these industries that they want to be a part of, and if you flash Comfort Systems USA, people might not know what that is, right? I have people sometimes that say, "You work for a pillow company, right?" They don't know, but if I talk about the customers that I serve, and the people that we work with, and the things we're able to deliver, right now, people understand and they recognize. And I think that's where the services and the trade industry goes wrong is because we focus on the task and the things we do and not the customers we serve.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a really good point. And we also talked about what I mentioned earlier, which is this historical norm is you have an open role, you post a job description, you require X years of experience, and people apply, and you pick the best candidate. I mean, that's an obsolete model at this point, right?

So, you had mentioned what we need to do is focus more on finding talent and then fitting roles around individuals versus wedging them into open positions. Can you talk a little bit about what that means and also how realistic do you feel that is for the space we're in?

Anthony Billups: I think it's very realistic. You got to start to realize that number one, the younger generation is not going to come into a position and do it for five years. Those days are over. They're over, right? I'm a grandpa millennial. I was born in 1981, so I haven't been in the same role for five years, right? 18 to 24 months, I'm ready to do something else, right? I'm ready for that next level, that next role, the next opportunity, the next challenge. So individuals my age and younger, that's the mindset. The attention span, the ability to master something at a quicker pace based how we leverage technology is completely different, right? So you have to build a path that is non-traditional, and it sucks because now individuals my age and older, we have to think about doing things differently than when we started, right? What was important to us, and I remember managers when I left my first company in the industry, I loved it. It was my favorite place in the world. Some of my closest friends in the industry were there, right?

I'm in New York City working where I grew up, and I have an amazing team, and the reason I left is I because looked around that group and said, "I am at least 10 to 15 years away from maybe being a manager." Right? Based on the team, the dynamic, and the way things were there. I'm at an event recruiting for at the time another company, right? I'm recruiting for the company I'm a part of, and my passion I'm talking to other salespeople, and a competitor sees my energy, sees my passion, and says, "What is it going to take to get you to come over with us?" And I said, "Just make me a manager." Right? I was vulnerable because I knew I was ready. I had managers that were good, but I knew I can do that.

I was succeeding as an individual contributor, but I was ready to be a manager, right? And I didn't have a roadmap. I didn't have a, "Oh, in the next few months, in the next year you'll be here, and hey, here goes another opportunity. You could go live in this state and be a manager here." That wasn't the conversation. I had no clue what that looked like, and when I said it, I was 29 years old, right? And I'm thinking, "There's no way that somebody is going to make me a manager in this industry when I look around and every other manager, A, doesn't look like me. It's another conversation for another day, another podcast.

Sarah Nicastro: Happy to have it though.

Anthony Billups: And then the age, right? So I was like, "This is not... I'll just throw it out there," and you don't get something if you don't ask for it, right? So when I said that, and the manager, the director of sales for this company, he laughed, and he said, "Is that all you want? The way you're recruiting, the way you're promoting to get people to come, the way you're giving this energy about what you do, and the same energy I give you today was the same energy I was given trying to recruit people into the industry." He's like, "You ready to be a manager." And then it was like, "Where do you want to be? I got an opportunity here. I got an opportunity there," and it was eye opening to me because another company saw the readiness for me to be a manager rather than my own company.

So I think when we go back to your comment about how does it work, I think what we have to do is start, for example, in the NBA, if anyone is a sports fan, nowadays, there's positionless basketball. And what that means is that in the old days, there used to be a point guard, a shooting guard, a small forward, a power forward, and a center, right? And you had these different positions on the court, and your center was normally the biggest guy on the court, so you think your Shaquille O'Neal, and your point guard was your Isaiah Thomas or your Allen Iverson. That was your point guard, right? And it was like these positions, and you got to play these roles.

Now there's positionless basketball. Now when people are building teams, they draft, and they go grab the best possible talent, and then they build winning strategy. They build their plays around the players that they have. And I think that's working in the NBA for teams, and that is how I think we as industries, and corporations, and companies, that's how we need to look. So let's start posting opportunities about the traits you're looking for, the teams that you have, and the team that they will fit in, and the things that you're looking for there. Let's also look at this years of experience area, right? Because somebody may not have an official role in that, and some people don't have the confidence to still apply. So you're missing out on candidates because they're reading something and saying, "Ah, this is pointless." And half the time, large companies are using bots to filter resumes based on certain parameters and buzzwords, right? So you're not even talking to the best candidates. You're not, right? Let's just throw that out there.

You're missing people that are not even applying or who've applied, but based on however you're filtering, you're not even seeing them. So let's focus more on the characteristics, and the talent, and the things that you're looking for to be a part of your team, this mindset of positionless recruiting, and then build around that. And then when someone comes into the fold, if someone meets a Sarah or an Anthony, and they say, "Man, I want this person at my company," then you start to mold and build what that person's career will be. What are the things you want to do? What's important to you? What verticals do you want to be a part of? How do you want to approach this? And then build around that.

And then as you can recruit that way, build your team, and then maybe there's... Man, I got one spot I'm missing. This is something I'm missing. So now you can now look for some of these areas, but again, it's about the qualities that the person is bringing, the experiences that the person is bringing, and not just where they worked at before and the things that we looked at prior when evaluating talent.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. No, I think that's a good point, and I have empathy for leaders and businesses in the sense that the way it was was easy and convenient when you could hire service technicians that would stay in a role for 5, 10, 15, 20+ years. That made everyone's lives very simple, and it's hard to change, right? We know that. But the reality is the same way that person at that recruiting event recognized your energy, and welcomed it, and made a space for it, if you don't do that with the talent in your own company, someone else will, right?

Anthony Billups: Yes.

Sarah Nicastro: So the idea of the way it was, the good old days, I think there's still some hanging on to that, maybe not fully, right? There's progress, but it's slow progress in understanding this isn't going to change. We need to adapt, and adapting means really recreating the whole thing from the ground up because it isn't just, "Oh, we should reword this, or we should train people this way." I mean, it's fundamentally revamping the whole talent strategy, recruiting and hiring process, and also retention. To that point, those individuals in your companies, on your teams that have that energy, have that drive, have that passion, you either give them an outlet for it, or they will find that outlet somewhere else.

Anthony Billups: I mean, they're getting the money that's being thrown out there, right? And the opportunities that are there, if you look at some of these services industries, technology is really enhancing the industry. So there's so much venture capitalist money that's coming into these industries, so these startup companies and other groups have the money to go and buy the talent, and they don't want the old regime. They want the new energy, the new regime. So if you got somebody that's an amazing talent, and you're holding them back, and then they get an opportunity to double or triple their earnings potential and their salary, it becomes a no-brainer. And at that point, it's too late.

At that point, you haven't built the roadmap for this... Even if you build the roadmap, you still may lose them, right? If they don't see that vision, right? So it's important, and when I made the comment about 18 to 24 months, there may be some that cringe at that, right? Think about how you read a resume, right? So to your listeners of your network of folks that join in for your podcast, think about how you view resumes, right? What is your unconscious bias? And I'm sure you've said it, right? You look at a resume and say, "Oh, this person jumps around. This person is not loyal. This person hasn't stayed with the company for longer than two years." So think about it not that the person is doing something wrong, think about the company didn't master, because if somebody moves around within the company to a different role, that's something to be said versus going to a completely different company, but I think everyone has a story, and that's changing, right? So-

Sarah Nicastro: Even then it's just sort of an outdated standard, right?

It's an outdated measurement to look at. Same thing with women that have gaps in their resume.

Anthony Billups: Yeah, like come on.

Sarah Nicastro: Just because someone was successful in the corporate world, took 1, 2, 5 years off to raise children, or do whatever she's doing, and now wants to reenter, that knowledge, perspective, experience is not erased, right? So it's the gaps, or I mean, people are taking time off to...

Anthony Billups: Travel the world.

Sarah Nicastro: Not just women, anyone, right?

Anthony Billups: Travel the world. Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: To travel, to take a break for their mental health.

Anthony Billups: Absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: You know what I mean? So it's things like that that are really outdated norms. You're right though. I mean, depending on who's looking at the resume and how modern their perspective is. You know what I mean? You could be missing out on a lot of things. You brought up money though, and I also want to touch on one of the points we talked about is understanding what today's talent values. Okay? And I do think it's important to say it isn't just money, right? And this is a common thing. So I hear people a lot. I was in the UK for our Future of Field Service event in May, and we were having a round table discussion on talent, and there was this guy there that was saying, "I'm just really frustrated because I bring technicians on. I spend all this money to onboard and train them, and then they leave to go make whatever, an incremental more amount of money somewhere else."

Now, I said, "Well, okay." And he was an older white guy, like a lot of people at the events are, and I challenged him a little bit and said, "I highly doubt that they're leaving only because of the money." It's easy to use that as the excuse. Okay? And I'm not saying some people don't do it, but I'm saying if it's an incremental amount of money, and you're providing a really good employee experience, and company culture, and working environment, mass amounts of people would not be leaving for an incremental amount of money. So I just think sometimes it's easy to use that as an excuse to not do a lot of the other things that are important to new hires today, right? Also, same thing I said, they take work, they take effort, they take change, right? So what are some of the things you see in terms of beyond fair pay? What do you think people value most today?

Anthony Billups: I think for one, we've heard this, "People don't leave companies. They leave managers." Right? So I think that manager employee relationship is extremely important, right? What type of development conversations are you having? Where does this individual see the future of their career? Do they think that they can learn, right? The role that I'm in now, I somewhat took a step back to kind of go back into the sales leadership area when I was leading both sides of the business, both sales, and operations, and full general management, right? And from a career trajectory, that's really where I want to be, but the opportunity to come work for the manager that I'm working for and the mentor that I have, it's a no-brainer for me to take a step back and learn underneath that umbrella. It's something that made sense for me because I know that's going to help me in my career as I move forward.

So I think that manager employee relationship is extremely important, and what does that individual bring? I struggled early in my career with having managers that I didn't feel I can learn anything from, having managers that I felt like didn't either know what they was talking about, they were promoted because of relationships, or other reasons, or whatever, and I look at them, and I'm like, "This is not the way to manage." Right? I have done a lot of training, and we conduct training around building leaders, not just managers, and the leader and the manager are completely different. So I think that dynamic is the first layer.

I think next it's about understanding the whole person, right? Do you really want to focus on the eight hour employee, or do you want to focus on the 24 hour person? And I think where you have leaders that focus on the 24 hour person and make that a part of it, they understand that, because you can always go and get an extra 50 cents if you're a technician, an extra dollar, an extra whatever. It's out there, and you can play that game. You can go from place to place and go get an extra 50 cents, an extra dollar, but at some point, you are where you are. At some point, you have to deliver on the task at hand, and then you have life that happens, right? And how does that company participate in the life element of what you have going on?

So I think when you have a leader that's focused around development and continuously communicating to their team about that, because you know the money will come. Don't get me wrong. People are not running around accepting opportunities for less money all of the time because they want to go work at a place, right? I mean, money does play a factor in it, but it's bigger than that, in my opinion, and I think it's centered around development and what does tomorrow look like versus just today.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, I really like that point about the 24 hour person. I also think the first point you brought up about leaders and the leader and employee relationship is important because in service it's very common for leaders to just... Not just, to be people that have progressed through the ranks, okay? But not everyone that is a strong individual contributor makes a good leader, and so when we use that progression as a reward system just for good performance versus evaluating people's actual ability to lead, we risk putting leaders in place that aren't really good at that job. It doesn't mean they're not good employees, doesn't mean they don't have a valuable contribution.

It just means that they might be lacking what talent demands of a leader today, which again, based on everything we've talked about, does look different than it did 10, 15, 20 years ago where that command and control type environment where it was all more, "Here's your role. You do this, check a box," that sort of thing. It wasn't so much getting to know people, helping develop people, mentoring, communicating, empathy, emotional intelligence. Not everyone is cut out for that, right? And we need to understand that and make sure that we aren't promoting people into those positions that might be great people and/or strong performers, but aren't built for that job. Certainly not doing it just because of the relationship, which also happens, but also even when we are putting people in those positions that are capable, how are we as organizations providing ongoing learning and development to the leaders as well?

Anthony Billups: Absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: I mean, we think a lot about how we do that with employees coming in, but leadership deserves training and investment in their skills as well.

Anthony Billups: Absolutely. A big part of my role today is centered around that, right? I lead up our training program for our salespeople as well as our leaders, right? And the reason that we really focus a lot of attention there is that we understand the value of our leaders, and if you can teach a leader to not be a manager, but to be a leader and to learn, and a lot of times to your point, you're really good at something, and then people put you in this people manager role, but you haven't been given the skills. When you start managing people, sometimes it may feel like you're a principal at a high school, right? Because sometime the personalities, and the things that happen, and you can't put this person with that person, and you end up dealing with that. And I mean, if you haven't gone through a conversation about crucial conversations and how to handle those, and how to approach those, if you don't understand the individuals that you're managing, and maybe some of the things that they struggle with, you may have a really strong individual performer, but they struggle with their own confidence.

So if you don't know that, and you don't know how to feed their confidence to help them be better in their role, you're putting yourself at a disadvantage. And if you've never been taught about that, then where are you supposed to learn that from? So I think developing and focusing on leaders is absolutely a part to grow and build your business, and to your point, some of the best players are some of the worst coaches, and even evaluators of talent, because they're looking for people that are like them. Sometimes you are just a unicorn in the way you prep, and the way you focus, and the way you work. I mean, I've worked with some people where, man, they dedicate 16 hours to what they do, and they're amazing at it, but not everybody is going to devote that time to get done 16 hours a day to complete the task.

There's some people that's not going to do that. There's some people that are going to put in their eight hours, their six hours, whatever it may be, and they're going to give you the best that they can during that period of time. So does that mean that that's a bad employee? No. That just means that that person is different, and you got to figure out how to coach that person to maximize and get the most out of them. It's not about the hours that you work. It's about what you do with the time and the things that need to be accomplished, and I think that's where we get it wrong, where we pick these great performers, and then not sure why things don't work out or why their team doesn't flourish like the way they flourish. They're teaching people to do things the way they do it, and that might not work, and that's a part of leadership, and in my opinion, higher upper management making the right executive decisions on how to really build a team.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm. The other thing we talked about in terms of leadership is the need to focus more on motivating and empowering today's talent. So can you talk about what does that look like to you, and how is that different than what leaders have historically done or focused on?

Anthony Billups: Yeah, I think it goes back to the 24 hour person. I think if you're helping people develop, a lot of our training is centered around helping people be better individuals, right? Some of the stuff that we do can help you be better at home in your interactions with your family and your spouse.

Sarah Nicastro: Do you have any examples?

Anthony Billups: Yeah, absolutely. So we teach a thing called Sandler Selling, and essentially what it is it is a process, a selling process for when you have a meeting, and a big part of that is kicks off with bonding and rapport, so that you're building that relationship with anyone that you're interacting with, so that you can now feed back into things. When things get tough, you can feed on that, right? And this is for both internal and external relationships. The next part of that is an upfront contract, and the upfront contract component is I'm going to tell you what we're going to talk about today, and think about how that can help you with your family, right? If you put it out there that, "Hey, this is the focus. This is what we want to get accomplished. What would you like to get accomplished? How would you like to approach this weekend? How would you like to approach this task? How would you like to approach this holiday?"

So if you put this upfront contract, so now we're able to talk about what we're trying to accomplish and not have meetings without that. Those are just some of the things that we teach. So yes, it's extremely helpful for your customer. It's extremely helpful for your internal meetings. It's also helpful when you're building with your family. Next, another part of it is really uncovering pain. If you're a salesperson, and you're trying to sell something, no one wants to buy from someone who is over the top-selling, right? If I sit here, and I'm trying to sell you this phone, and it's just like I'm over the top, and I'm like, "Oh, you need this. What phone do you got?" I hate that when you walk through the mall, and they're like, "Oh, what service do you have?" I'm like, "Listen, bro, I am not here for a cell phone. I don't have the time. I don't care if you give me seven phones for free. I'm walking away."

So no one wants to buy from that person. So then we talk about uncovering pain, and real pain, not just the pain from surface pain, right? A pain indicator, right? Oh, some piece of equipment broke. That's a pain indicator. How does that piece of equipment that broke impact you personally? Oh, well, I have to come in on the weekends, and I missed my daughter's softball game because I had to come in, because we have a big event. So now I'm getting down to the personal pain and how it impacts you, and it allows you to ask better questions, to listen more, and then those are the type of things we teach our salespeople, teach our leaders, and then that can help them be a better person. So to me, those types of things from a development perspective are extremely important as we think about our interactions with people that we come across every day.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, and I think this is also parallels what I'm hearing more and more of, and I mean, have been for years, but I think, again, the reason we keep talking about some of the same themes we've been talking about for a few years is there's layers of change that companies still need to make, right? So I was saying what you're talking about I think parallels what we're seeing in service, which is a recognition that we need to provide a lot more soft skills training, and communication, and empathy, and things like that, and I think understanding the root of the value in that is important, because it's not a checkbox exercise. It's not something you can send out a soft skills video for people to watch once a year and expect it to have any impact, but again, this is what I mean. There's this, "Okay, do we really have to do that? I don't want to. Okay, yes we do. Let's just do this online thing." Right?

But what are we really talking about? We're really talking about the 24 hour person. We're talking about caring about the people that we employ and wanting them to be better, be fulfilled, et cetera. So I think those are good examples because it's not looking at it in the sense of how can these folks get out and sell harder, and better, and faster. It's how can we provide them skills that are going to help them in all areas of their life, including their role at conference systems?

Anthony Billups: And there's a lot of really good individuals out there that are doing things. I'll give a shout out to someone that I know is out there doing it. A gentleman by the name of Mark Martinez recently wrote a book, and he talks about teaching people how to hit their grand slam, and what does that really mean? And he talks about living your dash, that dash in between when you were born and when you leave, and what does that really mean fulfilling that? So he does this type of training, and he works with companies, and individuals, and churches, and everyone because he's so passionate about it, but I love that because we need more companies looking for people like Mark to come in and do those type of trainings, because that's not just a check the box.

That's looking at the 24 hour person, and now that's feeding into it. And remember, now people will stay, because they're like, "Man, what do they got in line for me? I've never had this type of training. No one ever focused on this. It's helping build me. It's making me better. It's making me more confident at home. I'm going to stick around with this company because they care about me as a person, not just the eight hours, or 10 hours, or 12 hours they expect me to work for them." So those are the type of examples that I think companies should be looking more for to make a part of their training.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I know we're coming up on time. Is there anything we haven't talked about yet that we should mention before we close?

Anthony Billups: I would just say we touched on diversity a little bit, and I think that diversity of talent is extremely important. Our customers are way more diverse than they've ever been, and if you have a leadership team that all looks the same, and that's the panel deciding on who gets hired, or who gets promoted, or who gets... You really have to look at that, right? In order for us to be able to attract talent, individuals are choosing companies that they can see are dedicated to diversity of all kinds. So if you're not walking the walk on your website, and what you deliver, and what you talk about, and all these different things, it don't matter what you do in the interview, right?

Sarah Nicastro: And also though, behind closed doors.

Anthony Billups: Absolutely, absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: No one wants to go to a website and see what they want to see, and then you get in into it and realize it was-

Anthony Billups: They'll just leave.

Sarah Nicastro: Exactly.

Anthony Billups: Then they won't stay if you're not genuine in what you're really doing, if there really is no career path. Sometimes companies do these diversity numbers, right? That became popular over the last couple years, and then you take a real look at it, and it was all entry level positions. So they've gotten to double digits diversity in their entry level positions, but when you look at middle level management, upper management, executives, C-suite, nothing is there. So to me, that's the real proof. And don't be afraid to promote somebody. Don't be afraid to put somebody in the role who's just not ready. That happened to me in my career a couple times, and it meant a lot because I knew that they didn't want me to leave, but they saw something in my energy that they wanted a part of their future. I will help plan for what that future is.

20 years ago, we weren't communicating with cell phones, with email. 25 years ago, right? That wasn't the main form of communication, text messages. So this idea that technology is ramping up things so fast, don't be afraid to over promote, but give the proper training. Give the proper mentors, build the person, build your talent. You don't have to just always go out and grab the talent from other companies because that pool is just getting smaller and smaller. So that would be the piece that I wanted to add that I don't think we touched on a lot, but I don't want to diminish the importance of diversity, diversity of thought into everything that we do when we're thinking about talent and bringing people to organizations.

Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely. And for people that are not addressing unconscious bias, that aren't reflecting on holding on to outdated norms, or thoughts, or beliefs, they're exacerbating the talent gap. I mean, there's so much room to expand diversity in HVAC service, the trades, et cetera, that if you're not really in earnest working to do that, you are fueling your own problem. Not that you should care just because it's the right thing to do, but I mean it's literally missing an opportunity to start closing that gap by bringing people into the industry that historically haven't played a huge role and should. So it's a really important part of the discussion. Like you said earlier, it could be a conversation for another day. I'd love to have you back, and we could get more into it.

Anthony Billups: Absolutely. I love this.

Sarah Nicastro: But thank you so much for coming on and sharing. I appreciate it. It was a great conversation and enjoyed having you here.

Anthony Billups: Thank you for having me.

Sarah Nicastro: All right. You can learn more by visiting us at Futureoffieldservice.com. While you're there, be sure to sign up for the Future of Field Service Insider, which delivers our latest content to your inbox every other week, so you can make sure you don't miss anything. We also have one more Future of Field Service live tour event this year, happening in Stockholm on October 10th. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at IFS.com. As always, thank you for listening.

Is the Soft Skills Gap Growing?

Is the Soft Skills Gap Growing?

Share

Stay Connected

Related Content