In this current crazy competitive labor market, qualified technicians are hard to come by and sometimes you can be scrambling to find the perfect one for the job at hand. There are many things you can do to foster a beneficial space for your field service technicians—which enhances the overall environment of your business—and in the end retains your valued and appreciated team, as well as your customers.
1. Onboard Carefully and Properly
The first step is usually the most important and one to consider carefully and cautiously. When looking to onboard employees, you want to make sure they are the right fit. This seems obvious, but make sure they understand what the job entails, as well as its responsibilities and requirements and are more than willing to learn and grow their knowledge. Having a smooth system already in place for efficient and effective onboarding is a major tool that can help the employee get on their feet as soon as possible. This also can help aid with your employees personal confidence and increase their desire to get out in the field and begin working. This naturally leads us to follow up to the next stride—having the right teammates. Your employees need to be able to work together well, while having excellent communication amongst themselves. Be sure to think critically and carefully about putting together your team, it will make all the difference for the employees and the company.
2. Provide the Necessary Platform/Tools
Wouldn’t it be discouraging to be newly onboarded to a new company and then to come to the realization that they can’t provide you with the proper tools to perform your task to the best of your ability? Having the proper platform that enables the tech to do everything that is necessary for the job task workflow is without a doubt a must have. Whether that is recording data or details, finding knowledge and pulling past job history, recording time logged and time worked, documenting images and notes, or wrapping up the job task with a real time invoice. The right answer would be to enable the tech to have the ability to do all of these steps directly from his or her phone or tablet. Not only this, but make sure this technology is always up to date and working properly. The last thing you need to have is your technicians trying to circumvent software all together because of poor quality management. Technicians want to use the best equipment for the best outcome. That’s where the Lexul field service platform comes in. Lexul provides an all-in-one tailored field management software that is specifically designed for this situation and to solve every issue of a poor field management workflow. No more worrying about losing paper, not having proper history or knowledge, or even simply forgetting your password, we have your back. Support your techs with an efficient workflow and real job site data.
3. Create a Balanced Work-life Environment
A balanced work-life atmosphere is one of those workplace principles that is irreplaceable and indispensable. Life is not always about work, especially for real field technicians. The vast majority of individuals are not looking for a mundane, machine-like job environment. In order for your team to perform their best, they need to have a healthy balance. So, seriously consider things that help with balancing your team’s work and personal life, as well as their well being. If employees are not happy with how these are handled, don’t expect them to be around for long.
4. Transparency
It may seem cliché to talk about transparency, or it may be a popular topic that may be redundant—but it’s one not to miss. Universally, there seems to be a lot of “talk without the walk” in this area of business. Employees appreciate and are looking for honesty and transparency, and to be frank, it’s quite hard to find. As a whole, being an employer, do your best to be as transparent as possible. This results in trust, good will, and helps hold firm a healthy relationship between the employer and employee—which helps substantially with retention. There was a study done that said company transparency can actually boost the happiness of an employee. Most want to work with and be involved in a company they can support and get behind, as well as trust that they are operating ethically, truthfully, and properly.
5. Performance Based Advancement
Opportunities for advancement create another incentive for the technicians to grow with the company and increase their skill set and knowledge. Another way to retain a quality technician is to base their benefits on how well they perform, whether that is extra pay by a bonus or an increase in wage. Put the focus on technician performance, not manager preference. Having these available opportunities for employees to capitalize is another important step to long-term retention and employee satisfaction. At Lexul, we have performance documentation integrated directly within our field management software. We do this by aligning your hand-picked customized metrics which you can then align to any business goal you choose. Set your goal and watch technicians work toward it with excitement.
6. Encourage Ideas
Another great way to help retain employees is to involve and encourage employees to share their ideas, thoughts, and suggestions. No one feels like they can share anything in a closed and sterilized, limited environment. Make them feel like they are appreciated and actually part of the team—not just another nametag or number. Technicians are the backbone of field service companies, they are the ones going out every single day and getting the job done. A great way to show that they are appreciated is to ask if they need anything during the day, or help in any way shape or form with learning new things, or even asking if they have suggestions and ideas of how the company can be improved in general. Always be sure to take diligent care of the people that work for you, as well as those who you work with. Always be looking for ways to improve their environment, which can in the end, help to retain them as a respected service tech.
7. Employee Gamification and Customer Portals
Employee Gamification is the use of game-like elements, such as points scoring, rewards, or competitive platforms that can boost employee engagement. With Lexul Field Service software, employee gamification and customer portals are already built in. There are many advantages to adding this to your company portfolio, which include keeping track of your technician’s performance, quality of service, strengths and weaknesses.
On top of that, you can highlight and enable customers to leave specific feedback for the job and the technician. This brings extra motivation, productivity, and efficiency, as well as encourages the technician to supply better customer service. Customer portals also bring customer satisfaction and create an avenue for customers to share their needed insight. Customers can know which technician they are working with, view their profile, and begin to build that friendly customer-staff relationship. When customers are happy, technicians are happy too.
Looking for a perfect time to begin these steps? The time to start is now!
Get a free demo of our Lexul Field Service Management Software today, and learn how you can engage and retain staff while boosting business!
