ThinkTank Reflections: The challenges field service companies face in finding new service technicians are universal and not going away...
ThinkTank Reflections: The challenges field service companies face in finding new service technicians are universal and not going away...
Having hosted discussions with companies of all sizes, in multiple industries, and across two continents, there has been one universal challenge faced by all field service companies…
There is a lack of qualified engineers to fill the rapidly ageing workforce that is moving towards retirement. We’ve seen companies re-evaluate their recruitment approach while embracing technology to allow them to do more with less.
It was again a central topic in this ThinkTank session that featured a range of industry professionals from across the US and UK.
“I’ve seen some examples of companies, which, having come out of the pandemic, saw an initial spike where they were able to grow their business having worked through the challenges of lock-down, and they were then able to grow as we moved into the start of recovery,” explained Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News.
“However, where I am seeing such companies struggle now, is not so much driving the business growth, that is of course, not easy, but for many it is the ‘easier’ part of the equation,” Oldland continued.
“The bigger challenge, the challenge I am seeing everywhere, is finding the engineers to meet the demand,” he added.
Expanding on Oldland’s comment Gyner Ozgul, President & COO Smart Care Equipment Services, added, “Early in the recovery, we had access to a lot of technicians from other industries that were re-entering the workforce. So I think the first half of that recovery was easier, not easy, but easier.
“The last half of the recovery has been much more difficult because a portion of the workforce left entirely during COVID, and they’re not coming back. So we’ve had to lean heavily on less experienced technicians straight out of trade schools and build more infield training for those technicians.,” Ozgul explained.
“That training aspect has become much more prevalent for us now. However, the fact that the technicians are coming right out of trade school means there are five months before they have an acceptable breakeven product productivity in our business.
“We’re shifting more to building the resource now, rather than recruiting it, and we’ll see more of that again next year. We’re strategically investing more in training across the next two years, both digital and in person to accommodate the fact that we know we’re going to have to go to a less experienced pool of candidates,” he added.
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"COVID actually played a big role in driving that change, because the in-person workforce at our customers went to nothing and then those people didn't come back..." Jason Andrews, Service Director, Baylo
Indeed, this sentiment was further echoed across the group. However, the challenges were amplified in some corners because of the complexity of the skill sets required for specific field service technician roles.
“Our guys have to be their skill sets have to be very varied, down from the blue-collar mechanic, into the mid-level technician, through to more advanced engineering roles, and you need to have all those skill sets, which is exceedingly hard to recruit,” explained Jason Andrews, Service Director, Baylo.
“We are taking the approach of trying to train our customer technicians to be that first level. So we’re also investing in online training, and, then, are adding some in-person training for when they get to that second level. However, we’re also incentivising our customers to take our remote service solutions,” he added.
“We’re doing this by telling our customers, if you can be more hands-on with the product, then it’s going to cost you less, your cost of ownership is going to be less, and you just have to invest in training. We will then sell subscriptions to keep that service revenue coming in.”
Again, it is the disruptive nature of the pandemic that has forced change for Baylo, as Andrews outlined.
“COVID actually played a big role in driving that change, because the in-person workforce at our customers went to nothing and then those people didn’t come back,” he explained.
“So that opens up an opportunity for us to sell service into the market. However, it also creates a challenge, because we have to somehow figure out how to turn their displaced workforce into a first level technician, because we can’t do it for them, the contract price would be prohibitive and we wouldn’t be able to actually have a return on investment on the technology,” Andrews added.
"We started going back to the old way of approaching things, going back to the trade schools. So we started going to our local tech schools and asking them, 'Who are your strongest people? Let us interview them..." - Izzy Sanchez, Director Service & Systems Support Konica Minolta
With several different organizations ranging from enterprise to niche specialists around the table, this iteration of the ThinkTank was an excellent opportunity to assess whether the workforce shortage was impacting companies of all sizes – or was it a challenge that more prominent brands were able to negate somewhat, with their deeper resources and greater brand appeal?
“It’s been an extreme challenge, finding new technicians, regardless of brand recognition,” stated Izzy Sanchez, Director Service & Systems Support Konica Minolta.
“We currently have 400 open positions, so we’re aggressively recruiting. We had to become our own recruiters, even though we do have a recruitment team here.
“We started going back to the old way of approaching things, going back to the trade schools. So we started going to our local tech schools and asking them, ‘Who are your strongest people? Let us interview them.
“We’ve just hired three people fresh out of Lincoln Tech here, which is local to us. Honestly, it’s been about six months, and they’ve proven to be some of my better folks because they didn’t come in with any of the baggage. They came in fresh out of school and so were very malleable, and we were able to train them.
“There are still holes in the workforce that we need to fill. We’re a national company so while it is easy with somewhere like New York where there is a lot of population density, but it gets harder in more rural areas where there is population scarcity. So now we’re competing with other brands in our space and we are all trying to recruit that same talent.”
“I think it depends on the complexity of the product that the technician is responsible for,” added Tom DeVroy, Senior Advisory Solution Consultant, ServiceNow.
“I will say, however, that this is a very common refrain at a macro level – recruiting, training, fully utilizing and retaining critical components of your workforce.Then when service companies can’t recruit their own people, it’s developing better practices for how they can supplement their internal workforce with qualified contractors.
“Where a lot of companies are turning to us to help them is bringing those third-party workers into the fold as somebody who’s direct employee as opposed to sub-contracted employee. As an organization, that is a big focus for us at the moment as it resolves a lot of problems our customers are facing.”
All members of the Field Service Think Tanks are speaking from their own personal opinions which are not necessarily reflective of the organisations they work for.
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