ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘recruitment’ CATEGORY

Nick Frank, Managing partner at Si2 Partners, looks at the trials and tribulations of sourcing the talent to drive your field service organisation forward and asks why are we not doing this better?

Delivering on business objectives demands that we really understand and acquire those capabilities that help us differentiate from competition. Indeed, the same is true for us as professionals as we look for own next steps in our career. Yet matching needs with people is still recognised as one of the biggest challenges for employers and employees alike.

The reality is that for business in general and in the area of service business specifically, finding people who can deliver (experience, knowledge, qualifications & competencies), are highly motivated (right career move, location, salary, benefits & company) and fit (industry, company values, team they will be working with) is a major management headache. The impact of getting this process wrong can be a costly, time consuming, an emotionally draining exercise and frankly devastating on objectives.

Why is it like this?

Successful companies ideally manage their talent acquisition through a balance of succession planning, external hiring, or interim positions. This journey is complex and fraught with organisational, political and external challenges to deliver a robust and effective talent management framework. In this age when data, analytics and connectivity technologies threaten to disrupt many industries, the pressure to introduce new capabilities has never been stronger. Increasingly, service leaders are frustrated that to find talent whether it’d be sourced internally or externally is taking too long and with minimal choice.

This is why in trying to find great people, companies traditionally turn to head-hunters who rely on their respective contact base to provide suitable candidates. Whereas many head-hunters have developed dedicated expertise in finding well defined positions in areas such as IT, Finance and HR, very few if any, provide the same level of contacts, expertise and competencies in successfully searching for the modern service professional. Instead, head-hunters turn to the now infamous LinkedIn website as their primary tool for finding people.

 

Interestingly though, if you have ever tried to search for service people using these types of recruitment tools you will discover that it is very difficult to pinpoint the type of positions and qualifications you require to fill your vacancies.

One of the main stumbling blocks is that service is such a wide generic term that it identifies 1000’s of unsuitable candidates.

Using company job titles seems a good idea, but often although these might make sense to people within the business, they bear little relevance to the outside world. The result is that recruiters are forced to search for candidates with vague, irrelevant job titles which are difficult to match on the main social media platforms available today.

Alternative approaches such as on-line job boards have other challenges. Frequently job descriptions are not clear and easily understood. Recruiters do not know which talent match the ‘Service’ brief and are often overwhelmed with the volume of response, because many candidates apply based on their belief they work in the ‘Service’ industry, yet often are completely unsuitable for the job.

In summary, companies often end up waiting up from 9- 12 months to successfully fill Service Leadership positions!

What can we do about it?

With above in mind, it is possible to reduce the time it takes to hire good service people by more than 50%, through following three very simple rules:

1.Job descriptions:

Organisations are good at producing job descriptions that suit their internal HR processes, but these are often not easy to translate into the terminology used in the wider world. Don’t fall into this trap! Make sure the job description you develop meets both the internal company needs and for the recruiter is geared to the language of social networks.

2.Work with people who know Service:

Working with professionals who deeply understand your business environment and needs, will be far more effective in terms of time and quality.

They will enable a more relevant job description to be developed as well as widen and enrich the search to allow candidates from seemingly unrelated backgrounds to be identified. Very few internal recruitment teams or external head-hunters truly understand the ‘Service’ space, or the wide variety of terminology used by service job seekers.

 

3.Be involved:

Make sure that you are fully aware of the type of people being searched, so that you can ensure it is focused on the right experiences. Close teamwork between client and recruiter has been shown to significantly reduce the time it takes to identify great candidates.

By following these three simple guidelines, you will not only find people faster, you will find better qualified talent that will enrich your organisation as well as significantly reducing your recruitment costs. They also can be applied to those professionals looking to develop their career paths.

These guidelines have been developed over many years participating in the hiring process of service professionals across many parts of the world.

Whilst conceptually, fairly straightforward, they are not so easy to follow and execute. With technical and service business talent at a premium and the adoption of on-line search through social networks is transforming the recruitment process.

Good definition thorough understanding the service “space” and feedback throughout the recruitment process have become critical to successfully finding the nuggets of gold in the ocean of working humanity.

For more information on recruiting Great Service People, contact Dag Gronevik, Richard Cowley or Nick Frank on how to ‘Build your Service Capability’ at info@si2partners.com or call +44 208 144 6452.

 

---

 

Be social and share

Lucy Davies, a field service recruitment specialist with Concept Resourcing explores the challenges of attracting talent in the field service industry...

If you’ve ever been tasked to recruit experienced engineers, you’ll know how difficult it can be to find the perfect candidate.

Experience, remuneration and loyalty are all barriers that businesses encounter time and time again in the hiring process.

Companies are constantly struggling to strike the right balance between sourcing an experienced candidate with specific qualifications, versus hiring a younger engineer with less experience; but with huge potential to learn their trade and mould to the business needs.

With demand for field engineers at a constant high, what should businesses be doing to attract an effective team?

Working together

There’s obviously pros and cons to hiring from each candidate pool, a lot of companies want employees who’re fully skilled and can hit the ground running.

Unfortunately, for some industries this does rule out a lot of the younger workforce.

 

Take commercial catering, a lot of roles now require individuals to hold valid COMCAT tickets; unfortunately, the majority of candidates in the industry progress to catering after serving anything between 10-20 years servicing white goods.

Therefore, by the time a candidate has sufficient knowledge and experience in the catering sector, they’re often approaching the latter end of their career.

So what’s the answer?

There’s no reason why businesses can’t look at creating a balanced workforce with a mix of experienced and younger employees.

On-the-job training is where a lot of engineers hone their skills, therefore creating an environment for candidates from both ends of the spectrum to work together and learn from one another is a great way to get a diverse and effective team.

Brand and benefits

In recent years the trend to ‘job-hop’ has emerged amongst younger generations and millennials.

While 30 years ago a lot of employees would find themselves in a role with a company that they stayed with for the majority of their careers; these days once training is complete it’s not unheard of for people to move businesses every 2-3 years.

Whether it’s due to working environment, pay or career progression, it’s a trend that’s increasingly frustrating for businesses who’re investing time and money into training their team.

To combat this trend, it’s becoming increasingly important for businesses to create an enjoyable and sustainable working environment with great employee benefits to not only attract talent but retain it too.

 

Courting a candidate

The drop in apprenticeships in recent years has meant that there’s a real shortage of skilled field, therefore attracting quality candidates is paramount to any business.

Without a steady flow of trained engineers, recruiters have two candidate pools to target, those experienced candidates who’ve been in work for many years and those relatively new to the industry.

 

Attracting both pools of talent requires two completely different strategies.

With the advent of social media and 24/7 online access, a lot of younger engineers are looking to internet to search for work and will actively seek new opportunities through LinkedIn and Twitter as well as uploading their CVs to a wide range of job boards.

For the more experienced candidates, recruiters can’t rely on internet applications alone and need to run head-hunt campaigns while building relationships with candidates to attract the best talent to their businesses.

Strategic support

There’s no doubt that the challenges facing recruiters in the market will continue for many years.

As a result, businesses need to consider the commitment and training they provide to their employees to ensure they remain within their business and help keep the industry alive with experienced, quality engineers.

If more companies can continue to invest in cross-training engineers from similar sectors and buddy less experienced individuals with knowledgeable mentors then it’ll not only mean that there’s more quality engineers in the market, but it’ll allow businesses to shape their teams, ensuring they breed the right skills, attitude and work ethic into its workforce, ultimately delivering a better service to its clients.

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature

Field service organisations face increasing competition, declining margin and high customer expectations. But, they also are challenged by new technologies, such as social, mobile, cloud, analytics, IoT and M2M, and wearables. Each new technology has potential to revolutionise field service just as field mobility technology did several years ago. Marne Martin, CEO of ServicePower looks at why technology is just one ingredient in field service excellence.. 

ServicePower is spending much time and effort in innovating our field service management software. We are working hard to be innovative and stay ahead of the latest technologies such that our customers have the best in class FSM solution today, but are also positioned to take advantage of new advances as they hit the market. We are completely mobilising the field service call, enabling the field based tech to complete all onsite processes in one trip. We’re incorporating social collaboration to ensure that the tech has access to materials and expert assistance from the office to get the job finished. We’re partnering with one of the world’s leading research institutions, the University of Manchester, to further improve our scheduling algorithms.

Our hard work has been recognised through winning the 2014 M2M Evolution for IOT Excellence Award, and being named as a Visionary by Gartner in its 2014 Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management.

 

However, we cannot dismiss perhaps the most important element in the delivery of field based services: the field technician.

How does the emerging workforce, which is young, technically savvy and collaborative, affect your ability to provide exceptional field service? Let’s look at the following important issues regarding the technicians in your workforce.

Recruitment

One of the top challenges field service organisations face right now is the retiring workforce. However, according to Aberdeen more than half of field service organisations wait until there is an opening to fill to recruit a new technician, rather than doing so proactively. While it’s important to find a great technician with the skills required to perform the services offered by the organisation, it’s just as important to also understand the needs and motivations of its young (averaging 32 years old), technically savvy recruits, and do so prior to needing to fill a position. To that end, it’s also important to identify what will ensure the highest retention rates with the new workforce.

Technology Adoption

With the young, and we’re really talking about Millennials, which in 2015 are projected to surpass the Baby Boom generation as the largest living generation, comes adoption of more and more consumer oriented technologies. Aberdeen says that 62% of best-in-class field service organisations are incorporating some level of BYOD strategy. That’s happening because these young recruits are helping to speed the transition due to high adoption rates of mobile, connected technologies for personal use. As a matter of fact, in America, 2 of every 5 households only have wireless telephones. Technology is changing our personal and professional lives.

Service Evolution

The newest generation of young, tech savvy and collaborative field service technicians grew up with computers and social networks, text, email and chat. It’s how they communicate.

This isn’t a negative for field service. Adoption of these communication methods only improves customer service. As we field service management software vendors improve our ability to ensure the tech with the right skills and best knowledge of or proximity to the service location are intelligently scheduled, as with the ServicePower ServiceScheduling product, field technicians armed and comfortable with the latest mobile technologies can tap into the social, mobile and cloud technologies, as well as utilise wearables, to diagnose an issue while onsite, access the documentation or videos and chat or video chat with experts in the office whom can help ensure that the product is fixed in one truck roll.

 

For the customer, further downtime and inconvenience are eliminated. For the field service organisation, costs are minimised, customer satisfaction and brand loyalty are improved.

Strategy

Field technicians are your face to the customer. They are often the only point of contact a customer has with your organisation post sale. So, how do we find the best and brightest field technicians, and keep them?

• Proactively identify what your customers want.
• The Boomers are retiring. Proactively identify how to attract Millennials to your organisation.
• Identify how to keep workers engaged with your field service operation
  • Train them effectively
  • Offer and support utilisation new technologies such as wearables, which contribute to their success.
  • Provide access to the tools, information and experts to make them heroes to your customers
• Support social communications
  • Document how and when to use it for company purposes. A 140 character Tweet can be a huge PR success or a nightmare for your operation
• Encourage adoption of new technologies like route optimization, IoT and M2M and video. The business value of these tools empowers the field technician to create happy customers and make their own day a success![/unordered_list]

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature

In our recent series of articles we have asked if recruitment is going to be field services greatest challenge and explored why despite a negative press millennials are in fact a natural fit for field service.

The reason for this series is to introduce some of the themes ahead of our next webinar which is being held tomorrow at 4pm GMT. You can register for this webinar by clicking this link.

In the final part of this series we look at how we can attract millennials to our organisation.

“Gone are the days of where a company’s participation in regional hiring events or advertising in a paper or even a website is going to bring in a throng of great candidates.” Comments ServiceMax’s Patrice Eberline.

“This generation has different hot buttons and therefore requires different bait to entice them to your company.”

Eberline is a firm believer in having to understand the mindset of millennials and restructuring our approach towards recruitment if we are to attract the best-of-the-best to our companies.

“In order to attract this generation we need to support the notion that recruiting is a two way street. In addition to screening for skills and fits we need to  pay attention to supporting their hot buttons also” She explains.

In our forthcoming webinar Eberline will outline seven of these hot buttons which consist of:

Company Values Mission and purpose.

“At every opportunity underscore your companies higher purpose so they can pull context from social media.” She states

“The values, the mission, the benefits of a company should not be ignored in the recruiting process. Remember that these candidates have an unlimited amount of information and access to that information via the web. They will likely come to an interview with a great deal more knowledge than you might expect.”

The social media presence of your brand.

“Social is where they live we can’t ignore it.” Says Eberline “Use this as an outlet to educate candidates, to pull candidates in, to outline your values, just reach out because they will in turn be reaching out. This is the generation that makes that fan base weak or strong through social and it’s not afraid of liking or unliking so this does play a part in recruiting.”

Work life balance

“Something very important for millennials but it does not necessarily mean they are looking for an easy ride.” She insists

“On the contrary millennials are going to work very, very hard for you. That energy they bring is incredible but they are going to respect your respect for work life balance so don’t forget to include that in the conversation. “

Mentorship and training

“Mentorship and training is huge for millennials who really value face time.” Explains Eberline

“Now this may give us some unique challenges as many in field service are managing remote teams. However, if we put a TM at the end of FaceTime it becomes the app. Bring technology in to the mix to enable one to one time ads millennials value learning from others.”

Teamwork and shared goals

“Setting up situations and setting up role expectations that support their collaborative nature that shouldn’t be ignored.” Eberline comments

“Being able to encourage collaboration is something that will bring this generation to you and keep them with you longer.

Variety of experience and growth potential

“Variety is the spice of life.” She adds “They want to experience it all and they want to experience it as much as possible in their work world as much as in their private life. “

Social responsibility

“Millennials gravitate to companies with a strong social responsibility.” Eberline explains “So if your company has that outreach, if it has that as part of its company values then highlight it.”

 

---

 

To hear more from Eberline as well as an additional feature from Nick Frank looking at monetizing IoT in field service click here to register now.  

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature

As we draw closer to our next webinar we begin a new series looking at one of the key topics - the growing danger that field service is facing a real talent shortage within the next decade...

To register for the webinar that will accompany this series click here...

It’s a major challenge being faced in many industries but the statistics for field service companies, across all corners of the globe, are particularly bleak.

One such statistic is that 40% of Field Workers are over 40 years of age. That’s nearly half of our workforce that will need replacing within a twenty-year period.

Let’s consider another.

60% of companies are currently report that they are understaffed in their technical and highly skilled positions. This is also in an area where demand is predicted to grow twice as swiftly as other professions by the year 2025.

Whichever way we look at it we are under increasing pressure to meet a growing demand to acquire and retain new additions to our mobile workforces and this theme is at the heart of our forthcoming webinar with ServiceMax.

Indeed it is a topic that has come to the attention of the team at ServiceMax a number of times particularly in their customer focussed workshops and seminars.

Explaining further Randy Reynolds, VP Product Marketing, ServiceMax commented “We didn’t realise just what a critical area this was in the field service space” He began before explaining that it was in fact at a round table at last years MaxLive event in Paris that the dawning reality of the problem really struck home.

“What was interesting is that this is a conversation I was hearing a lot of” Reynolds continued before expanding further.

“Perhaps the first thing that I noticed a lot of our customers saying was that there are significant changes in the requirements to fill field service positions.”

 

“Historically they would be looking to hire people with very strong technical knowledge, very product related knowledge but now because the role of the field service technician is evolving, companies are looking for what we could consider softer skills.”

“Field Service companies are now looking for people that can interact with customers and deal with different situations that are out in the field.” Reynolds added “So rather than going out and looking for people with great vocational skills, many companies now feel that they can teach those skills on the job.  What they truly need is people who can relate to and really understand the customer, people who fundamentally understand the service equation side of the role.”

So if we return to our opening thoughts around the challenges we face in terms of replacing an ageing workforce, not only is their mounting pressure for us to seek out talent, there is also a need for us to reinvent the profile of our workers simultaneously.

Challenging times indeed.

Another of Reynolds colleagues at ServiceMax who has been doing a lot of work in this area is Patrice Eberline, ‎Vice President, Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax.

However Eberline, who has a wide background in professional management working across implementation, training, change management and deployment and adoption across a career spanning nearly twenty years, sees the current situation not only as a challenge but also an opportunity to truly ignite transformation for ‘future year staffing.’

Eberline, who is giving the lead presentation in our next webinar being hosted on the 20^th May at 4pm BST, admits that traditionally as an industry field service has been in a fortunate position when it comes to staffing.

“We’ve been lucky in field service in that traditionally we have had low turnover and high company loyalty.” She says “Folks come and work in field service and they make a career out of it. We really haven’t had employee churn as an issue to worry about in field service - however this is changing. “ She warns.

 

The problem, Eberline asserts runs far deeper than the challenge of replacing lost man hours. The underlying issue, which is even more worrying, is the loss of knowledge that goes with each and every individual that retires or moves on.

Knowledge that all too often isn’t documented either Eberline points out.

“I recently had a technician come into my home” she explains anecdotally “but being a little bit of a geek I’d spent ages looking all over the web for a solution to my problem.  Honestly I didn’t feel like there was much to be done but getting an engineer out was the next step before buying a replacement.”

“However, literally within 5 to 10 minutes of arriving the engineer had developed a work around that wasn’t listed anywhere in any documentation.  That fixed my problem and gave me some additional life on my device and promptly left me feeling wonderful about this – so this stuff is really important.” She concludes.

Indeed it is this threat of potential knowledge leakage that is perhaps the greatest danger of the ageing workforce crisis that field service companies face.

This knowledge, sometimes referred to as tribal knowledge, in that it is knowledge that is accrued through the years spent on the job, is starting to leave our businesses as the workforce reaches retirement age. So we need to capture this knowledge and find a way of releasing it quickly.

This is where we really need to embrace the technologies available, and systems such as ServiceMax are key to enabling product sharing platforms such as that implemented by Elekta in recent times.

As we see industry wide moves towards platform based approaches, driven largely by the success of Cloud based offerings such as Salesforce then the ability to not only document product knowledge but to have that knowledge as widely accessible as possible, integrating with numerous business areas such as field service software, CRM even accounting software can be hugely advantageous.

And as we look to the next generation of potential workers, the so-called millennial generation, this trait of open knowledge sharing is actually inherent to their makeup. This is a generation raised on social collaboration, so knowledge sharing should be second nature for them.

 

So perhaps the future is not as bleak as first it seems?

We need to make the transition away from tribal knowledge to social collaboration and we need to start doing it swiftly. But the technology is available and the next generation of field workers should have all the skills required to be able to adopt such an approach swiftly.

The challenge is going to be in making the transition from a to b as smooth as possible.

This most certainly will be easier said than done, however the work being done by Eberline and her peers will undoubtedly  help us in defining our own specific road map and this is something we shall be exploring in further features in this series as we lead up to the webinar on 20^th May.

---

To join us for this webinar click here and register now. 

---

be social and share this feature

Looking to the future is not just about which technology you should be applying to your mobile workforce to ensure that you are beating productivity level KPIs, it is also about looking at how you can ensure sustained growth within the business.

A key part of this is of course staffing.

However, for many companies an ageing workforce could prove to be a significant hurdle to not only growing their business but also to simply maintaining their existing size and standards. One such company that is attempting to tackle the issue before it becomes irreversible is Siemens.

“We have a habit of looking a few years ahead and we are looking at where will we be in 2020” states Graeme Coyne, Business Development Manager, Siemens Customer Services

“Our particular department is about 200 people in the UK. Based on the growth of our department over the last few years, we believe that by 2020 we will need around 250 people.” on to Coyne explains before going highlight the gravity of the situation that the manufacturing giant faced.

“We had a problem. We have 200 employees now and we needed 250 in six years time but we estimated we were going to lose about 100 people through retirement by then also”

“We’ve got an ageing population. I’ve personally been in Siemens for 30 years; the oldest person in our service organisation is 75 years old. There is a big bulge of people who are aged between 45 and 55 and we are expecting many of them to go fairly soon.”

Siemens are certainly not alone in facing this issue. Indeed it is a problem mirrored in many other companies in many other verticals. So what can be done to resolve the problem and build a sustainable workforce for the future?

 

The idea of these technology centres is that on the one side you’ve got academia producing skilled engineers of many different types and on the other side you’ve got some very good manufacturers. Sometimes in between we lose things and the idea is that these catapult centres are sat there to help avoid this”

Well of course the first thing to do is to look to engage with the next generation, something that Siemens have done through both traditional and non-traditional routes.

“We’ve gone out to the universities to sponsor students, we’ve got about 1,500 sponsors throughout the UK – it something we have to do.” Begins Coyne. However, Siemens are not just targeting graduates, they have an apprenticeship scheme that means they won’t miss out on those bright young minds that for whatever reason don’t see academia as the right path to choose.

“The other thing that we have done is that we have got 400 apprentices in the UK.” Coyne continues,  “I am told this is not enough. We were talking about taking people from the age of 13, 14 15 – it is essential. So we are trying to do our bit, we’re investing a lot of time and effort into it and it is starting to show results.”

However, the Siemens recruitment machine is far more sophisticated than just supporting and developing training programs.

“We think we are doing an OK job recruiting people” Coyne admits, “What we have been doing is we have been investing in manufacturing technology centres. These are important, as they are specialist areas which are invested in by academia, by manufacturers and by government.”

These technology centres are key to solving both the Siemens problem and that of the wider industry. By sitting in between the gap between business and academia they allow smart young minds to connect with industry without the pressure that may come from a more formal environment.

As Coyne explains “The idea of these technology centres is that on the one side you’ve got academia producing skilled engineers of many different types and on the other side you’ve got some very good manufacturers. Sometimes in between we lose things and the idea is that these catapult centres are sat there to help avoid this”

However, these centres play a deeper role in the recruitment and retention of the next generation of field engineers. They are also important to ensure that that next generation of field engineers are ready for the next generation of technology as well.

“All of our new technology is moving on, we are moving to industry 4.0.” Coyne begins “basically all the things we are trying to do is so we can get engineers to fit where this next wave of manufacturing technology is going to be”

This approach is commendably, but necessarily long sighted.

“We are talking about something that is not yet ready. It’s going to be ready in maybe 20 years but parts of it are already there.” However, the manufacturing technology centres, being co-funded by industry, education and state provide opportunities for the next generation of field engineers to start understanding and utilising tomorrows tools today.

This has two-fold importance. It ensures you are not only attracting the best minds but also that they are being readily prepared for the future.

“We need engineers that are fresh faced, fresh minds that know all about the current technology,” states Coyne. “But I’ve been out and talked to some of our graduates and asked what do you want “they said they want experience, they want to do as much as possible, learn as many skills as possible and get trained so that they can do many different things”

Getting this balance between what you and your future employees want is not an easy road but it is companies like Siemens who are investing in the future heavily today that will almost certainly be set to reap the rewards tomorrow.

 

 

Over recent months, recruitment in the field service market has boomed, with a wealth of opportunities now on offer for field service engineers, managers, representatives as well as specialist roles. John Cameron, general manager, Trimble Field Service Management (FSM) looks a little deeper into this trend...

In line with this boom, field service organisations are seeking a new type of worker, one which has the necessary technical ability to carry out skilled and complex work but which also has the interpersonal attributes to deal with, and build a relationship with, the customer.

Trimble recently released a report, ’Transforming Service Delivery 2014 – An Insight Report’, which investigates the most pressing issues affecting fleet and field service organisations today. Interestingly, the report found customer centricity to be at the heart of field service business’ strategies and highlighted an era in field service where customer satisfaction, retention and profitability are intrinsically linked. As a result, organisations are revolutionising their strategies in order to conform to growing customer expectations.

A direct impact of this has been the role of the field service worker, which has shifted from one of operational necessity to strategic importance. Why this shift? Because today’s customer values one-to-one interactions and with the field service worker often being the only contact a customer will have with a company, the quality of service and information the field worker provides can be the only way for customers to measure the integrity, credibility, effectiveness and overall brand promise of the service-based organisation.

The emergence of a ‘new’ field service worker

Jo Causon, chief executive of the Institute of Customer Service and third party expert cited in Trimble’s report, has found that having well trained and professional employees who are genuinely empowered to do their jobs is something that customers truly value.

“The biggest change we’ve seen in customer service,” Jo Causon explains, “is the move from a transactional economy to the relationship economy where value lies in one-to-one interactions and service leaders prevail in the marketplace. In a relationship economy companies that excel in customer service are increasingly able to cross into and disrupt marketplaces with a common purpose of changing the rules of engagement with the consumer and the employee, raising expectations of, and commitment to, service.”

With this shift, the skills agenda is becoming increasingly important as customers expect a greater level of engagement and real understanding of their needs. “Those organisations that concentrate on developing relationships rather than transactions will be the ones that are able to drive greater loyalty and commitment,” says Jo. “The types of new skills sets required are the ability to combine strong emotional intelligence, commercial acumen and technological awareness. All of which will be integral in an environment which is increasingly complex. There will be a growing challenge for organisations to bring together the required skills in order to deliver service experiences that are simple and intuitive and run across the organisation.”

Field service organisations therefore need to ask themselves when they are recruiting, are the individuals they are interviewing those who have not only the technical skills to do the field service role but also the  required emotional intelligence to make the connection with the customer.

 

Will Sambrook managing director of The Akenham Partnership and an additional expert cited in Trimble’s report, says of field service organisations, “I think a lot of organisations are often guilty of wanting people, especially young people, to arrive at the workplace ‘ready’ for the work and the culture and it’s not as simple as that.

“Businesses need to do more to engage with the colleges and schools showing students what they can expect from an organisation like theirs. What they can do in terms of getting themselves ready, demonstrate where their career can go in their industry.”[quote float="right"]Aberdeen found best-in-class companies were 35% more likely to use workforce management solutions such as performance management tools to optimise resources and workforce management processes.

 

But it is not just new starters in a company that need to be considered.  It is essential that any changes being implemented to an organisation, whether it is rolling out new technology or processes or ways of working, are communicated thoroughly to the existing workforce. Engagement is essential for a successful outcome. Employees need to be fully prepared so that a culture can be fostered in which they understand the changes, why they are needed and how to embrace them.

Will Sambrook adds, “Board engagement is absolutely essential. But it is important that Boards do not believe they have to be all-seeing, all-doing or all-acting. Their role is much more about creating the line of sight, from the Board strategy to what’s happening in the organisation; the processes, the people, their engagement with the customer – everything is aligned.”

Retaining top performers

In terms of field service workers it is not just about focussing on those being recruited or going through change but also managing those in the business and doing the job every day. Best-in-class organisations understand the ramifications of having an undertrained, underqualified workforce. When a company sends a field service worker on a service call, the worker needs to resolve the issue the first time. According to Aberdeen, however, 26% of cases are not resolved on the first visit, requiring additional follow up visits. While this is not all down to skillset, it nonetheless erodes customer confidence and can reflect the need for worker training.

One way managers of field based workforces can manage performance is through the use of workforce management solutions which provide capabilities to evaluate field worker performance and determine who delivers the best results. Once managers identify best-in-class workers they should do what they can to retain them. Aberdeen found best-in-class companies were 35% more likely to use workforce management solutions such as performance management tools to optimise resources and workforce management processes.

For more information on the transforming landscape of customer service and associated change and skills gap download Trimble’s latest industry report, ‘Transforming Service Delivery: An Insight Report’ via the following link: www.trimble.com/fsm/insightreport