Written by Employee retention is an important issue for any business that is dependent on a mobile workforce. However, in the field service industry this is especially crucial as not having enough employees means the work will not get done and losses will follow. Professional services as a whole have a high turnover rate compared to many other jobs, with over 11% of employees leaving their job within the last year. Only retail and technology have higher turnover rates.
Let’s address how we can combat this issue in the field service industry. Here are six strategies to help retain your technicians and staff and keep your company running smoothly.
1. Make the Job feel like a Real Career
Opportunities for better pay and growth are a common reason why field service techs, and most employees in general, switch jobs or careers. By offering things like pay raises, training, or other opportunities, employees will feel like they are actually accomplishing something rather than just trading their time and labor for money. Continual education along with constantly learning a broad range of new skills can help them grow as individuals and give them abilities that will be useful throughout their careers.
2. Keep Technology Up to Date
There are many phone apps, computer programs, and other tools that will make a field service tech’s job easier. It is important to make sure employees have access to the latest forms of field service technology so that they are not wasting time and money, or working harder than they need to be. mHelpDesk comes packed with many features designed specifically to make field service staff and technicians’ lives easier.
3. Enlist Better Communication and Feedback Channels
Employees always want to feel like they are valued and their management actually cares about them. Because your techs will spend so much time alone in their vehicles and only interact with customers rather than co-workers, it is important to provide some kind of channels that allow them to share ideas or voice concerns, while properly delegating the right tasks to an administrative assistant rather than the technician.
4. Perform an Audit
It is important to have some system in place to see how jobs are going and learn about what could be improved between customer and employee interactions. Making adjustments to streamline each job will ultimately make the technician’s job easier, while giving important information for administrative staff about how to improve customer service, eliminate inefficiencies, etc. A field service app like mHelpDesk helps teams access to communication logs to keep track of what’s being sent out to customers, jobs that are in flight and even reports on staff productivity.
5. Respect their Life Outside of the Job
Employees tend to not stay and work for companies where they feel like a cog in a large, uncaring machine. Younger workers are likely to switch jobs for intangibles like a better balance between their life outside of the job and career ambitions than previous generations. Make sure technicians and staff have enough paid time off and their time is respected by not expecting them to do things like work a long shift at a moment’s notice. If they are unhappy with their ability to spend time with their families or do other important things outside of their work hours, it is only a matter of time before they leave.
6. Minimize Travel Time
Field service technicians are in a difficult situation where they do a lot of driving or traveling that is not directly tied to their job duties. This can become wasteful and stressful without some kind of system to properly manage their time, optimize their routes and minimize the amount of time your technicians are spending just to get from one place to another. mHelpDesk makes it easy to ensure the most optimized scheduling of your techs in the field. You can see tech and job locations in real-time to effectively assign jobs and plan efficient route for your team.
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Last modified: July 24, 2019
