Motivando a los Técnicos de Mantenimiento 101

Anyone who runs a business knows that success is often tied closely to the performance of employees. An entire industry has grown up around selecting, retaining, and most importantly, motivating professionals to work hard and well.

This is true in the maintenance world, where technicians are often called in to fight fires, solve difficult problems, and work within challenging circumstances. Companies that find ways to properly motivate maintenance technicians will have a loyal and hard-working team that’s happy to keep all their critical equipment running reliably and consistently. Those that fail may find an unpleasant ripple effect that negatively impacts many aspects of their operations.

So, what motivates maintenance technicians? For most, they simply take pride in knowing their company’s equipment assets are running to specification. Technicians want equipment to do the right thing at the right time.

In order to experience this, maintenance technicians must see that the company, management, training, and systems are available to help them achieve that goal. 

What Is Motivation?

Motivation is the reason for actions, willingness, and goals. So, what does that mean? It means motivation is the purpose for what we do, proactive or reactive, and our willingness to do that or not. It affects the goals we set for ourselves.

Motivation is derived from the word “motive” or a need requiring satisfaction. Many maintenance technicians are satisfied when their equipment runs well. Others may enjoy chasing the breakdowns.

These needs, wants, and desires may be acquired through the influence of culture, society, lifestyle, and may generally be innate. These also may vary a great deal from company to company and from country to country.

Maintenance Technician Hierarchy of Needs

Every maintenance technician, or really any employee, has a hierarchy of needs that he or she is trying to meet on a day-to-day basis. Different people will have different priorities and values. Great leaders work to fill each person's needs by connecting those needs with their role in the company. Here are some of the most important needs.

• Job Security. Most technicians want to know that when they come to work, they can come again the next day. They need to be able to support their family and others in their community, as well as feel confident in themselves and their work.

• Money. Although many try not to focus on money, the bottom line is it’s an important need that motivates technicians to stay at an organization or switch jobs.

• Respect. Maintenance technicians want respect, especially in organizations when it becomes part of the culture to isolate them just to do their jobs. They need to feel part of a team; that they’re working toward a common goal and are respected for their role.

• Available Parts. Maintenance supervisors should take special care to ensure parts are available when a technician is assigned a work order.

• Where to Go for Help. Technicians want to know which resources and people are available if they have questions about this or that system.

• Training. Learning and growing on an ongoing basis is also important for many maintenance technicians. Allot time and money for your team to learn how to mitigate equipment failure, understand things like preventive maintenance, and find root causes.

Motivation Proven Concepts

Given this hierarchy of needs, how do you motivate maintenance technicians? Here are some proven concepts to adopt in your organization if they don’t already exist.

• Great Environment. Prioritize creating a great place to work for your maintenance technicians. Provide all the needed tools, clear procedures, and a fully functional computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).

• Opportunities for Self-Development. Offer different avenues and support for your maintenance technicians to grow in their careers. Help foster their particular interests and find ways for them to acquire new skills.

• Foster Collaboration. Create a collaborative environment within your workplace. Emphasize the importance of working together and help technicians support one another in day-to-day tasks.

• Encourage Happiness. Fewer breakdowns equals less stress and more happiness.

• Don’t Punish Failure. Instead of passing around blame after a failure, look for the root cause and how to fix it.

• Set Clear Goals. Technicians need to understand goals. Don’t make them complicated; keep things simple.

• Never Show Anger. Everyone gets angry, but it’s important for supervisors to protect technicians from that discouragement.

• Never Delegate Something You Wouldn’t Do Yourself. Supervisors should show technicians that they’re no different and willing to do the hard stuff. Set the example.

• Use a Dashboard. Everyone loves competition. Help your technicians score in the game. Track and show goals and progress for maintenance labor hours, PM labor hours, emergency urgent labor hours, schedule compliance, rework, and so forth.

Why Are Maintenance Technicians Not Motivated?

If you have an organization where maintenance technicians are not as motivated as you’d like them to be, take a closer look at your processes, procedures, and culture to see if any of the following are present.

• Lack of Expressed Appreciation. It’s not enough for management to appreciate maintenance technicians, management has to demonstrate and communicate this appreciation regularly. Does your organization have an established channel for that to occur?

• Unmet Maintenance Schedules. It can be extremely frustrating when technicians arrive at work expecting to execute a specific job, and then discover the job has changed or been replaced by a different job.

• Lack of Information and Parts. It’s very difficult for technicians to succeed and stay motivated if they don’t have the right information, established procedures, or correct resources to do their jobs properly.

• Forgotten Patches. Everyone knows that a quick patch may be required sometimes to keep production moving, but be sure to schedule proper maintenance as soon as possible. Technicians get stressed knowing that something is running out of specification.

• High Overtime. Most technicians are willing to put in a little extra time now and again, but don’t make this the status quo. Help technicians keep the balance of family and fun along with work.

• Lack of Leadership. Be sure leaders don’t make excuses for failures, remain accountable for their own roles in problems, and are well-versed in the company’s maintenance processes and procedures.

• Lack of Empowerment. Technicians need to feel heard, especially when they suggest changes and improvements. It can be unmotivating if technicians lack the budget, skills, authority, or tools to make the changes they see that need to be made.

Technician Knowledge of Proactive Maintenance

By making sure your technicians have a solid knowledge of maintenance processes, planning, and scheduling, you’ll arm them with the tools they need to both succeed and be motivated.

Consider using something like a maintenance scheduling process map, which isolates scheduling tasks from planning tasks. Teach technicians about work execution specifications using repeatable procedures, which outlines each step on a work order, initial equipment condition, final equipment condition, and feedback.

Be sure to include a failure report analysis of the corrective action system. It’s important to learn from failures, perform analysis on them, and make corrective actions so these failures don’t reoccur.

Then, track all your key performance indicators on a maintenance scorecard. You may want to start very simple with KPIs such as PM compliance, percent of planned work, schedule compliance, accurate work order closing, and percent of rework. Most technicians find competition and public dashboards motivating.

Human Motivation

Remember that maintenance technicians are simply human beings, motivated by many of the same things common to all. They want self-actualization. They’ll try to accomplish what they can as long as they feel like they have the capacity to do it. If technicians feel unable to accomplish particular tasks, it’s difficult to even try.

As a maintenance supervisor, you want to find scenarios that allow technicians to succeed. This, in turn, helps them develop the confidence to try additional tasks.

If a technician manages to solve a difficult problem, make them a hero, but do so in a low-key way. Most technicians don’t want to be publicly acknowledged, but certainly appreciate a thank you. Be sure to reward and praise attempts even if they fail, and work together to find a solution. Give your team autonomy; most will rise to the challenge of doing what they need to do.

You’ll also want to be attuned to the personal growth goals of your maintenance technicians. Becoming a certified maintenance and reliability technician is a great step in any technician’s career.

Attributes of a Proactive Maintenance Technician

Once your organization puts things in place to motivate your maintenance technician or team of technicians, you’ll begin seeing an attitude shift in day-to-day work. Ideally, technicians will take more and more responsibility for their tasks and become much more proactive. So what are the attributes of a proactive maintenance technician? Here are some things to look for: 

• Equipment at Specification. Proactive technicians ensure all maintenance work is executed to specification. Breakdown work will be done to temporary specification until more permanent fixes can be made.

• Equipment in a Controlled State. Preventive maintenance results in expected outcomes.

• Seeking Knowledge. Proactive technicians are always looking for on-site, off-site, and vendor training opportunities.

• Immediate Notification. When proactive technicians see that equipment is not performing on spec, they notify the supervisor immediately.

7 Habits of a Highly Effective Maintenance Technician

Taking the lead from Stephen Covey’s well-known book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, let’s look at the 7 habits of highly effective maintenance technicians.

1. Begin each day with the following attitude: I am a professional, and my focus is always to do the best I can, no matter the challenges I face today.

2. Seek knowledge. Technicians should look for online webinars, join the Society for Maintenance & Reliability Professionals (SMRP) and take advantage of their training and resources, pursue the Certified Maintenance & Reliability Technician (CMRT) designation, and read books and vendor documents.

3. Perform all proactive maintenance activities using repeatable procedures to minimize human-induced errors.

4. Have a positive attitude. No matter how difficult something seems, a positive attitude can  make a big difference.

5. Make smart patches and accompanying corrective work orders to restore to specification later.

6. Notify a supervisor immediately if you see equipment not performing to specifications or an operator having problems. Don’t just walk by; stop and engage.

7. Perform preventive maintenance as a controlled experiment.

Steps to Increase Motivation of Your Maintenance Technicians

Now that we understand the goals, attributes, and behaviors of motivated technicians, how do we get there? Here are some concrete steps to do just that:

1. Build trust and rapport with the team to establish a safe and honest foundation and work environment. Treat technicians as people, not just as wrenches.

2. Ask your technicians to complete a survey each year. Encourage them to complete the survey by giving them a chance to win a dinner for two at a restaurant of their choice.

3. Bring in a sales person or a maintenance trainer once a week to educate the team on specific topics. For example, one topic may be causes of bearing failures.

4. Gift technicians with specific pocket manuals. Give mechanics a Mechanical Trades Pocket Handbook. Electricians should get the Electrician’s Pocket Manual. 

5. Design a simple and quick win training program taught by one of your maintenance technicians every week. Offer four hours of overtime for doing one, focused on something simple like how to use the V-belt guide.

6. Use tool box talks. A maintenance supervisor should conduct these training sessions until the crew takes responsibility for what they’re learning. At that point, technicians should rotate responsibility for giving them. Finish with an open dialogue between the maintenance crew. Then, post the toolbox training for refreshers.

7. Review rework. Troubleshoot and identify the true root cause of the problem. Brainstorm reasons why rework occurred to raise the overall awareness. Use basic root cause analysis tools like the five whys process. After five sessions, post rework metrics to see the progress being made.

8. Offer formal training. Teach maintenance technician best practices. Offer time and money to have technicians take the CMRT exam. 

9. Post a scorecard. Let them know what the score in the game is. What is PM compliance? What is the yield? What percentage of work is PM? What is scheduled compliance, rework, and stock-out this week? How many emergency labor hours were there?

FAQs

What are best practices for motivating an entire maintenance organization across many facilities?

Start with the maintenance team that’s most likely to succeed. It’ll be easier, and success will breed interest and desire for other teams. 

What if management isn’t thinking along the same lines as maintenance professionals?

Ask what’s in it for them and talk their language. Think about their priorities and talk about maintenance in terms of whatever they’re most concerned about, whether that be reducing costs, decreasing downtime, or improving customer service.

Should you give small gifts for a job well done?

Yes, that can be a good idea. Dinner for two at a restaurant of the technician’s choice can also be used to challenge a team to figure out a solution to a hard problem.

Should you involve technicians in maintenance planning and, if so, how much?

Assign one maintenance technician per week to work with a maintenance planner, so technicians learn how planning and scheduling works. You’ll see schedule compliance increase exponentially.

If there’s a discipline issue, should you act as a manager or a leader?

They’re the same; discipline is part of the job. Just let people know if they made a mistake. Most of the time, a simple correction works. If someone is constantly making mistakes, put things in writing, alert them of a deadline to improve, track things for 30 days, and then notify HR. If they improve, offer that the mistake will not go on their personnel record.

How do you motivate technicians to develop new habits and adapt to changes?

Technology brings opportunity. Begin by making sure they’re trained in that technology, and then make it part of your processes. Take one step at a time.

Can promotions be another form of motivation?

Start with a job task analysis and then measure the skill level of each technician. There should be natural progression from one skill level to the next, evaluated by a combination of written tests and hands-on applications, which can fuel promotions.

This article is based on a webinar "Motivating Maintenance Technicians 101" with Ricky Smith. To view the recording of the webinar, click this link. 

Author bio:

Ricky Smith, CMRP, CMRT, CRL, is the Maintenance Expert in Residence at UpKeep and Consultant at World Class Maintenance. He’s held a wide range of roles from maintenance supervisor, to maintenance manager, to maintenance company commander while serving in Iraq. Ricky’s wide global experience has brought him a unique perspective that “Maintenance is maintenance, it doesn’t matter where you go.”