For companies that rely on physical assets to deliver services and products, having a loyal and efficient maintenance workforce will usually make the difference between success and failure. Our internal study, as well as other industry surveys, shows that there is a glaring shortage of skilled maintenance workers. 

It is a complaint we hear from maintenance managers on a daily basis. This situation may not improve anytime soon. 

If you are one of those business owners or managers that have a hard time retaining and finding maintenance workers, this post is a must-read.

Why is having a loyal workforce important? 

Loyal employees are committed to the company’s success, they embrace the company’s objectives and work hard daily to help the company get to its desired destination. In view of the talent shortage in maintenance roles, having loyal employees on your side is crucial now more than ever.

For better or worse, employee loyalty has to be earned. As an employer, you need to take deliberate action to grow a loyal workforce.  

Before you start making any changes in your maintenance department, if you really want to make positive changes in your maintenance department, you first need to understand what really matters to maintenance workers.

What do maintenance workers care about?

The best way to find out what workers want is to just go ahead and ask them. It is not that hard to create an anonymous Google Form survey and ask workers to take 5 and share their opinions – after all, that is in their best interest.

If you are unable to do that for whatever reason, here is some research we did instead. We jumped over to Indeed’s company review section and searched for reviews of the biggest manufacturing companies in the US. 

Here are some of those summarized in the form of screenshots.

A recurring trend we noticed during the research is that plant workers are particularly happy about things like: 

• A great work atmosphere
• The ability to learn new skills
• Health insurance coverage 
• Good benefits and growth opportunities
• Fair pay

What often caused issues are things like:

• No sense of belonging
• Toxic work environment
• Poor trust in colleagues
• Frequent overtime
• Incompetent managers and supervisors

Many of those issues can be fixed without significant investments, by adjusting business processes and practices.

Traditional rewards and incentives 

Before we dive deeper into tips and examples for creating a loyal maintenance workforce, let’s look at some of the conventional no-brainer rewards and incentives for employees:

• Offer monetary bonuses and profit-sharing opportunities.
• Fair pay for fair work. Everything else we are going to mention in this post won’t make a difference if you pay your staff poorly.
• Health benefits. It is not a secret that employees prefer businesses that offer health benefits, especially in the industrial sector.
• Extra vacation time. Additional vacation time doesn’t need to mean extended periods off; a few days at a time can make a lot of difference.

Those are all self-explanatory so let’s go straight to the rewards and incentives that might not be so obvious. 

#1) Provide the option of flexible work

A 2022 survey by BCG covered 16,000 workers in the industrial sector globally and revealed that among other things, more than half (55%) of workers in that sector now want to work remotely for at least two or three days a week. The interviewed workers also mentioned their prioritization of a better work-life balance. 

As long as normal business routines and processes are not at risk of being disrupted, consider offering your maintenance staff a more flexible schedule. You could ask them: 

• which shifts they prefer to work
• do they prefer on-site or field work
• who they like to work with the most in a shift
• type of tasks they feel they are the most qualified to perform
• anything else you can use to create a more flexible schedule at your facility

Of course, this is all very situational, but might be worth exploring for larger teams. 

#2) Invest in training programs

Some employees, especially younger ones, will consider leaving the company to further their professional development.

The same BCG study we mentioned above also touched on another important issue that concerns maintenance workers. According to the report, industrial workers are concerned about  the potential threat that automation poses to their livelihoods. As a result, more than ever before, they are willing to reskill, retrain, or upskill to remain relevant in the workforce of the future. 

Also, according to LinkedIn’s 2019 learning program, a whopping 94% of employees would have remained at a previous company longer if they had been offered more training and development opportunities.

You can use all of this to your advantage. The training doesn’t have to be offered just for the sake of training. Explore what kind of skills you are missing and offer your maintenance team the option to get a certification in that specific area. 

If push comes to shove, you should also consider expanding the maintenance training program to other plant floor workers. For example, machine operators can be trained to perform basic routine maintenance tasks on the equipment they work with. This is the essence of autonomous maintenance. 

#3) Take advantage of modern tech

Maintenance work can be hard, repetitive, and dirty. While you can’t stop grease and oil from staining their new overalls, you can ensure they have access to proper tools that will make their daily life easier and more engaging.

Technology can be applied here in many different ways, from process digitalization to modern industrial maintenance tools.

For example, a company can implement a CMMS to streamline and organize all of its maintenance resources. This will also eliminate much of the cumbersome paperwork and administrative work that maintenance professionals love doing every day.

A maintenance department that lacks digital tools will struggle to accomplish work in the most efficient manner. Even worse, when new employees come in and discover your spreadsheets, logbooks, and worn-out tools, they will have a hard time sticking around.

Last but not least, for those that have a budget to spare, you can also consider investing into:

• VR and Augmented reality (AR) enabled devices that can be used for maintenance training and inspections in several industries without interfering with the normal operation of the assets.
• Drones. These unmanned vehicles present the opportunity to improve efficiency and reduce workplace accidents, especially if your technicians are doing a lot of work in the field. They can be used for monitoring remote facilities or inspecting dangerous work environments, such as hard-to-reach rooftops, towers, power lines, etc.

#4) Introduce employee referral programs

In view of the maintenance skill shortages, employee referral programs offer a unique opportunity for the company and staff alike. 

Basically, an employee referral program is a way to enlist the help of current staff when finding new talent. Companies ask their staff to search within their networks and recommend candidates for open job roles rather than leveraging traditional methods of hiring, such as classified ads or job boards. 

If their recommendation is a good fit and they successfully join the company, your staff get a reward.

According to Zippia, up to 45% of employees referred by colleagues will remain with the company for more than four years, compared to only 25% of employees sourced through job boards and other conventional channels.

Tips for making referrals work:

• Don’t assume that your employees know what you’re looking for. Ensure that specific job requirements for vacant positions are clearly communicated. 
• Offer a mix of monetary and non-monetary incentives.
• Design a well-thought-out employee referral program.

#5) Show the workers how they are making a difference

Another way to gain and build employee loyalty is to show your staff how their actions positively impact the company’s success on an ongoing basis.

Specifically, show them how their productivity contributes to organizational growth. You can demonstrate this by tracking certain performance metrics and sharing the results with them at intervals.

The following metrics will help your organization to pinpoint where it has been, where it is going, and whether maintenance KPIs are on course or not:

• Completed work. Track the number of completed WOs and PMs. If applicable, also show how many items were removed from the deferred maintenance backlog.
• Cost savings. Compare maintenance costs over time and show staff how their efforts have helped to reduce operational costs.
• Downtime saved. Track equipment downtime and let your staff see the improvements over time.
• Work quality. Routinely collect feedback from your customers and upper management and discuss your findings with your staff.

The idea is to present a kind of “before and after” overview to let them better understand their relevance in the big picture.

Limble CMMS customers like to use our custom dashboard to set up relevant metrics which can be projected on a monitor so workers can track those statistics in real-time.  

#6) Improve the overall working conditions and team atmosphere

Working in a comfortable and positive atmosphere can help to keep your maintenance staff motivated and encourage them to keep coming to work and produce quality results. However, conducive working conditions are not just about the physical environment. 

Many times the general company culture and the sense of belonging that comes with being part of an efficient and vibrant team matters to employees almost as much as the physical workspace. In addition, building a great team atmosphere requires a mix of hard and soft skills. 

People need to be good at their jobs but that’s not all – they must get along with others as well.

Tips for making this work:

• Maintenance work is often risky. Invest in keeping workers safe by providing tools, information, and equipment to facilitate safe work.
• Train and retrain your managers and supervisors to be leaders, not bosses – remember, workers don’t leave their jobs, they leave bad managers. Also, it really helps if the workers feel that their managers are fighting for them and not just following orders from top management.
• When hiring workers, try to look at both their hard and soft skills.
• Develop a robust onboarding program for new employees to offer them a safety net and show them the ropes.

#7) Offer a clear promotion path for high-performing technicians

The 80/20 rule suggests that 80% of the work is done by 20% of employees. Even if that is a little extreme, it is really important to know who your high-performers are.    

To retain top talent and keep them motivated, you need to give them a clear career path to follow.

By carving out promotion paths for high-performing employees, you are making it known that your company prioritizes, values, and actively promotes career development for staff that are willing to put in the work. 

Of course, if the promotion is not what they are looking for, talk with them and find out what makes them tick. Spending resources on retaining top talent will often give you a better ROI than searching for a cheaper replacement.

Time to put words into actions 

In all of our recent talks with existing and potential customers, labor shortage stands out as a key issue.

A couple of things we can do to help is reduce your staffing needs by improving productivity – which we’re already doing by providing the best mobile maintenance software on the market. The other way is producing articles like these, which we hope will be just as helpful.

For more content about managing labor shortages and all things maintenance, keep exploring our blog.