TRSA’s Maintenance Network Connections on April 30 covered key issues in building and maintaining a high-performing technician workforce in linen and uniform service operations. This virtual roundtable discussion enabled the participants to learn from industry colleagues’ experience recruiting and retaining these professionals, widely acknowledged for difficulty in hiring and retaining them.
Participants were split into two groups so all could see who they were talking with, as each of their names and faces could be displayed on the same Zoom gallery screen. To enable everyone to speak frankly, confidentiality was maintained and the sessions weren’t recorded.
At first, the entire group took a poll, with about half of the group responding to it. They identified two or three of the following as of great importance to them in perpetuating their companies’ technician workforces (percent of respondents identifying each function as such):
- Skill testing in hiring 68%
- Subsequent training 68%
- Initial training 53%
- Onboarding 21%
- Performance evaluation 21%
- Pay scales (Tech 1, Tech 2) 21%
- Job satisfaction measures 16%
- Job interviews 11%
TRSA member moderators of the discussion included:
- Darrin Smith, Kannegiesser North America, Minneapolis, MN
- Phil Vershaw, Mickey’s Linen, Chicago, IL
- Steve Schock, Spindle Technologies, Woodridge, IL
- Joel Bell, UniFirst Corp., Wilmington, MA
Moderators worked from a list of these questions for their groups to prompt discussion:
- How do you know that a tech or maintenance supervisor has the skills to grow to a manager or leader of maintenance operations?
- When an individual has this capability, what additional steps do you take to retain the person in their current role, suspecting they realize another professional opportunity may exist for them elsewhere to move up and they may leave?
- Discuss the org structure of your maintenance department, how many people, doing what, and how many pounds the plant or plants produce in day or week?
- When preventive maintenance is delayed, what’s the usual cause?
TRSA’s Maintenance Manager Job Analysis Report enables large-scale laundries to assess competencies required for performance. Initiated by a task force of subject-matter experts, the analysis identifies task capabilities and knowledge requirements, validated by a practitioner survey.
Click here to order the analysis and here to order it discounted with its companion for production managers.
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