In today’s competitive marketplace, businesses in commercial real estate, retail, grocery, restaurants, hospitality, and other sectors rely heavily on their technical workforce. Ensuring these skilled tradesmen are effectively recruited, trained, and developed is crucial for operational efficiency and delivering exceptional customer experiences.
Here are some top technical workforce strategies to help businesses unlock their potential and stay ahead of the competition.
What Is the Technical Workforce?
The term “technical workforce” can mean different things to different people, but it’s generally used to describe tradesmen, technicians, or craft workers — that is, individuals who are skilled in a particular trade, such as electrical work or HVAC maintenance or repair. While their jobs require some education in technology, they’re not usually trained in science or engineering, but rather the technical arts.
Anyone who works in facilities management knows the tech workforce is diminishing and becoming less skilled over time. It’s also an aging workforce, with the average technician age in the mid-forties, according to the NECA (National Electrical Contractors Association), ACCA (Air Conditioner Contractors of America), and PHCC (Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association).
In the face of such challenges, it’s becoming difficult for employers to find qualified professionals to fill essential roles, keep them engaged, and ensure they perform at a high level.
This makes it essential for businesses to understand how to fill the gap left behind by retiring technical workers and develop strategies to retain and advance their current workforce.
6 Technical Workforce Strategies to Power Up Your Operations
1. Get competitive
For any facilities or operations department to function optimally, it’s essential to attract not just qualified technicians but top-tier talent. It all starts with offering a competitive compensation package.
“You have to know your market,” says Tamara Joiner, who as Senior Vice President of People & Safety at City US oversees strategy for people hiring, training, and engagement practices as well as driving consulting initiatives for CCS (City Consulting Services).
When conducting a thorough compensation evaluation, companies must first decide their pay strategy and whether they want to lag the market, be the market, or lead the market.
Choosing a pay strategy is fundamentally a philosophical decision that each business must make independently,” Tamara says. “If you decide to lag the market in compensation, however, it’s important to make sure you have other benefits or perks that enhance your offering such as robust health insurance options, retirement plans with company matching, paid time off, wellness initiatives, growth and development paths, and bonuses.” Even being behind the leading rates by a small margin, such as two to four percent, is enough to deter top talent, Tamara notes.
2. Align roles with business goals
It’s important to evaluate positions for job alignment to ensure strong retention and optimal operations.
“Make sure technicians are aligned with what their role is and understand how it supports the goals of the business,” Tamara says.
Make sure technicians are aligned with what their role is and understand how it supports the goals of the business. Tamara Joiner, SVP of People & Safety at City US
Regularly reviewing job descriptions, responsibilities, and expectations ensures employees are clear about their roles and how they contribute to the organization’s success, which in turn fosters job satisfaction and retention.
3. Strengthen your training
“Providing continual learning opportunities to level up skills is critical for developing technician’s adept at managing evolving and emerging technologies,” says George Campbell, who as Director of Technical Services oversees technical training for CCS. “Improving these skills on a regular basis can have a significant impact on asset uptime, customer experience, and overall operations costs.”
Improving these skills on a regular basis can have a significant impact on asset uptime, customer experience, and overall operations costs. George Campbell, Director of Technical Services at City US
One of the most important things to keep in mind is the importance of simulation and practical training. “The current training standard is to pair the new guy up with an experienced guy for a few weeks of on-the-job training, and that’s as far as it goes,” says George. “But there’s no substitute for hands-on experience when it comes to the trades.”
High-quality technician training involves creating customized training programs with practical exercises and realistic scenarios. For example, CCS creates custom training programs tailored to an organization’s unique needs through First Coast Technical Academy, their training center based in Jacksonville, FL dedicated to upskilling technicians through their flexible weekly class offerings. CCS also provides extensive self-study and on-demand resources post-training to support ongoing development.
“We take the exact or similar equipment the technicians will be working on in the field and create a hands-on training experience as well as the curriculum to support it,” explains George. “The result is technicians who are empowered to thrive in their own environments with better troubleshooting and problem-solving skills and greater confidence.”
| Read Facilities Management Training Tips for more insights and best practices on technical workforce training. |
4. Strengthen processes
Even the best-trained technicians will struggle to be productive in the absence of streamlined and effective processes. This makes it vital to review aspects of your process, including:
- Managing job orders
- Job distribution
- Technician communication channels and practices
- Software technologies
- Parts ordering
- Other operational elements
By ensuring these components are as efficient as possible, you can ensure technician productivity and morale stay high. The result is not only maximized asset uptime but also stronger retention.
5. Align talent acquisition with operations departments
“In technical industries, it’s common to find that talent acquisition teams are disconnected to the business and lack an understanding of how the technicians they hire will fit in,” says Tamara. “As a result, HR departments will flip candidates directly to managers and let the managers do all the work.” This can lead to misalignment in expectations, skills, and cultural fit, ultimately causing inefficiencies in hiring and integrating new talent.
The first step, Tamara says, is a skills assessment. “We conduct a deep and thorough technical assessment before we put them in front of the recruiting and hiring teams,” she says.
Whether you’re outsourcing recruitment or doing it internally, it’s important to make sure talent acquisition personnel are closely connected to operations and technical teams. “Ideally, technicians should possess both industry experience and a thorough understanding of the market,” says Tamara. “This ensures that new recruits are a good fit from the outset.”
Technical skills aren’t the only consideration. It’s important to note that skills assessment also includes evaluating the technician’s soft skills, like adaptability, willingness to learn, problem-solving, and the ability to handle customer interactions. “Top-tier technicians are top-tier because not only are they technically proficient, but they’re also dedicated to the customer and care about the service they provide.”
Top-tier technicians are top-tier because not only are they technically proficient, but they’re also dedicated to the customer and care about the service they provide. Tamara Joiner, SVP of People & Safety at City US
| For more technical workforce recruitment best practices, check out our guide, Mastering the Art of Technician Recruitment in 4 Steps. |
6. Don’t forget your leadership
When developing your technical workforce, take your whole team into account — including those in leadership roles in back-office support departments like operations, real estate, and facilities management.
By investing in their on-the-job success and career growth, you can ensure they have what it takes to effectively guide their teams. Additionally, focusing on the growth and development of your leadership team helps to align, motivate, and equip your entire workforce to meet both current and future business challenges.
Here are some steps you can take:
- Revisit job descriptions to make sure they’re up to date and accurately reflect responsibilities and expectations, including required skills and experience.
- Outline clear leadership paths to provide a roadmap for career progression and skills development for advanced roles.
- Implement succession planning to facilitate a seamless transition when current leaders move on to other opportunities or retire.
- Invest in leadership development programs to upskill your leadership. For example, at CCS, we developed a 21-week leadership development program (LDP) that includes instructor-led live learning sessions, reading assignments, and project assignments.
- Encourage mentoring and coaching within your organization by pairing experienced leaders with emerging ones.
Take Your Technical Workforce Development to the Next Level
With our 40 years of global facilities management experience, City Consulting Services (CCS) offers unparalleled technical workforce expertise. Our people experts have recruited and trained thousands of technical staff in competitive markets and developed training frameworks to advance critical skills. Our proven strategies ensure your workforce grows alongside your organization’s needs — and we can even help you implement them.
2016: City US is established in North America, in partnership with Southeastern Grocers (SEG), servicing over 750 supermarkets across 7 southern states.
1985: Willie and Susan Haughey establish City Refrigeration Holdings (UK) Ltd in Glasgow, UK.
2009: City Australia launches in Melbourne, in partnership with Coles, servicing over 700 supermarkets across the country.
2015: City Asia launches in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in partnership with Dairy Farm, servicing over 205 supermarkets across the region.