{"id":16729,"date":"2022-11-30T16:47:31","date_gmt":"2022-11-30T16:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fieldnation.com\/?p=16729"},"modified":"2023-01-27T21:23:17","modified_gmt":"2023-01-27T21:23:17","slug":"quiet-quitting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fieldnation.com\/resources\/quiet-quitting","title":{"rendered":"Quiet quitting in field services: Why you need to reconsider the type of work you\u2019re assigning to your most valuable employees"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Shawn Fields, Senior Field Services Strategist, Field Nation<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cQuiet Quitting\u201d is the newest buzzword in the post-pandemic world of talent. The term refers to a situation where workers do the bare minimum required by their job\u2013\u2013and no more. Historically, union workers have referred to this phenomenon as \u201cwork to rule.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

One might ask, \u201cWell\u2026where\u2019s the harm in that? I\u2019m doing exactly what I was hired to do. If my company wanted me to do more, they should include it in my job description and increase my compensation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And there\u2019s the rub. For decades, American workers have done much more than just \u201cphone it in.\u201d Baby boomers – referred to as \u201cTraditionalists\u201d in Linda Gratton\u2019s recent McKinsey survey – have always given more than just the bare minimum. They would work extra hours each day. They worked nights and weekends. The expectation for that generation (especially the salaried management levels) was: \u201cYou\u2019re a salaried employee. You work whatever number of hours you need to in order to get the job done.\u201d And if you wanted to rise through the ranks, you worked more.<\/span><\/p>\n

Quite honestly, the younger generations can hold the baby boomers responsible for \u201cspoiling Corporate America,\u201d for setting unrealistic expectations about the amount of work and the output that they could expect from their workforce.<\/span><\/p>\n

How we put that genie back in the bottle is beyond the scope of this article. What I want to focus on here is the phenomenon of Quiet Quitting as it relates to field services. What is it? What causes it? And most importantly, what can be done to prevent it?<\/span>
\n <\/p>\n<\/a>

Field services Quiet Quitting: What is its impact?<\/b><\/h2>\n

For years, the primary measurement of productivity in field services has been utilization\u2013\u2013<\/span>a traditional practice I have previously <\/span><\/a>discussed. Utilization is simply a measurement of how \u201cbusy\u201d a field service technician might be. In other words, out of the total number of hours available in the day, how many hours is that technician actually working on a task that is somehow billable back to a client?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/a>

What Causes It?<\/b><\/h2>\n

So yes, utilization can account for how \u201cbusy\u201d a particular technician is, but what it doesn\u2019t account for is \u201c<\/span>BUSY DOING WHAT?<\/b>\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

All services volume isn\u2019t created equal<\/span><\/i>. If you\u2019re giving work to a Level 4 technician just because they have available time, but that work requires him to drive 4 hours to do a 1-hour preventative maintenance call that generates $60 in revenue, then you likely just lost money on that transaction. The more important metric would be \u201crevenue per tech per day,\u201d which ensures you\u2019re not only keeping that technician busy, but you\u2019re keeping them busy doing the type of work that will provide an acceptable return on the investment your company is making in that technician. As importantly, you\u2019re ensuring that you\u2019re keeping them busy doing work that they want to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

A company I\u2019ve worked with recently looked into optimizing their field services cost. They were ahead of their time in that they strove to examine all the work being done by their field service force and categorize it into work that actually needed to be done by the appropriate level of technician. The results might surprise you:<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Technical Level<\/b><\/td>\nPercentage of Total Required at Level<\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Level 1<\/span><\/td>\n55%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Level 2<\/span><\/td>\n25%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Level 3<\/span><\/td>\n15%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Level 4<\/span><\/td>\n5%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yes, that says what you think it says. Level 4 technicians were only required for 5% of the total work orders. Level 3 technicians were only required to do 15% of the total work orders, and so on.<\/span><\/p>\n

What that means is that if an organization had 100 Level 4 technicians (the most expensive, tenured, certified technicians in the workforce) then they had 95 too many! And even if we consider geographic issues, the order of magnitude of the possible savings that would come with workforce reduction remains significant.<\/span>
\n <\/p>\n<\/a>

Quiet Quitting in field services: What can be done to prevent it?<\/b><\/h2>\n

So, how does this \u201cmisclassification\u201d of work contribute to quiet quitting? Well, from the earlier study, you can see that Level 4 field service technicians\u2013\u2013who have the most seniority, experience, and certifications and have spent literally YEARS getting to their level of proficiency\u2013\u2013are spending just 5% of their time on work that they want to work on – work that truly challenges them. Work that truly makes a difference for your clients.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If they\u2019re only spending 5% on work that truly requires their talent, how are they spending the other 95% of their time? On commodity work: preventative maintenance, installations, and project work. How do you think that makes them feel? How long do you think you\u2019ll be able to hold onto these senior-level techs if you still just keep \u201cfilling up their bucket\u201d with low-level commodity \u201cbusy work?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And if you are able to hold on to them, how long before they just \u201cQuiet Quit\u201d and begin doing the bare minimum necessary to get buy?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And how many of those \u201cQuiet Quitters\u201d have already found more fulfilling work on a platform\u2013\u2013a venue where THEY can choose the type of work they do?<\/span><\/p>\n

All work volume isn\u2019t equal<\/span><\/i>. If your company doesn\u2019t have a workforce management program that breaks the work into its component skill requirements and then uses those skills to determine who does the work, you\u2019re already behind.<\/span><\/p>\n

And being behind in today\u2019s war for talent isn\u2019t where you want to be.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Shawn Fields, Senior Field Services Strategist, Field Nation   \u201cQuiet Quitting\u201d is the newest buzzword in the post-pandemic world of talent. The term refers to a situation where workers do the bare minimum required by their job\u2013\u2013and no more. Historically, union workers have referred to this phenomenon as \u201cwork to rule.\u201d One might ask, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":16702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"xn-wppe-expiration":[],"xn-wppe-expiration-action":[],"xn-wppe-expiration-prefix":[],"footnotes":""},"content-group":[],"class_list":["post-16729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","fldn_content_type-blog"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow to address quiet quitting in field services | Field Nation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Learn how quiet quitting is affecting field service delivery, and how on-demand labor can mitigate the risk of losing your best people.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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