In October I shared an article with some excerpts and extras from the recent survey and subsequent report we created with the Stand Out 50 Leaders. That piece, specific to employee engagement, is complemented well by research recently released by the Service Council.

In September, the Service Council provided an early look at the results of its annual “Voice of the Field Service Engineer” survey via a webinar with Service Council CEO John Carroll and Gerardo Pelayo, VP of Research and Advisory at the Service Council (you can watch the whole thing here).

This annual survey provides some good insights into technician psychology, particularly when it comes to job satisfaction and the ongoing challenge of finding and retaining employees. It also gives us a look at how technology initiatives are affecting the employees in the field. What I found interesting in the data the Service Council presented this year was that, while technicians generally appreciate the efficiencies created by existing solutions, there may be times when automation goes a little too far.

But first, a few interesting points about the research. The median age of technicians is decreasing, with the largest group of respondents being younger than 44, indicating a renewed frontline workforce. However, technician commitment is eroding. Less than half plan to remain in field service for their entire career; in some organizations, that number is as high as 83%, so there is quite a spread when it comes to retention in the industry.

While the reasons they plan to leave varied, a lack of fulfillment seemed to be driving many of them into other careers. Many are looking for more money or, interestingly, a bigger challenge when it comes to their job. Which begs the important question: is automation making some field service work too … boring?

As Carroll put it, “Will automation make the role mundane and take creativity away? We need to find a balance between the technology capabilities being innovative, and not making this a boring, mundane, step-by-step job. The frontline is empowered by fixing and solving problems.”

Balancing Automation and Empowerment

In the survey findings, technicians listed solving problems, fixing and repairing equipment, and learning about new tools and technologies as what they like about their jobs. They don’t like paperwork and administrative tasks, wasting time searching for information, their work hours, or the pressure put on them to work faster. Technicians above the age of 35 also don’t like rigid, imposed processes, which could be a warning sign when it comes to technology deployments and retention.

Technicians across age groups still felt they were spending too much time on paperwork and data capture in the field, with the respondents claiming they spent an average of 52% of their day on these tasks. While this indicates ample opportunity for greater use of technologies like AI and further automation (perhaps coupled with a need in many instances for modernization of core service management platforms overall), there are also points that show the work that service organizations have done when it comes to digital transformation has yielded benefits.

For instance, an impressive 93% reported that technology had made them more productive, and 69% said they were encouraged to innovate. Technicians generally are much less concerned about GPS tracking than they were in prior years, and the percentage of technicians who phone a colleague when they need support has dropped from 81% last year to 58% this year. This is significant, because those inter-technician support calls can be a costly drag on productivity.

The survey also asked what capabilities were not currently available on their mobile device that would be valuable. Top categories were live troubleshooting steps using AI-based support tools (20%), augmented/virtual reality on the asset for troubleshooting (19%), live video with backend support (18%), and spare parts inventory visibility (15%).

Technicians also said they would like to see improvements in email management, spare parts inventory visibility, parts ordering, and time and expense reporting.

I’ve written a lot in the past about the importance of maintaining a holistic view of employee satisfaction that includes recognizing that technicians are people with lives outside of their work, and the survey touches on a few of those topics, too. Sixty-eight percent of respondents said that technology has made them less mentally stressed, and 83% indicated that technology had made them safer in the field.

Asked what features were available in their technology solutions, but felt like a burden, lead opportunity capture ranked high. That led the Service Council team to question in their webinr discussion whether there may be too much pressure on technicians to sell/upsell in the field.

So, what can we take from this data? On the upside, it looks like technicians really like a lot of the technology that has been deployed over the past several years, particularly when it helps remove friction from the parts of the job they don’t like (paperwork, for example) or speeds up the process of helping them address problems/answer questions. And they want more of it – more video and AR/VR support, better ways to find and order parts, and access to more knowledge.

What they don’t want is to be forced into cookie cutter work processes, or to have their ability to creatively solve problems for customers restricted by technology. It also looks like organizations still have work to do when it comes to making field service an appealing long-term career choice to this new crop of younger technicians. That will probably involve a mix work/life balance adjustments to things like scheduling, improving technician engagement in technology deployments, and finding ways to incorporate technician input into operations and business planning.

You can watch the webinar here. If you have thoughts on the data or want to share how your own technicians have responded to automation, I would love to hear them.