Building a Sense of Ownership with Your Maintenance Employees

When your employees are invested in your organization’s success—and their own—they have to build a sense of ownership in their work that provides a solid foundation for your work group.

While you can work on building a sense of ownership anywhere, let’s focus on the maintenance team and their needs. Your maintenance employees need to feel like they have a stake in their work—and the workflows, tools, and software they use to get that work done.

Here’s some advice from current MPulse customers, who’ve worked to create a sense of ownership in their employees.

1. Listen.Rich, MPulse customer: “You may not be able to do everything your employees want. But you can listen and understand their concerns. I incorporate their suggestions when I can—even on the little things. People want to feel like they’re heard, even on small things like where the tools are kept or the names of our customized fields in MPulse.”
2. Train.Jan, MPulse customer: “Training is constant. That includes both formal training—like classes and workshops, and internal training like peer mentoring in the shop. Be sure to invest in good training and let your team know they’ll be getting it. It’s a long-term investment.”
3. Foster a positive perception of maintenance work.Luis, MPulse customer: “Maintenance suffers from a perception problem, so it’s our job to change that. We start in our own department by emphasizing our team’s contributions, and we work hard to do the same thing with our management team. It’s almost an internal PR campaign. It’s particularly important to our younger employees who want to feel like they’re making a difference.”
4. Show the results.Juan, MPulse customer: “Maintenance doesn’t get a lot of recognition for their work—we often feel undervalued and unappreciated. So, it’s important to show your team how their jobs impact the entire company. We emphasize the results of the work they put in and share MPulse reports that show reductions in downtime, labor hours, inventory costs—anything and everything.”
5. Communicate.Jack, MPulse customer: “Everyone talks about communication, so sometimes it feels like a cliché. But it’s the foundation. Ask probing questions to understand your team’s perspective, particularly when there’s a lot of change happening. Sometimes establishing the right expectations is half the battle.”

How have you worked towards building a sense of ownership with your maintenance team? Leave a comment or contact us.