The latest Webinar Wednesday session, “Effective HTM Skill Stratification: Optimize Your Program by Applying the Appropriate Skill Level to the Right Activities,” was sponsored by Accruent and presented by Al Gresch. The session was eligible for 1 credit from the ACI.
Gresch discussed strategies to establish a skill stratification structure, where individuals are directing their most highly trained and skilled staff’s activities toward the right things. With the ever-declining availability of qualified resources in the HTM industry, leaders are pressed more than ever to find different strategies to continue meeting customer needs and remain as cost-effective as possible.
Gresch shared the following:
- Details of the staffing challenges the industry is facing
- How to identify the different levels of activities within a team is engaged in and what skill levels are needed for each level
- How to partner with the HR department to develop the optimum structure
- How to set up a plan to appropriately direct activities to the right people
- How to develop a career ladder that will enhance one’s ability to recruit and retain top talent
- Succession planning tactics for every position on the team
- Valuable industry resources leaders can tap into
The webinar also included a question-and-answer session following Gresch’s presentation. One attendee asked, “You have outlined the challenges facing the field with regard to being able to backfill position. How do you think we can take on additional responsibilities like imaging services in light of those challenges?”
“That’s a great question,” Gresch replied. “And how you do that is exactly what we talked about today. You create a position for non-degreed staff. There are people I know who would be interested in jumping into a role like that. It’s a great job. In my past, shortly after we developed those positions, actually had a maintenance technician apply for, and was given that role, because he liked what he saw the folks on my team doing and he was very interested in moving in that direction.”
“So, you know, what’s first and foremost is to offload anything that you can from your higher end technicians. And I’m not talking about just technical work. I’m also talking about administrative work,” he added. “I mentioned that we created a position for parts procurement specialists because all of my technicians were spending time sourcing and ordering their own parts and when we did a time motion study, we found that they were spending an hour per technician per day on that on that activity. And, of course, I had 80 technicians at the time. That’s how I was a lot of time. And so, I had an open tech position that I chose not to fill with the tech. But I created a position and hired a parts procurement specialist. And what that did for me is that made each one of my technicians more productive when we started this whole process.”
“We were about where the rest of the industry is today, which is about 1,000 annual device hours per technician. When I left the first organization I was in, we had jumped up to over 1,500 annual device hours per technician. So, that’s how you do that,” Gresch said. “And if you create a culture and an environment where people want to come to work for you, I will tell you, we filled a lot of those positions by hiring engineers from the OEM. … In many cases, we had the same guy turning the wrench on the device that was doing it before – except that now he worked for us.”
More insightful questions and answers followed and can be heard in a recording of the webinar.
Approximately 100 people tuned in for the live presentation. Attendees provided feedback via a post-webinar survey that included the question, “Overall, how satisfied were you with today’s webinar?”
“Very satisfied. Excellent content for any leader looking to improve their own shop operations,” Site Manager J. Ruiz said.
“Helped with developing a strategy of medical equipment management with the little resources available,” Chief Technical Officer O. Mathumo said.
“Very interesting information that was given in a concise and thought-out manner. Really enjoyed the webinar,” Biomed Tech J. Simon shared.
“It was a good overview of how to assess your needs for operation and staff development,” Operations Manager M. Clark said.
For more information, including a list of upcoming webinars, visit WebinarWednesday.Live.
