The goal of any maintenance manager is to unite the maintenance team under one purpose: preventing equipment failures and improving efficiency across the board. This is the sole purpose of preventative maintenance and should be the primary measure of a maintenance manager’s success. If you want to empower your maintenance team to meet these goals, you need to lead them effectively.
However, leadership isn’t so simple. You are tasked with seeing the big picture and achieving it through day-to-day protocols. Developing the skills to do so takes time. Here are some tips to help you get there faster and more effectively:
Measure emergency versus preventative maintenance hours logged.
If your preventative maintenance program is working, you should have significantly fewer emergency maintenance requests than you do scheduled preventative maintenance tasks. This seems intuitive, but many managers don’t take the time to crunch numbers and objectively evaluate their programs in this way. If you want your maintenance team to be at the top of their game, you have to push your preventative maintenance programs to become leaner and more effective.
Schedule random site inspections.
A part of running a tight ship is ensuring that your programs are carried out as you expect them to be. This requires you to visit the worksite periodically to ensure that protocols are followed and that your maintenance staff is performing functions the way they are trained. You can identify many problems in your maintenance performance by watching how your staff conducts themselves on a daily basis. Oftentimes, a lack of training or supervision is responsible for major maintenance issues.
Conduct wrench time studies.
Wrench time studies evaluate individual maintenance workers’ efficiency and effectiveness at critical and routine tasks. You should be requiring your crews to perform wrench time studies to help you better ascertain the skill level of your staff. However, wrench time studies should not be used as a means to threaten or shame your workers. Go over the results with the individual in private, and use it as a means to identify points for improvement as a team. If someone is falling behind, it likely means they don’t have the proper training and their time with you should be a priority.
Get to know your crew.
As any manager, you need to have strong interpersonal relationships with your team members. They won’t go to you with problems if they don’t see you as a respectful and trustworthy individual. Know each of your crew members’ names and get to know who they are as people. You will have a much easier time leading when your team trusts you. This is one of the most important steps to effective maintenance team management.
MaintenX prides itself on having some of the strongest maintenance teams across the country. We serve 13 states with emergency and preventative maintenance services for businesses of all kinds. Talk to us today to learn more about our guiding principles and preventative maintenance services.
