Serving People through Facility Maintenance

by Andrew Pust

The most difficult part of facility maintenance is not the actual work involved; instead it is communicating with people. Unfortunately, maintenance personnel can become just as frustrated, or even angry, when people report a problem as when they do not report a problem. While there are many reasons that problems don’t get reported (they didn’t notice, they don’t know what normal is, or they would rather deal with it than deal with us), there is only one reason for our responding in frustration or anger—pride. The fact is that we really don’t think we should have to work at communicating. We think, “It is perfectly clear to me, so everyone else should get it too.” The goal of this article is not to solve all the world’s communication problems. Multitudes of books have been written, yet the difficulty exists. The goal is give a few suggestions to help you maintain positive relationships with your colleagues while you serve them.

1. Remember that people are not mind readers. If you have information that would be helpful to someone else, you must tell him.

2. Teaching is different from telling. If we want others to understand and remember important or helpful information, we must teach them. This takes time and effort. Learning rarely happens without repetition, so refuse to get frustrated even after the seventh time you have explained something. Maybe the problem is your explanation, not their understanding.

3. Develop communication at the prevention level rather than at the fix-it level. Visit your colleagues in their work space when you are not responding to a reported problem. Ask about things you notice that are not right or could be better, and chances are that they will mention a few things that you didn’t notice. Answer their questions and explain to them what normal is. This casual teaching will eliminate many “phantom” problems.

4. Listen completely before you start to repair anything. Jumping to conclusions is frustrating to everyone involved and tends to cost more in both time and money.

5. Be honest. Do not use excuses to avoid dealing with imagined or legitimate problems. Give solutions and teach reasons. If a long range plan is needed, develop the plan and let everyone involved know what you will be doing about it and when.

6. Show compassion. Your colleagues turn to you for help because you are supposed to help them. One sarcastic response can put up a wall that may take months to remove. Expect in that case to work twice as hard in your service to them before they will believe again that you really care.

7. See number one. Don’t assume that the other twenty-five people you work with know that twelve people have already reported the same problem in the last three minutes that you knew about two hours ago. Communication starts with you!

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if  we faint not.
Galatians 6:9