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By Andrew Gager, Contributing Writer

September 2026

Key Takeaways:

• Effective people management begins with identifying whether an employee challenge is rooted in unclear expectations, poor working conditions or a mismatch between the person and the role.
• Top maintenance technicians deliver value beyond technical versatility by recognizing early warning signs, addressing root causes and preventing costly equipment failures before they disrupt operations.
• To retain high performers, managers should assign complex work, provide outcome-based autonomy, offer direct developmental feedback and ensure leadership recognizes their contributions.

Maintenance and engineering managers face a host of personnel challenges these days, including the basic question of how and where to find qualified technicians to replace older technicians who are retiring. But once an employee is on the job, the challenges do not end. 

Managers also need a strategy for leading people across the full range of performance and personalities, from stars they cannot afford to lose to the hire they cannot afford to keep.  

The demographics of every facilities department are similar. Twenty percent are superstars, or high performers. Forty percent are older and more reliable. Thirty percent are new hires. Ten percent are poor performers. 

The concept is simple: Before deciding how to manage an employee, managers need to diagnose the individual. A people problem generally is a clarity problem, a conditions problem or a fit problem. 

Start at the top  

Top performers are high-output, low-maintenance personnel with high internal standards who are self-directed and often impatient with friction. The mistake managers make is assuming that because they need less, they need nothing. 

The outstanding tech makes the building run so smoothly that leadership forgets the amount of work that takes. They're technically broad, comfortable across differing HVAC systems, electrical, plumbing, controls and general repairs, but their real edge is judgment. They know which problems are cosmetic and which are the early signal of a failure that will flood a mechanical room at 2 a.m. They diagnose the root cause instead of just clearing the symptom, so the same call doesn't come back three weeks later. 

These folks catch failure before failure occurs. For example, during a routine preventive maintenance (PM), notices amp draw on a supply fan motor trending high and a faint vibration that wasn't there last quarter. Instead of closing the PM, pulls the trend from the CMMS, confirms it's climbing, and schedules a motor/bearing replacement for the weekend shutdown. Avoids an unplanned loss of conditioning to a production area during peak hours. 

What do these workers actually need from managers? 

Hard problems. Boredom is their number one exit reason. Give them the ambiguous, high-stakes work nobody else can do. 

Autonomy. Trust first, and verify lightly. Prescribe the outcome, not every step. 

Straight talk. They want real feedback, not applause. Tell them where they're actually weak. 

Managers also need to protect a top performer’s time. Do not let the best worker become the dump for everyone else's slack. They also need to put the top performer’s name on their work. Visibility to leadership is currency they value more than another compliment. 

Andrew Gager is CEO of AMG International Consulting. He is a professional consultant and facilitator with more than 20 years of experience partnering with organizations in achieving strategic objectives and goals.