Enabling Corporate Leadership with Computerized Maintenance

Building Teams and Trust

Two years ago, Sedgwick began holding monthly calls with his site maintenance team leaders to share knowledge, discuss best practices and offer solutions for issues their colleagues struggled with. Not everyone was happy with the arrangement or understood why they were suddenly discussing things such as risk management.

It took two years of site visits and giving his maintenance leads a chance to get to know him personally before the new communication plan smoothed out. Now, Sedgwick routinely offers up new strategic plans for review and asks his team leaders to “tear them apart.”

“There’s one maintenance manager that probably had the most pushback day one. He’s the most engaged now, and I think a lot of that has to do with him understanding how this all ties together. We’re not just doing something to check a box. We’re trying to make [strategic plans] fit what we’re trying to do.

“We’re not implementing everything the reliability centered maintenance textbook tells you to. We’re only doing the things that we know we can control and that are actually going to give us the benefits we need,” Sedgwick says. And the CMMS provides real truth on whether the new policies deliver results or not.

In October 2023, at the request of some of his site leaders, Sedgwick for the first time got the entire maintenance team together for an annual meeting. This time it was Sedgwick who felt the hesitation. How could he pull all 16 leaders from their sites when they were usually tied up with the day-to-day? How could he justify the expense? And if people were afraid to talk on a Teams call with the camera off, would they want to communicate as a group, in person?

“We presented what our three-year strategy looks like, allowed them to talk about it, tried to identify all the areas they struggle in like time management and prioritization, being a leader in your department at the site level, stuff they never had that exposure to,” Sedgwick says. “We made it more about trying to develop them, not trying to get them to talk about things they didn’t want to talk about.

“I had the same feeling everybody was going to sit there and not say a word… and we were not going to get the benefit out of it. It was the opposite. Everybody got to know each other and everybody loosened up a lot. Just trying to get that social aspect together really helps get them to open up, talk through things, work as a group.”

This year, he added quarterly one-on-ones with site leaders to serve people that still might not feel comfortable speaking out in meetings, make sure larger goals meet the specific needs of individual plants and that everyone has the resources they need.

“A good example is trying to find maintenance technicians. If we have three openings at a site and not seeming like we’re getting any resumes for interviews I can try to go to HR and figure out what’s going on. What do we need to do to get this done?” Sedgwick says.

“I don’t think that’s ever happened before, where [the site leads] actually had people ask them if they need help with something. It’s always been ‘Here, do this, do this.’ So that’s been something we rolled out this year to try to get more people to open up, to feel like it’s a team effort.”