Incorporating feedback into maintenance management system configuration is a key principle of effective change management.
By Graeme Kirkness, Technical Specialist – Asset Management
When it comes to maintenance programs, there is no silver bullet if your people aren’t onboard.
Remarkably, we’re nearly halfway through our year of maintenance blogs, having covered numerous options for organizations to improve their maintenance practices, regardless of their current maintenance program’s maturity. Yet, all too often, we encounter maintenance professionals with cautionary tales of projects that, when closed out and reviewed, had left parties wanting more.
Dig deep enough into these cautionary tales, and you’ll find a recurring theme: “It started strong and fizzled out over time.”, “We couldn’t get staff to use the new tool.”, “Not enough truly participated to get full value.”, “Staff didn’t fully grasp the big picture and kept doing things as they always have.” To summarize in a word, the common theme is adoption.
This raises a critical question: “In today’s rapidly evolving world, how do we get people to buy-in?”
Recognize What’s Missing
In today’s asset-intensive industries, maintenance is no longer just about fixing equipment – it’s about optimizing performance, reducing risk, and enabling business continuity. Organizations are investing heavily in modern maintenance management practices such as Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM), predictive analytics, and digital tools like Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) platforms. These technologies and practices are fantastic enablers of an organization and its workers.
However, despite the promise of these technologies and philosophies, many initiatives struggle to deliver expected value.
Rarely is technology the reason.
It’s the absence of structured, intentional change management.
Change management is often misunderstood as communications or training added late in a project. In reality it’s a systematic discipline for enabling people to adopt new ways of working.
In maintenance transformation, change management ensures that:
- Processes are not just documented, but followed
- Systems are not just deployed, but used correctly
- Strategies are not just defined, but embedded into daily work
The Human Side of Maintenance Transformation
Maintenance teams are deeply rooted in established routines. Technicians rely on practical experience, tribal knowledge, and proven methods developed over years. Introducing new systems, processes, or philosophies can disrupt these norms. Managers combat challenges unique to our maintenance world like:
- Deeply Entrenched Habits: Technicians often rely on years of hands-on experience. Informal practices such as “fix it when it breaks” or prioritizing verbal instructions are deeply ingrained.
- Operational Pressure: Production demands often override process discipline. Even well-designed workflows get bypassed when urgency takes over.
- Skepticism from Past Initiatives: Many teams have experienced failed system rollouts or short-lived improvement programs, leading to low trust in new initiatives.
- Distributed Workforce: Maintenance teams are frequently shift-based, geographically dispersed, or mobile, making consistent communication and training more difficult.
On top of all this, there’s the underlying basic human instinct for routine and comfort. No one wants to get out of their comfy bed.
Unless they have reason to.
Below, I’ll outline 8 key principles of change management that can help maintain the momentum of your new maintenance program initiatives.
Core Change Management Principles Applied to Maintenance
1. WIIFM (What’s In It For Me)
People do not resist change; they resist unclear or unnecessary change. This is more heavily emphasized in maintenance; our staff don’t have time for vague, abstract, theoretical reasons. The case for change needs to be grounded in reality:
- Increasing equipment failures
- Rising maintenance costs
- Safety risks
- Lost production time
Translate these into meaningful, beneficial outcomes:
- “Reduce emergency work by 30%”
- “Increase planned work to 70%”
- “Improve asset uptime by 15%”
When technicians understand the reason why, resistance decreases significantly.
2. Engage the Frontline Early and Often
One of the most common mistakes is designing processes, or selecting new technology, in isolation. Staff make “big picture” decisions without fully understanding the impacts to daily operations. Worse, decisions are made assuming that all groups operate identically or similarly. Inevitably, this leads to the dreaded “What about….” question during training, to which no one has an answer, and a solution dead in the water before even launching. Without understanding current workflows, for all impacted groups, it’s impossible to set realistic goals & reasons for change. Effective change management addresses this by:
- Including technicians in workflow design
- Piloting processes with real users
- Incorporating feedback into system configuration
By including technicians/front-line staff from the onset, we enable ownership and ensure solutions reflect real-world conditions. Now, staff are receiving training knowing their peers were involved in the decision-making and design process, making our solution pre-validated and adopted before launch.
3. Use Structured Frameworks to Guide Change
Wise organizations apply proven change management frameworks, structures developed by organizations specializing in change management. Just like your staff, you have enough going on each day; now isn’t the time to re-invent the wheel or “figure it out on our own.” Leverage the work and expertise of others, to guide you. One widely used example is Prosci’s ADKAR Model, which focuses on individual change through the following stages:
- Awareness of the need for change
- Desire to participate
- Knowledge of how to change
- Ability to implement change
- Reinforcement to sustain change
4. Align Leadership at All Levels
Change fails when leadership isn’t united due to unclear goals, inconsistent answers, lack of accountability, or individual wariness. If leadership is unsure, why should staff worry, because this isn’t likely to succeed. Defining the “why,” “what,” and “how” at the project’s beginning ensures everyone is chasing the same target. Change management equips leaders with:
- Clear messaging
- Coaching skills
- Accountability mechanisms
5. Consider Behavior Change (Not Just Process)
A common pitfall of major projects is assuming that defining the new processes will change behaviors. In reality, without assistance (or support), these new processes will revert to old behaviours.
Instead, organizations should design behavioral reinforcement loops:
- Strive to make the desired behavior the easiest option. While this isn’t always possible, even acknowledging the difficulty of the new behavior goes a long way in encouraging change.
- Provide immediate feedback (e.g., dashboards, KPIs)
- Recognize and reward compliance
6. Build Capability Through Practical/Realistic Training
Traditional training often fails because it’s too theoretical. Training is not the time to show everything a new system can do. Training needs to prioritize only what/how end-users will interact with the new system/processes at (and beyond) go-live.
Effective maintenance training should be:
- Role-specific (planner vs technician vs supervisor)
- Scenario-based (real tasks and situations)
- Hands-on (using actual systems and workflows)
7. Measure Adoption, Not Just Performance
Success depends on more than outcomes (e.g., uptime). Long-term success will be determined by whether behaviors have changed. Ensure that following go-live, adoption metrics are captured, not just the “we are using it” metrics.
Key adoption metrics include:
- % of work orders planned vs reactive
- Data completeness (failure codes, time tracking)
- Schedule compliance
These indicators provide leadership with insights into whether the transformation is taking hold.
8. Reinforce and Sustain the Change
While projects may be complete after go-live or the close-out meeting, change management is not; it’s just beginning. True, long-lasting change requires sustainment. Without it, staff tend to revert to old habits, especially during periods of pressure. Don’t lose all your progress by neglecting change management after the initial project finishes.
Sustaining change can include:
- Ongoing leadership reinforcement
- Regular audits and feedback loops
- Continuous improvement cycles
- Celebrating wins and progress
Final Thoughts
Maintenance transformation is not just about implementing new systems. The perfect system will fail if an organization fails to change how people work, think, and collaborate. Technology provides capability and processes provide structure, but change management delivers adoption.
Knowledgeable consultants will advocate communicating across all staff levels, aligning leadership on project goals and rationale, following established methods of tracking change, and looking beyond project deadlines to measure success.
If you’re planning to implement a new system, are in the middle of an implementation, or feel like your new system isn’t providing a full return on investment, contact me. I’d love to discuss how change management may be missing and how our team can come alongside yours, deliver results, and maximize your ROI.
