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Meter Reader Retention Meter readers are the people who go house to house, and business to business, to read the meters that monitor gas and electricity usage for billing purposes. While technologies are beginning to change the job, today, it still requires a human being to make the rounds. Some meter readers walk in excess of eight miles per day. And that’s year round. It doesn’t matter if it’s 98 degrees, or –10 degrees; the job needs to get done. It should come as no surprise then, that retention proves challenging in this entry-level job.

This particular company had quite a bit of experience and confidence in its HPI practitioners. Meter reader leadership went beyond requesting a particular solution. The request was more business oriented— reduce turnover.

The decision makers for the project included the manager of the department, the director in charge of the meter readers, the supervisors in charge of meter readers, and the human resource manager. The key stakeholders were the leaders in the meter reader department, the HR recruiters who had to continually recruit meter readers, and the candidates who were interviewing for the position of meter reader.

The project team included one of the supervisors in charge of the meter readers, the director of the department, the HR consultant for the meter reading department, the recruiter for meter readers, the HPI consultant, and an HR graduate assistant.

The team used an internal process (or model) called SIRIUS. SIRIUS stands for scope, investigate, reason, innovate, undertake, and sustain.

The results of the process were as follows. The Scope of the project was to reduce turnover. During the Investigate stage, the team collected all of the information that they could relating to the turnover problem. They determined the current turnover rate, the times of the year that were better and worse for turnover, the reasons that employees gave for leaving the job, and the thoughts of supervisors about why people leave the job. The team took a look at the current recruiting process. They also looked at the wages and other incentives.

What the team found was that approximately 50 percent of the people being hired into the entry-level position were employee referrals, while the others had no connection with the company. The job is entry- level and extremely physical, but one that can lead to positions requiring basic utility knowledge that are critical jobs in a great company to work for. But the team found that the employees who were referring candidates didn’t always have the information necessary to inform the candidates about the requirements of the position well. The team also found some bottlenecks in the recruiting process. When examining the data, the team was able to determine that those candidates who had had previous physical jobs in the past or were athletes seemed to do better in the role. When interviewing the supervisors, the team quickly learned that interview questions being used by the supervisors didn’t consistently yield all the information needed to make sound hiring decisions. In addition, very little if any time was being given to explaining the Power Rating System (PPRS). The Power Rating System is the quarterly incentive awards program that provides additional income for meter readers based on their performance. New meter reader trainees indicated that they weren’t clear about how much incentive money they could actually earn via the incentive program when they were candidates. The team also discovered that more meter readers leave the company during July/August and January/February for obvious weather-related reasons. The team was also able to document a starting wage issue among the new employees. Finally, the team discovered that there appeared to be some communication issues between the meter readers, who were mostly young Generation X and Y employees, and their supervisors, who were mostly baby boomers.

As the team entered the Innovate stage, they began to brainstorm ways to overcome the issues uncovered in the Investigate stage. They looked into what other companies did and tried to think “out of the box” for creative solutions for the problems encountered. The team then proposed several solutions or interventions, and those that were approved by the decision makers were implemented during the Undertake stage.

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The team developed a candidate referral specification sheet that included a list of all of the attributes of good meter readers. The sheet was provided to employees who might want to make a referral. The team also produced a job aid for supervisors during the interview process. This job aid included guidelines for discussion about the employee incentive plan and specifically how meter readers could add as much as 12 percent to their annual salary via bonuses. They gained support from management to examine the need for extra people just prior to the two “high turnover” times of the year and to hire them, if warranted. The team hired a consultant to improve interview questions and the overall interview process. Starting salary is being reviewed to ensure it is competitive with market, to both attract and retain employees. As well, the amount of time meter readers have to work before getting a salary increase is proposed to be shortened. Pending approval, department leaders will be provided access to a course offered by the learning and OD department on the characteristics of Generations X and Y plus mitigating strategies. In order to clarify job expectations, a slide presentation