A monthly people review for automation and robotics companies: ten questions for the owner

The owner of a robotics integrator learns that his best programmer is leaving when the resignation email lands. Looking back, the signs were on paper. Three site stretches back to back. Two FAT dates a few days apart. A night call log with his name on most lines. A pay review that slipped twice. Nobody laid the sheets side by side.

A monthly people review is the habit of laying them side by side. The owner runs it, it lasts an hour and it rests on ten questions. Each question points to a record the firm already keeps. Think of it as a check on whether the people who wire, program and commission your systems are being worn out, stranded or courted by rivals.

Project firms hold more people data than they think. Loading sits in each project manager's Gantt chart. Outstation nights hide in lodge bills and bus tickets stapled to travel claims. Night calls are in the service engineer's mobile call history and the customer's complaint emails. Bench days show up as timesheet hours booked to an internal job code. Skill gaps sit on the matrix, if one exists. None of it needs new software. It needs someone to pull the pages together before the hour starts.

1. 1

   Project managers

   The loading view: every live job, its next FAT, SAT or handover date and who is on it.

2. 2

   Service lead

   Last month's call log, with night and weekend calls, who took each, and repeat call-backs by customer.

3. 3

   HR or the office

   Joiners, leavers, notices served, open requisitions, pending travel claims and the current skill matrix.

4. 4

   Training lead or senior engineer

   Trainee task cards, showing which lines moved and which are stuck.

5. 5

   The owner

   The pipeline: quotations likely to become orders next quarter and the skills each will need.

1. Who is on more than one job with a FAT, SAT or handover in the next four weeks? Source: loading view.
2. Who spent the most nights at outstation lodges last month, and when is their rest due? Source: travel claims.
3. Whose mobile took most of the night and weekend calls, and from which plants? Source: service call log.
4. Which skills, such as a robot brand, safety PLC work or vision retuning, rest on one person? Source: skill matrix.
5. Which closed projects still lack a handover pack, program backups or as-built drawings? Source: closure list.
6. Who has sat on the bench beyond two weeks without a written plan? Source: timesheets and loading view.
7. Which trainees have not moved a line on their task card this month? Source: trainee cards.
8. Whose pay review is overdue, and who has mentioned an outside offer? Source: HR notes and managers.
9. Who resigned or served notice, and what did the exit conversation reveal? Source: exit notes.
10. Which quoted jobs need a skill or headcount we lack? Source: pipeline and skill matrix.
Close: one action per red answer, naming who acts and by when. Last month's actions are checked first.

Most months, a few answers will be uncomfortable. That is normal in a project business. Commissioning bunches, FAT dates slide when bought-out drives arrive late, and service calls spike while a customer's line is new. What matters is one name turning up under three questions, or one question staying red three months running. A programmer double-booked across a palletiser FAT and a press-shop SAT, sleeping in lodges most nights and fielding the small-hours calls, is a resignation in waiting, whatever he says in the corridor.

• Double-booked engineer. Move one test date, or add a second engineer to one job before it reaches site.
• Night calls on one mobile. Start or repair the on-call rota and name a backup for each customer plant.
• Single-name skill. Put a second person beside the expert on the coming job that uses it.
• Missing handover pack. Give it an owner and a deadline, and tie it to the project's closing milestone.
• Stalled trainee. Look at how busy the mentor has been before judging the trainee.
• Overdue pay review or outside offer. Bring the review forward and check the grade against the market.

Circulate the sheets two days before, so the meeting is spent on answers rather than hunting for numbers. Start with last month's actions. Pass green questions with a nod and spend the time on the red ones. Finish by reading the action list aloud. If the meeting overruns, the sheets were not ready, and that becomes an action too.

Fix a date, such as the first Tuesday, and send the ten questions to whoever owns each sheet. Expect the first review to be messy, because some sheets will not exist yet. Creating them is the first month's work. Our post on six people numbers for automation firm owners covers which figures to track over time. Our people reporting work can merge the sheets into one view. The headcount planning notes on the industrial automation companies page tie headcount to the pipeline. For the recurring people problems behind these questions, read our overview of automation and robotics HR.