Do engineers need a separate HR approach from workshop staff?

Partly, yes. Picture a unit building ECG monitors, haematology analysers or ventilator subassemblies. Its firmware engineer and the technician crimping a sensor loom need different reviews, ladders and pay construction. They should still share one rulebook on conduct, leave, safety and complaints. Mixing those two layers up is where most device units go wrong.

Run everyone through a single appraisal form and engineers find it meaningless while operators find it opaque. Run two entirely separate worlds and the floor starts calling the design office 'the AC room' with some bitterness. The workable middle is sketched below. How this sits among the group's wider pressures is mapped at device and equipment workforce issues.

• Reviews. Judge operators on acceptance at final inspection, entries made live and operations held solo. Engineers need lines like drawings released without bounce-back, field faults closed for good, design changes documented and juniors coached.
• Ladders. Workshop ladders run helper to master bench by operations signed off. Engineering ladders run junior to lead, with a specialist branch for anyone wanting depth on, say, pneumatics or embedded code instead of a team.
• Pay logic. Skill grades plus accepted-piece rates suit benches. Engineers expect a band per level, a yearly review against market, and allowances for travel or site work where they apply.
• Hiring tests. A trade test at the bench for a fitter or setter. Engineers instead get a dead board to revive, or a drawing to pick apart.
• Learning. Masters and bench slots on the floor. For engineers: time on new platforms, vendor sessions, and sitting in on customer complaints.

• One code of conduct and one disciplinary process, applied with the same evidence standard to an engineer and a packer.
• One leave policy, one holiday calendar, one route for grievances.
• The same gowning, ESD and safety rules for anyone entering the floor, including design engineers dropping by for a quick look.
• Equal respect in meetings. The floor lead's view on a design change counts.

Small device makers lean on a few people who grasp the product from schematic to service manual. Such engineers go when no next rung is visible. They go when dragged into every floor firefight. They go when credit for a fix lands with whoever phoned the hospital. A written ladder with a specialist branch solves much of that. Ladder design is unpacked further in why device engineers want a visible next rung.

Succession matters too. If one engineer alone knows why the suction pump trips at altitude or why a particular analyser drifts after calibration, the unit is exposed. Naming and grooming backups is covered under succession for analyser and monitor builders.

Test technicians, calibration staff and field service engineers sit between the two worlds. They do hands-on work like operators but carry judgement like engineers. Hand them a distinct ladder: stages by machine family signed off, with a route across into design or applications if they want it. Splitting builder, tester and service duties cleanly is shown in role sheets for diagnostic analyser builders.

Applications specialists deserve a mention too. They demonstrate an analyser to lab staff, train nurses on a syringe pump, and field the first worried phone call after installation. Measure them on repeat queries from the same site and on how often their training notes are reused by dealers, not on kilometres driven.

1. 1

   Publish both ladders

   Put the workshop ladder and the engineering ladder side by side on one sheet so nobody imagines a hidden deal.

2. 2

   Time the reviews apart

   Monthly sheets for the floor, twice-yearly for engineers, with the increment cycle the same for both.

3. 3

   Use the same evidence rule

   Every rating line for any role must trace to a record: lot tags, travellers, release logs, call sheets.

4. 4

   Create joint moments

   Monthly fault reviews, first-article trials of a new design and tender planning sessions with floor leads present.

5. 5

   Check fairness each year

   Compare increments, promotions and exits across both groups and ask whether any pattern would look unfair to the other side.

List your roles in three columns: workshop, middle and engineering. Beside each, note today's review basis. Where all three columns match, start by drafting the engineering ladder and the middle ladder. Through performance management process assignments we design both tracks and the shared rulebook together, so neither group feels it got the leftovers.