A fibre splicer finishes a trench-side joint at nine in the evening, checks the OTDR trace, and rides forty minutes home on his own two-wheeler. The next morning a supervisor sends him back to the same pole because the customer's router still drops. The fault was in the drop cable laid by a different gang. The revisit counts against him. At month-end his per-ticket payout is short, and the fuel claim from the revisit is held 'for verification'. By Diwali he has joined a rival contractor who pays on the fifth.
Telecom and field technology firms lose their best hands this way, quietly and after small injuries accumulate. The pay slip is rarely the cause. What matters is how work reaches a technician, how it is measured, how quickly the payout lands and whether anybody can see the next rung. This article sets out the reasons by crew type and a method for finding the cause behind each exit.
Four crews, four exit patterns
- Fibre and broadband install crews: drop-cable fixing, ONT set-up, router configuration at the customer's home, revisit tickets, and a payout that depends on closure code.
- Tower and infrastructure riggers: height work, harness checks, battery-bank and DG-set swaps at remote sites, long road travel and night shutdowns.
- Network maintenance engineers: preventive-maintenance rounds, fault isolation, SLA clocks, on-call weeks and escalation from the NOC.
- NOC and helpdesk desks: ticket queues, call-back targets, shift swaps and the strain of taking abuse for faults the field team has not reached.
Exit patterns split along these lines. Install crews leave over payout disputes. Riggers leave over safety gear and travel hours. Maintenance engineers leave over on-call weeks that never end. Desk staff leave over shift pattern and being blamed for field delays.
The payout and the ticket
Per-ticket pay looks fair on a chart and feels unfair on the ground. Three failure points repeat. Closure codes get changed by the supervisor after the visit. Revisits caused by cable, ONT or customer-premises faults are charged to the last technician. Payouts are held while a customer's feedback call is pending. A technician who cannot see why his sheet is short will leave for the contractor who pays on a fixed day.
TECHNICIAN name, crew type, vendor or direct payroll.
PERIOD last three months.
TICKETS CLOSED installs, faults, preventive visits, revisits.
REVISITS ticket numbers, root cause code, who was at fault.
HELD PAYOUTS reason, days held, released Y/N.
TRAVEL fuel claims raised, approved, lapsed.
ON-CALL weeks served, call-outs after midnight, offs given.
SAFETY KIT harness, helmet, test equipment issued and replaced.- 1
Pull the ledger before the exit talk
The ops coordinator and the finance clerk build it together. Do it for every leaver, not only the resentful ones.
- 2
Match payout days to promised days
If the rule says the fifth and the money lands on the twelfth, that gap is the first finding.
- 3
Check revisits against root cause
Where the fault was cable, splice-loss or a previous gang's work, the revisit should not hit the next technician.
- 4
Ask about the road, not only the job
Hours on the bike, parking at customer sites and night call-outs shape exits more than the ticket count.
- 5
Tag each exit
Payout delay, revisit blame, safety kit, on-call load, travel, ladder, poached, personal. Read the tags monthly by city and crew.
Height, weather and the safety kit
Tower and fibre crews work at height, on poles and roofs, in rain. A harness that has not been inspected, a ladder shared between two gangs, or a rain-soaked night shutdown with no relief the next day can end a technician's loyalty in a week. Record issue and replacement of harnesses, helmets, gloves and test gear, not as an audit but as a routine. See workplace health, safety and wellbeing for how infrastructure firms handle it.
The ladder that ends at helper
Many technicians start as helpers, learn splicing and ONT work on the job, and stay helpers on paper. Define the rungs: helper, junior technician, splicer, team lead, field supervisor, network engineer. List the tools and tests expected at each. Tie each rung to a pay band and a certification you recognise inside the firm. Pair it with competency and talent management so skill is recorded, not assumed.
What to do this quarter
Choose one district. Build ledgers for the last six leavers. Write down the payout date you promise and measure how often you meet it. Move root-cause coding away from the supervisor's phone. Add a safety-kit register. Then review tags with the district head each month. For wider help, see the telecom and field technology hub and the retention and attrition work, or send your requirements.
