A medical equipment maker assembles monitors, suction units, beds-side devices and similar machines from bought-in parts, tests each one and services them in hospitals. The testing bench and the field engineer are where it is won or lost.
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Share your requirementsA medical equipment maker designs or assembles machines such as patient monitors, suction pumps, nebulisers, infusion devices or sterilisers. Parts such as boards, pumps, housings and sensors are bought in, then fitted, wired, calibrated and tested on a bench before packing. Many units also sell service contracts, so engineers travel to hospitals and clinics to install, train staff and repair. Orders come from dealers, hospital tenders and government supply. A small design and assembly team often holds all the product knowledge, and a service engineer who knows the machine well is easy for a competitor or dealer to hire away. See also HR for pharmaceuticals and life sciences.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
The person who tuned the design or repaired the first units knows faults nobody has recorded, and when he leaves, field problems take much longer to solve.
An engineer standing in an ICU or theatre decides on the spot what to repair, what to replace and what to tell the nursing staff, with little supervision.
Technicians who build and test their own units can pass faults they would catch on someone else's work, and test records are filled in after the fact.
A tender win means weeks of overtime and rushed hiring of technicians, followed by quiet months when the same people are idle.
Whoever happens to be free explains the machine, so users get different instructions and the same avoidable faults keep reaching the service desk.
Trained engineers leave for a dealer or competitor who offers a small raise, taking customer contacts and machine knowledge with them.
Assembly staff and engineers compare allowances and travel time, and resentment builds when field overtime is not recorded.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Retention and Attrition Management; Learning and Development; Organisation Design. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for pharmaceuticals and life sciences, not in general.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a medical equipment makers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
List what an assembly technician, tester and service engineer can each do alone, with names against it.
What this coversHideList what an assembly technician, tester and service engineer can each do alone, with names against it. Start with the role design and job descriptions approach.
A named tester who did not build the unit signs the record, and the record is filled at the bench, not later.
What this coversHideA named tester who did not build the unit signs the record, and the record is filled at the bench, not later. This gives your performance management a real measure.
A staged route from junior to lead with sign-off on each machine family, a record of call-outs and a basic hospital conduct briefing.
What this coversHideA staged route from junior to lead with sign-off on each machine family, a record of call-outs and a basic hospital conduct briefing. See learning and development process.
Machine, fault, fix, time taken and engineer, so knowledge stays in the company.
What this coversHideMachine, fault, fix, time taken and engineer, so knowledge stays in the company. The HR reporting and analytics work can show patterns.
A shared list of expected orders so hiring, overtime and training of temporary technicians are arranged early.
What this coversHideA shared list of expected orders so hiring, overtime and training of temporary technicians are arranged early. The recruitment process work supports it.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A clear map of what bench technicians, testers and service engineers each own.
A staged path for service engineers, machine family by machine family.
A look at why trained engineers leave for dealers and rivals, and what would keep them.
Simple reporting on call-outs, overtime and attrition across bench and field.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in pharmaceuticals and life sciences, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why people leave pharma and life sciences roles, and how to ask about qualification, shifts, territory and quality culture in an exit conversation.
7 min readRead article
How to spot an unmanageable workload before it becomes an exit or an error, what to look at, how to talk about it and what to change, without guessing.
5 min readRead article
A calendar of courses, a budget spent by March and no record of what any of it changed. What a learning and development process contains when it starts from need rather than from the catalogue.
7 min readRead article
A flat structure works until the founder becomes the only route to a decision. How to tell when you have passed that point, and how to redesign without a reorganisation.
8 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Find out what the dealer offers beyond pay, recognise machine expertise with a grade, and give engineers a growth path and a say in training. Keep a record of who knows which machine.
It is safer when a different named person signs off the final test. Where the team is small, rotate the testing so no one signs their own work.
Ask for a short note after each repair, review faults together monthly and pair a junior with the senior on real calls. Over time this becomes your fault guide.
Plan ahead with sales, use people who already know your units for extra hours, and keep a list of reliable temporary technicians. Check employment arrangements with a qualified professional.
Give a short induction on conduct near patients, hygiene, permissions and communication with ward staff, then collect feedback from the hospital after visits.
We would ask who alone can fix certain machines, read a month of test records for who built and who signed, and count field calls handled by one engineer. A sensible first project is a skills map plus a service engineer path. Scope is agreed in writing before any work begins.
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