[Cover Story] The Technician of the Future

When you think of the pest management technician of the future, would you expect him or her to be most comparable to Albert Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci?

According to Tom Fortson, president of Terminix Services, Columbia, S.C., the technician of the future will need to be most like Leonardo da Vinci to be a success. "Da Vinci can get a whole lot more done out of a vehicle than Einstein can," Fortson said.

Although Einstein’s genius is indeed commendable, it was a very focused, single-minded expertise, Fortson explained. Da Vinci, on the other hand, was learned and skilled in virtually every area to which he turned his hand — anatomy, engineering, architecture, sculpture, ciphering and, of course, painting. And it is this range of abilities in a multiplicity of seemingly unconnected areas, these qualities of the universal man, that future technicians will need to emulate to fill all the roles they will have.

The universal man (or more technical — and non-gender — "polymath") is defined as a person of great and diversified knowledge. The pest management technician of the future will need to have a similar range of knowledge and expertise, with:

• not only a thorough understanding of pests and pesticides, but the discretion to decide when pesticides are absolutely necessary and when other Integrated Pest Management techniques can be applied.

• not only complete training on inspection, but also the power to investigate and inquire.

• not only solid technical and computer savvy, but also the know how to interpret and analyze the resulting data.

• not only service ability, but communication skills in all media, as well as social and relationship-building skills.

Such a list of proficiencies will require technicians to have more and different training. Beyond the technical, the technician will need training in such areas as client management, writing and documentation, and understanding and dealing with community concerns, said Alfie Treleven, president of Sprague Pest Solutions, Tacoma, Wash. "Technicians will have to be learning adults.

"Our industry is going to have to be much better at training people and allocating much better resources," Treleven said, explaining that this needs to be "every day, every year" and requires a commitment from both the company and the individual. "The people who aren’t willing to invest the time to learn," he said, "are a liability to themselves and the whole industry. The tolerance of what we do and how we do it is shifting."

This shifting tolerance also means that training programs will need to start including sensitivity training. "The technician needs to be very nimble not only in technical ability but also in community and client relations," he said.

Fortson agrees. "The big thing we will need is social skills," including communication in all its forms: e-mail, written reports, telephone, face-to-face. "The consumer is a lot more educated about what we do — and mis-educated," he explained. With the ease of Internet research only getting broader, many customers develop preconceived ideas before the technician ever arrives. Depending on the validity of the source, however, these notions may or may not be correct. Either way, the service technician must be able to explain to customers what was done and why, particularly if the customer is not there during the service.

"If they are afraid of what you (the technician) did, or they don’t trust what you did, we’ve failed," Fortson said.

In this way, much of the change in technician techniques will also be driven by customer knowledge and expectation. "I see that people are being more demanding because they have more information," Fortson said.

THIRD PARTIES. Some of this demand will be an effect of third-party auditing, which Bobby Corrigan, president of RMC Pest Management Consulting, Richmond, Ind., also sees as increasing. The board of health gives a restaurant a fact sheet, and, in turn, the restaurant manager quizzes the technician on the pesticide to be applied. It is increasingly important, he said, that technicians receive enough training to have the basics down cold before they leave the shop.

It is not only what the technician does that will change in the future but how it is done, Treleven and Corrigan both said.

Treleven said he sees a particular trend toward requirements for more humane techniques. In the old days, he explained, the customer just wanted a technician to get rid of a pest — "just make sure it’s gone." Now, with the impact of PETA, European precedence and concerned customers in general, some industry professionals say they expect certain pest control methods and equipment (i.e., glueboards) to be at risk.

"My guess is that you’re going to have to deal with the customer and community influences that impact the way that you’ll allow the rodent to sit in there," Treleven said.

As we move forward into the future, the IPM techniques now followed in schools will become the standard for all commercial and public buildings, Corrigan said. The industry is moving itself in this direction, he noted, "but it’s going too slow."

But a push is coming from outside the industry, with precedence being set in several states that require the increased public notification of pesticide applications and the practice of board-defined IPM in certain places and certain situations. Corrigan said he expects such trends and changes in pest management techniques will continue to spread.

"There’s a big difference between a pest management professional and a professional pesticide applicator," he said. "Technicians will be doing a lot more inspecting and analyzing as opposed to treating."

And it’s the analysis that will receive particular emphasis. For the last several years, Fortson has stressed investigation rather than "just" inspection. "There’s something about the word ‘inspection’ that always leaves me flat," he said. "An investigation is a systematic fact-finding inquiry…it is more of a procedure; it includes verbal communication."

"It’s almost like being a medical doctor," said Stephen Kells, assistant professor in the University of Minnesota’s department of entomology. The technician will "pull the file on the patient" in order to review the property’s condition and background and determine what needs to be done. With the expected increase of both external and internal auditing, Kells said, training will need to change substantially. "We have to train people to inspire them to find the problem," he added.

Not only, though, will technicians need to be trained and "inspired" to find existing problems, but they’ll also need to be able to find and document potential problems. "If you look on your service tickets and you’re always saying ‘Looks good; no problems,’ you’re probably not really doing much," Corrigan said. Proactive service, such as "conducive conditions reporting" — tree branches touching the structure, doors not closing properly, areas not up to sanitation standards — will become not an extra value, but an expected basic.

In this area, our "futuristic experts" are in agreement: The extensive documentation and recordkeeping currently required in food-processing plants will carry more and more into other industries. The continuing advance of technology will make electronic tracking more common, but it is the actual documentation and interpretation of that data that will be most important — and increasingly required.

"Documenting what you’ve found and what steps you’ve taken for long-term results before the first ounce of pesticide is used is going to be critical in the future," Treleven said. Pest management will not focus just on the pests themselves, rather technicians "are going to have to be able to manage all the surrounding issues."

Kells said he also expects to see increased research on control and increased technology for detection. Research will include areas such as cold and heat treatments; analysis of pheromone-trap catches (e.g., if you catch 50 Indian Meal moths on a trap, how does this equate to numbers of moths present?); and insect threshold levels. Technology will expand to better detect and document findings: bar codes, scanners, PDAs — all are already being used in the field for service tracking and documentation.

UNDERSTANDING THE DATA. What will be most critical, Kells said, is what the technician does with the information and documentation that is gathered. "The critical thing in the future is how you will use the information to help the customer."

A technician will need to be able to look at and interpret data and what it means for prevention and control. Once the data is interpreted, the technician then needs to be empowered to decide the proper service to be performed and veer from the "system" when needed.

This, however, creates a conundrum, Fortson said. The more discretion technicians are given, the more a company must be able to rely on their character and values. It’s not hard for people to rationalize good reasons to not do something, he explained. "The easiest thing for management is to require systematic application — treat every trash can, every entrance…the hardest thing is to extend the decision making to the field," he said.

To enable this, Fortson said, field supervision and training will becomes more important as will the recognition of employee abilities and release of "owner or supervisor arrogance." Managers sometimes have the attitude toward employees that "I can learn all that stuff, but you’re not capable of it," he said. Instead, Fortson said, managers should make it their responsibility to champion the success of each person. "I think the goal is to challenge people. The more they do, the more they become capable."

ATTRACTING THE RIGHT PEOPLE. Championing such success requires a level of skill and flexibility on the part of the manager and trainers, due to the varying ability of incoming technicians — which does not necessarily equate to education level. "We are getting a much larger variation in technical education and ability," Treleven said. "We have a number of college graduates that can’t write a logbook or report, and we have high school graduates that do a wonderful job."

Because of the industry’s deep-rooted "bug-killer" reputation, though, it’s not always easy to attract qualified people, Kells said. "There is a challenge to portray the industry as a high-tech, helping-out kind of industry."

Active recruiting at the high school and beginning university level is one way of changing this paradigm. For example, Kells said, "It might be just a matter of people being hired for summer jobs." If you get even a fraction of these recruits liking the position and deciding to stay on, the industry will be ahead, he explained.

Corrigan also sees the future holding more interest for technicians with higher education, with some companies seeking, or even requiring, a bachelor’s degree and targeting their recruiting toward universities, he said.

No matter the level of education or the extent of training provided, it will continue to be dedication to the fundamentals that will spell success for pest control technicians and companies in the pest management industry. "The future is still about the basics and implementing the basics," Corrigan said.

But it will be a wider, more universal, set of basics: Customers will want pests gone but will want data and information about what is being done, how and why. Communities will want pests gone but will call for more proactive service with less pesticide, more humane techniques and more stringent recordkeeping. Pest management companies will want pests gone and will seek technicians with the ability to do so within the new boundaries; the ability to implement the new universal range of basics; the ability to be a polymath, a person of "many learnings."

The author is a frequent contributor to PCT magazine. She can be reached at llupo@giemedia.com.