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Scorecards should be one of the most obvious win-wins in home services: frontline technicians get recognized (and often rewarded) for doing great work, and owners get a clear view of how everyone on the team is performing.
So why is it so hard to get technicians on board?
It's mostly because people naturally resist change. The majority (58%) of home services companies say technician adoption and training is the biggest hurdle when rolling out new technology. Even when a new tool is almost guaranteed to make things easier, people just don't feel like shaking up their routine.
In this guide, we’ll break down how HR teams and operations leaders in home services can roll out technician scorecards so adoption sticks, and the benefits show up where they should: in the field.
Why technicians push back on new technologies
Before you can fix adoption issues on your field service teams, it helps to understand why technicians resist new tools. Pretty much every study on frontline work makes the same point: the resistance isn’t about the technology itself.
Frontline workers are too often undervalued, underinvested in, and disconnected from decisions about the tools they’re asked to use. This creates a natural defensiveness when higher-ups try to force them to engage with something they never showed any interest in adopting in the first place.
Here are the practical realities that drive resistance:
- They feel watched, not supported. When a new system is introduced with a focus on metrics, monitoring, or performance tracking, it can feel like surveillance rather than a tool to help them succeed.
- Training often misses the mark. A one-off webinar or email link doesn’t cut it. If training doesn’t happen in the context of their actual job (ideally with someone they trust), the new system will be forgotten by the time they hit the road.
- They don’t see what’s in it for them. If scorecards are positioned as something that only makes managers’ lives easier, technicians will treat them like one more checkbox. To get buy-in, the “what’s in it for me?” needs to be front and center.
Addressing each of these objections requires that HR teams treat scorecard adoption as a people problem vs. an IT problem.
Start with explaining why your technicians should care
One of the most widely used change management frameworks (especially in operational and field-heavy organizations) is Prosci’s ADKAR model. It breaks successful change into five stages:
- Awareness – People understand why the change is happening.
- Desire – They actually want to participate and support it.
- Knowledge – They know how to change.
- Ability – They can apply the change in their day-to-day work.
- Reinforcement – The change sticks over time.
Most rollouts fail at the very first step: awareness. People need to understand why something is changing before they’ll even consider getting on board.
With scorecards, many HR teams and ops leaders pitch the business case instead of the technician case. They talk about scorecards in terms of performance visibility, accountability, margins, and reporting. But none of that really matters to technicians. They care about how they're compensated, how they're treated, and fairness at work.
So instead of:
“We’re implementing a performance management system to improve operational efficiency and grow revenue.”
Try:
“We’re giving you a tool that shows exactly where you stand so there’s no guessing about raises, bonuses, or how you're doing. It'll help us recognize and reward great work instantly."
Speak to what your technicians actually care about: fairness and earning potential.
Build a champion network
Awareness is about answering the 'why'. The next stage, desire, is all about getting technicians to actually want to participate.
The best way to foster desire is to ensure that your technicians hear about the new technology from valued peers rather than higher-ups. Identify two or three respected technicians at each location and turn them into your change champions.
Prosci research shows organizations that take advantage of change agent networks are significantly more likely to hit their project objectives than those that don’t. Frontline transformations, where field workers themselves help drive adoption, dramatically outperform top-down mandates.
Your champions should be:
- Trusted by their peers (not necessarily your top performers. Pick people you know are well-liked.)
- Curious about technology, even if they’re not power users
- A mix of tenured veterans and younger, digitally-fluent technicians
Train your champions 2-3 weeks before the broader team. Give them hands-on access. Answer all their questions.
Then deploy them as peer coaches during rollout. Have them answer questions in the field, troubleshoot problems, and model the behavior you want the rest of the team to adopt.
People naturally regard their managers with a bit of skepticism. Similarly, they're implicitly inclined to trust their peers. If you have trusted technicians showing others how useful scorecards can be (and how much they already love it), it's much more likely your broader team will actually want to engage with them.
Roll out in phases (not all at once)
Once technicians understand the why (awareness) and start to see peers buying in (desire), the next step is knowledge: teaching people how to actually use scorecards.
Trying to launch scorecards across your entire organization may cause chaos.
Instead, use a phased approach that builds momentum and catches problems early.
Pilot
Pick 2–3 locations with strong managers and willing champions. Run scorecards live. Gather feedback daily. Fix issues before anyone else sees them.
This is your testing ground.
Broader Rollout
Share pilot results with the rest of the company. Deploy your expanded champion network. During the broader rollout, make sure to train location by location rather than via a mass webinar.
Stabilization
This is when people start to warm up to the new technology. Wait until people get the hang of things to introduce advanced features.
Make training fit how field workers actually learn
The next phase is 'ability', which is basically just making sure your techs are actually using scorecards. A technician can understand how a scorecard works and still not use it, so this is important.
In the case of scorecards, peer-led, on the job training is by far most effective. Have your champions train their teammates how to use and access scorecards on the job. Check in occasionally to see how things are going and whether they find themselves checking their scorecards app often.
Tie scorecards to incentives (not surveillance)
Even with strong training, adoption stalls if technicians don’t feel personally motivated.
Scorecards that only benefit management will always feel like surveillance. But if you tie performance directly to meaningful rewards, your technicians will instead understand it as a way to increase job satisfaction and compensation.
Scorecards include automated incentives built-in. That said, it's up to leadership to decide which target behaviors are tied to instant incentives (if any).
Make sure to enable incentives for a common positive behavior, especially in the first 90 days after roll out, so all technicians can quickly see the benefits of using scorecards to hit performance goals.
Incentives serve as a form of positive reinforcement; the final phase of ADKAR.
Pick the right metrics
Metrics shape behavior.
One of the fastest ways to kill scorecard adoption is to track too many of them. Technicians get overwhelmed and the system feels like a data dump instead of a useful tool.
Instead, start with 3–5 core metrics that directly connect to the kind of company you want to run. If you want to focus on efficiency, for example, track route completoioin, time on site, and reservice rate. If you want to focus on safety, track driving score.
Weight metrics based on what moves your bottom line. If you're unsure where to start with weighting, try 35% and 30% for your top two priorities, then distribute the rest.
Treat rollout like a campaign, not a one-off event
Again, every successful rollout follows the ADKAR arc.
- Awareness: Lead with what’s in it for technicians.
- Desire: Build a champion network.
- Knowledge – Train in context, not in theory.
- Ability: Roll out in phases and remove friction.
- Reinforcement: Tie performance to incentives and sustain for 90+ days.
When transformations include frontline workers as active participants, success rates jump dramatically.
Your technicians want to be recognized for great work and rewarded fairly. Give them scorecards that make their jobs clearer and more rewarding, and they’ll do the rest.
Ready to see how automated scorecards work for your techs? Chat with our team.
