The business owner is locked in a talent war that promises to get hotter as fewer technicians enter the industry while the demand for well-educated, well-trained employees is on the rise. It’s an evolving competitive market now, and successfully attracting and retaining great talent is our industry’s soft underbelly. So how do you fill your stable with thoroughbreds?
Don’t hire in haste. Unfortunately, when faced with a sudden opening in the technician ranks, some shop owners make hasty hiring decisions that later haunt them. Similarly, far too many technicians leap at the first job opening, and discover afterwards they have made a poor choice of employer. Neither choice is good for business.
Matt Fanslow, a technician from Minneapolis, found himself so unhappy at his previous employer that he felt compelled to make a change. However, he did not have another position lined up in advance.
“I panicked—I didn’t take my own advice,” Fanslow says. “I have said for years that we technicians don’t value ourselves appropriately, but I took the first job that came available. It was a mistake, and now I’m looking again.”
What Fanslow finds so disheartening is his perception, rightly or wrongly, that business owners exploit this personal undervaluing by offering “take-it-or-leave-it” pay and compensation plans that do not rise to the level he believes ought to be prevalent throughout the industry—that is to say, pay scales commensurate with professional tradesmen, such as plumbers and electricians.
Fanslow also believes this haste to accept any position contributes directly to stress at home. “I am a person, a father. I have dreams,” he says. “A journeyman electrician makes almost double what I make in this area, and all he has for tools is a voltmeter and a 90-degree drill. How is that fair? What kind of lifestyle can I support at half what someone in a trade makes? What about my family and our needs?”
But what combination of workplace rules and social culture seems to best evoke an environment that contributes to long-term stability and employee retention? George Witt, owner of George Witt Service in Lincoln, Neb., responded with this gem:
“First and foremost, hiring [technicians] with values that match the shop’s values is the single most important thing you can do. The self-centered worker who wants everything for [himself] is extremely disruptive, as is the jerk who is constantly doing things to make others miserable. There’s no place for these people in my organization. Forget production; forget how well they can fix a car. If they can’t get along with others on the team, I can’t afford to have them. The same way with work habits – if a guy isn’t into all the extra quality steps, he won’t make it here.”
So, what attracts them?
Fundamentally, people must want to come to work every day, and it is the duty of management to create an environment that fosters that desire.
1. Ask them: Ask your staff what attracted them to your company, what they looked for in an employer and what you should offer new hires. This project becomes the foundation for any new staff search, as well as interviewing and hiring procedures for a company. Truth be told, your staff’s willingness to hitch their wagons to your star begins right there. If you’re a shop owner, you alone are responsible for their mindset on this issue. If they are reluctant to respond honestly, take a moment to consider your workplace environment. Do you foster a sense of openness?
2. Listen to them: Asking your staff for their input is an ongoing process, and most technicians tell us it goes a long way toward encouraging their loyalty. Conversely, giving mere lip-service to their input on things such as new equipment purchases, shop layout and efficiency, and appropriate labor charges will often immediately and permanently turn off any further participation on their part. It’s simple: No one appreciates being asked for their opinion if it is not afforded the serious consideration it merits.
To balance the equation, of course, once the business owner has collected and considered these valid inputs, everyone on the team must accept that the decision has been made and move forward from that point. As Colin Powell puts it, “When we are debating an issue, loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I’ll like it or not. Disagreement, at this stage, stimulates me. But once a decision has been made, the debate ends. From that point on, loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own.”
3. The support they need: A truism in this business is that a good service writer or technician can help you to be successful, but a bad one costs you far more than his or her salary. Technicians may not necessarily be qualified to sell, but they can certainly judge for themselves poor performance by the shop’s support staff.
Nothing damages morale more quickly than a service process that requires technicians to find legitimate work that then is not consistently offered to the customer for a purchase decision. If a technician is not doing his or her job well, that technician is terminated. Often though, a poor service writer remains in place beyond his or her effectiveness on the job. That’s simply bad business, and everyone in your organization knows it when they see it.
4. Fair play: Fairness implies objectivity, and your objective judgment of whether an employee needs to be replaced or retrained should be uniformly applied to all employees. Employees may not always be thrilled with a firm standard of performance, but they appreciate and respect a yardstick that measures everyone by the same criteria. Artificially protected employees cost you quality, money and morale. The best advice is to move them out, then move on.
Lou Calka, owner of Alpine Auto Service Inc. in Glen Burnie, Md., says this: “If I had to pick one word for the ‘key’ to keeping techs, the word is ‘fair,’ because everything else boils down to this. Of course, it takes an honest employee to appreciate a fair employer. And vice versa, I might add.”
5. Clear and professional communication: The process of communication between customer, service writer and technician is always nebulous at best. Customers speak one language, shop owners and management speak another, and technicians speak yet a third language.
Good management puts a process in place that provides everyone with common language and statements about the process so that the transfer of useful and important information is not compromised. Employees want to know what is expected of them in black and white. Clear communication means rules don’t change from day-to-day, or constantly change “on-the–fly” to suit the whims of management.
6. Honesty, from the top down: Time and again, the complaint most often heard from disgruntled employees is that promises are made but not kept by management or owners. This becomes what is called a “dissatisfier.” For instance, the presence of a competitive pay plan may not necessarily satisfy, but its absence will surely cause dissatisfaction and result in costly employee attrition.
The sword cuts both ways, of course. Some in management seem to promise the moon and deliver only green cheese, while technicians have been known to inflate or exaggerate their experience, skill levels and quality of production. A policy of honesty on all topics starts with the leadership of the company.
7. An appropriate work mix: It’s easy to say, but an ideal work mix for a productive technician of even moderate skills is at least 60 percent routine maintenance and 40 percent car repairs and other services. Shops that retain technicians most effectively have solved this puzzle by marketing to this need and selling the services. This alone can make a tremendous difference not only in your bottom line, but in the productivity, efficiency and morale of your technical staff.
8. A place they can be proud of: This goes far beyond the obvious issues of shop cleanliness and logistical ease of physical layout. Technicians want a place they can be proud of, a business that is unquestioned in its integrity and commitment to employees and customers alike, jealous of its reputation and fierce in its defense of conducting business openly, honestly and focused on benefiting the customer.
9. Share your business goals: The term “open book management” often receives little more than cursory attention, and that is often interpreted by the staff as nothing less than a statement that the only real goals are to enrich the owner at the expense of the technician. In reality, good shops highly value the opportunity to share the rewards of effective business operation, and owners make every effort to communicate the performance, financial condition and future plans of the business to every employee.
Prepare for change
When all is said and done, finding good quality staff for your business combines a number of skills: hiring; talent evaluation; a grasp of the employment market in your area; and keen personal judgment about people, personas and chemistry. Acquisition of new staff by definition implies change, so embrace it and take the high road at every opportunity. Your people and your staff will thrive
