Reviewing techs' work

At Rad-Air’s eight Northeast Ohio locations, Andy Fiffick has a large task of making sure each technician is up to speed on the information he or she needs to repair vehicles. A structured review system is in place to help him through that yearly process.

But at other smaller shops, formal reviews like that are not in place. Rather those shop owners say their daily, close interaction with their technicians is enough of a review. Shops use these formal and informal reviews to make sure their techs receive the proper training, to determine raise and bonus allowances and for other reasons specific to the location.

You first need to determine if a formal process is right for your shop. Once you decide the method, then you can define review’s aspects.

Rich Brauer, owner of 59 Auto Repair in Plainfield, Ill., recently decided his shop needed to shift from informal to formal reviews. Working with Automotive Training Institute (ATI) helped the shop owner decide to implement the process.

“Pretty much if we don't let them know what’s expected out of them, how can we expect them to do it,” he says. “If I don’t tell them what I’m happy with so they can continue on doing those things and tell them what we have some issues with, I can’t really expect them to change it.”

The Formal Review
If your shop is like Brauer’s and could use a formal process, putting one in place is relatively easy to do.

Start with a list of basic attributes, including timeliness, reliability, appearance and compatibility with others in the shop. Beyond your shop’s basic rules, this is the opportunity for you to really examine what your technicians are doing. Fiffick suggests starting with a close look of your business plan to make sure the proper information is tracked in the reviews.

“If your business plan concentrates let’s say on doing a lot of tires and alignments, are all your technicians up to speed to do alignments on all vehicles,” he offers. “Do they do trucks? So the review would have to go in and measure their skills on working on off-road vehicles or box trucks or whatever it is. The review has to be tailored to whatever your business plan is.”

Formal reviews need to be documented and obviously kept confidential. To successfully track progress, reviews should be completed shortly after an employee is hired and then at minimum once a year. Some shops conduct interviews every six months.

“Once we hire somebody, we do a review after three months, and then they happen just about every spring or so,” Fiffick says. “It will be a rolling thing where we may start in January and it takes us through February to get everybody reviewed because it’s a timely process. We spend about a half hour, 45 minutes with each person, so you can’t do them all at one time or the shop would shut down.”

He is quick to point out that waiting for a slow time in the shop is important, too, because the technicians should not be kept afterhours for review purposes.

Fiffick created the formal review used at his shops. It is a written review utilized by monitoring the technicians in the bays. Brauer is working with ATI to create his review process. You know your shop best and can determine the points that need to be covered in a review. It’s a fluid process, too, so don’t be afraid to make adjustments as needed.

The Informal Review
If looking at the work going into a formal review doesn’t seem to fit what your shop needs, informal processes work well in many cases.

Jim Bastone, owner of Bastone Auto Service in Pittsburgh, says because his shop is small, with four technicians and two service writers, he feels his daily interactions show him what the technicians can and cannot do. With this approach, he is able to keep the lines of communication between owner and employee open constantly, not just during review times.

That’s actually a rather common approach at small shops across the country. At Paul’s Auto Care in Virginia Beach, Va., co-owner and general manager Stuart Lamont says there are no official reviews, just an ongoing process.

“We’re just a small shop and I know the guys that I work with and work for me,” he says of the four techs in the shop. “We’ve worked together for a long time, so we’ve just kind of clicked. They know what’s expected.”

Deciding to go this way includes a number of the same aspects as a formal review. You still need to make sure you’re talking with the technicians regularly about their work ethic and progress they are making. Again, keep the discussions one-on-one, and open for feedback from the tech.

The main difference is informal reviews are less structured and not necessarily recorded in writing. Good rapport with your technicians is a must for this type of review.

And if your shop does not offer an incentive program, informal reviews are a good option. Dennis Poirier, owner of Veryls Automotive Services in South Hadley, Mass., does not have a formal review process in place; rather he says he starts off with employees on the right foot.

“It takes a lot of time for incentive programs to track everything and do that,” he explains. “I generally pay pretty good to start with and take care of them the best I can. And then at the end of the year, depending on the year we’ve had, we’ll do bonus checks at Christmastime.”

Lamont says because the technicians at Paul’s Auto Care are not commission-based, there is not much of a need for a formal process, and informal discussions work well.

“If you’re not under the gun to turn a car to get onto the next one to make a paycheck, you take a little more time a little more pride in it,” he says. “We find that the quality of work is a little bit better and comebacks are a little lower. There really isn’t a whole lot of criticism that needs to be applied.”

Remember the Positives
Reviews of any kind are a great time to point out not just weaknesses in a person’s performance, but the positives as well. If a technician has employed a lot of knowledge he or she just learned at a training course, mention that in a review.

Actually, positive attributes should be the first thing you lead with when conducting reviews. Discussing positive qualities, areas of improvement and other positives about the employee will make the review go smoothly.

Use the review as a time to discuss with the technician what he or she feels is important in the position, and make sure that lines up with your plan for the shop. It’s also a good time to talk more about the technician’s life outside the shop and make sure they know that their wellbeing is important to you.

Above all, listen and treat the tech with respect. Make sure they know that the one-on-one review – whether formal or informal – is kept confidential. The risk of “bad PR,” as Bastone describes it, isn’t worth the risk of conducting formal reviews in his shop.

“If anybody has doubt about them at all, or even if they don’t and they kind of screw up on something, they might feel a little less positive about themselves,” he states. “I would rather discuss things with them. And if I feel there is something in their performance that is lacking, then we can look at a training seminar.”

Brauer adds that the two-way communication is beneficial to both him and the technicians. It is one aspect he says the shop will be keeping in place when it shifts to formal reviews.

Then What?
Once you’ve decided how you’ll review technicians, it’s time to figure out what to do with the information. Fiffick uses his information as a baseline for training.

“Part of the reason we do that is to number one, track their progress. Number two, it will point out any deficiencies that are there in their training,” he states. “And number three, to be able to schedule and get the proper training for each technicians throughout the year.”

Smaller, one-location owners say the same can be accomplished with informal reviews. The same is true for determining raises and bonuses. It’s just a matter of properly utilizing the data you have, just like what your technicians are doing.