What are the key factors that will help hold onto hood staff? Shop owners share their ideas with John Yoswick
The difficulty in attracting and retaining technicians in a workshop are as acute in the US as they are in Australia. Several business owners share their ideas on what has worked for them.
Aaron Flett, owner of Kent Collision in Washington state, says when he opened his shop 10 years ago and considered what he needed to do to attract and retain employees, he thought about the differences he’d seen and heard about big-box national retailers, one of which had closed its stores in his region, while the other is successful across the US.
“One of the big things that we learned about the difference is just a work-life balance [for employees],” Flett says, during a panel discussion at recent industry event.
“We’ve all had techs who want to work 10- or 12-hour days. We don’t really allow that. We want to make sure they get their eight hours in and go home, to enjoy their family, be healthy, have longevity in life and longevity in the industry. We want fair compensation plans that make them want to not have to work 12-hour days.”
Another Washington state shop owner on the panel, Micah Strom of Modern Collision, says his company took a different approach to providing that work-life balance.
“We switched to four 10-hour workdays, which is a little unusual in our industry, but has been very well accepted by our team,” Strom says. “It’s a great attraction for new talent coming in. We get three days a week to spend with our family at home. Some of them do have things going like daycare or getting kids off to school, so we have flexible hours. I think it’s important to accommodate because everybody has different things going on in life.”
Another panelist, Kevin House of Center Collision in Tacoma, Washington, says he’s placed an emphasis on employee retention by focusing on building camaraderie and culture within his 30-year-old business.
“We look for opportunities for our employees to interact not just at work, but outside of work,” House says, pointing to recent paintball contest his employees had against employees of a nearby tyre shop. “My employees just had a great time.
That’s part of our culture, making it not just about work, but about a little bit of a life experience. Does anybody know what national holiday was last Friday? It was national grilled cheese day. There’s a holiday for every day of the year. You can Google it to create opportunities.
We grilled cheese sandwiches for the whole staff. We shut down for an hour and all have lunch together every Friday. We take the whole crew out boating every year. We just look for opportunities to build a team, to create that culture and make it more than just going to a job.”
The panel agreed that improved benefits have become as important as wages in terms of attracting and retaining employees.
“One thing that I’ve found surprising, that’s changed since I was a tech in the industry, is that it seems like people coming in want a better benefits package,” Flett says. “When I was in my twenties as a prepper or a painter, I just wanted a paycheck. Give me more money, fewer benefits. But now they definitely know the importance of having good benefits. We’ve recently added a [retirement savings plan], we pay for everybody’s vision and dental insurance 100 per cent, and we’ve increased our contribution to the actual medical portion of the health insurance as well. That helps us compete with the MSOs that also have a pretty good benefit package based on their size.” Strom agreed.
“We have the dental, vision and life insurance,” he says. “We’ve had a really good healthcare plan, and a [retirement savings plan]. We also just started [giving new hires] one week’s vacation after six months. So they’re not working a whole year without having any paid time off. Times have changed. This younger generation needs something different. It’s about adapting and working with it, not against it. If you want to sit there and stay the same, you’re going to end up being behind.”
Strom also says it’s important for the industry to be involved in their local schools, saying his shop tries at least once a year to bring an intern in for job shadowing.
“I’d have to say probably at least six of them we actually hired on afterwards,” he says. “If we aren’t involved with the schools, there’s so many other trades out there that are. Probably a lot of us growing up, your dad worked on cars, or your uncle or your grandpa. Nowadays, the kids don’t have that opportunity. The parents take their car to a shop. That’s all they know. So it’s our job to get out there, to talk to the kids, to get involved in the schools, and show them this a rewarding career and it’s a lot of fun.”
Andrew Riggs, a collision repair instructor at Bellingham Technical College in Washington state says his program made a change to help keep students engaged: They eliminated classroom time.
“We don’t sit our students down anymore and make them listen to us lecture,” Riggs says. “We moved that online. They can do that at home on their own time. And then when they come to the college, it’s all lab. So all the time we get to spend with our students is hands-on lab activities, and that’s made a huge difference.”
He says one of the primary challenges that programs such as his face is the public misperception about the industry.
“The biggest thing that we fight is the stigma of this industry from the parents,” he says.
“They think you’re just going to grab a hammer and beat on metal in a dark, dirty shop, and that it’s a go-nowhere job,” Riggs says. “So we have a ‘Try a Trade’ event where we get to set up resistance welders, we get to set up our virtual painter, stuff like that. So the high schoolers come in with their parents and they get to see this equipment and understand that this is not easy. This is a complicated career. There’s a lot that goes into it. We’re electricians, we’re plumbers, we’re artists. It really does change the parents’ perspective, and that has helped a lot.”
To help perspective students and their parents see the opportunities available in the industry, Riggs sometimes asked successful graduates to share their income tax returns. He removes their personal information from the paperwork, and sets them out so students and parent can see what they’re earning.
“They don’t have to be worried about their son or their daughter going into a dead-end job,” Riggs says. “You can make a good living doing this.”
He says students in his program finish with a three-month internship in a shop, usually paid.
“If that opens the door, if that shop is happy enough with them for that three months, then it turns into full-time work after that,” he says.
Beyond wages and benefits, he says, the young people in his program are very much interested in a good work-life balance.
“They want some freedom, whether it be 4-day workweeks, or the ability to build their own schedule a little bit,” Riggs says. “Maybe they can’t be in at 8 o’clock every morning because they have to get their kids off to school. From what I understand, they have no problem staying later if they can start a little later, so they can still have a family and spend some time with them.”