In our last article, we discussed a method to evaluate technician progress towards becoming a journeyman. This article will focus on becoming the employer of choice in the market and then “Feeding Your Eagles” to ensure the journeyman training and certifying your apprentices have a high job satisfaction perception. For the purposes of this article, the eagles in a collision center are the general manager (GM), the lead estimator/repair planner, top body technicians and paint technicians. It’s not that the other roles are insignificant, it’s just crucial that these roles are filled for the flow of your repair center.
Is this the situation in your market?
Recently an aggressive competitor has been offering $2,500 referral incentives (to friends of body shop staff) on the radio and then $5,000 signing bonus’ for the journeyman technicians or lead estimators/repair planner.
The recruiting and job search web site Indeed.com has over 25 positions available for technicians or lead estimators in your market.
Or, even more unscrupulous methods of poaching have occurred, such as walking into competitive shops and soliciting staff on the job.
Why does this recruiting pressure seem to be getting greater?
Need. Assuming a competitive repair center manager has sufficient DRP or dealer work, they need to produce the work in a timely and profitable manner. Being short staffed puts them at risk of not meeting sales targets, long cycle times, eroding quality and low Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) scores.
Aggressive recruiting of skilled people is not new, but 6 month recruiting time, training cost, up to 3-6 year per person development time, lost productivity cost and management distraction for GMs often compensated month to month or quarterly, make it seemingly worth-while. Last month we provided information on the path to develop young people so there is a profitable way to develop young people.
How might you protect your staff from this poaching? Consider doing what is needed to become the employer of choice in your market and “Feed Your Eagles.”
Becoming or Maintaining Position as “Employer of Choice”
The table below offers some considerations as to how to improve your standing in the key areas employees consider in our industry:
How to “Feed Your Eagles”
The book Feed Your Eagles by Derek Newton was published in 1994, so the concept of hiring, facilitating (clarity of mission, sound policies and procedures, and commitment to active supervision) and rewarding top staff members is not new. The challenge is focusing on these things as a leader to make the “Eagles” realize you appreciate them.
Let’s review some ways to further reward your eagles in the following roles:
Of course, there are many other ways to become the employer of choice and to feed your eagles. Hopefully, this article has inspired you to reconsider your employment and management choices to protect your current staff from recruiting by other repairers. Our next article will recap the series and provide an action plan going forward. We look forward to sharing more details in this series over the coming months.
