Have you had any of your employees poached by a competitor recently? If not, have there been attempts to poach them? I’m sure you can answer at least one of those two questions with a resounding yes. So what are you doing about it? Do you have a plan to defend the attacks?
Regardless of how well you run your facility, if you don’t have a team of people helping you accomplish your goals you will ultimately fail. You can market incredibly well and bring in more vehicles to repair than anyone else, but what good is it if there is no one there to fix them?
You can create the best system full of amazing processes but if no one is there to execute them, what value do they have? That would be a big zero.
So how do you combat the increasingly aggressive poaching going on? Build a culture that creates loyalty so your shop becomes a one-way employment street. You only want techs coming in, not going out.
Here are some steps to take that will guarantee building loyalty.
Show Appreciation
How often do you thank someone on your team for work they performed? You can’t answer, “Well I pay them every week.” If that’s your typical answer, think about this: what employee doesn’t get paid every week? I challenge you over the course of the next month to genuinely thank each employee (twice) individually for work they have done. The key word here is genuine; you must mean what you say. A fake thank you is worse than no thank you at all. I’m going to tell you now that you’ll be overwhelmed by the positive responses.
Everyone wants to be recognized for who they are. That’s why so many people post their lives on social media, so they will get recognized. If you become a leader who expresses gratitude for the work your employees are doing, your workers will keep showing up the next day for more. By the way, the cost of doing this requires no financial investment on your part.
Be Transparent
This piece of wisdom took far too long for me to learn. I am a very private person by nature; I don’t share much unless people ask me. And at work I typically would be fiercely private with the details of the company. My past behavior isn’t something you want to replicate, as it doesn’t breed a culture of trust. Once I started to share numbers, future plans, and even details of my personal life, I felt the increase in trust I had with our team.
A human being’s natural inclination is to lie, or hide the truth, when it fears negative consequences. Hiding the truth always leads to bad outcomes; it just delays the amount of time before you feel the pain. Open up with your team about things that scare you to talk about; their responses will pleasantly surprise you.
Work Together
I’ve always enjoyed a team environment. Whether it’s a sports team, a group of volunteers, or family/friends working together on a project, it’s where I’m most comfortable. I believe our industry focuses too much on individual achievement. Tracking a single person’s efficiency is a waste of time. Take a very efficient painter and put him in a shop where the body techs do awful work and you’ll find that the painter is no longer very efficient. Recognize the team’s achievements, not the individuals.
Create an environment where each team member helps others get their work done. The best way to do this is cross-training. If you allow your team to work together, they’ll find comfort and value in the people they work with. They’ll fear going to another shop knowing the new team they’ll be working with is likely to be very different.
Throw a Party
Find reasons to celebrate together. It could be birthdays, work anniversaries, birth of a baby, buying a new house, etc. People like parties, especially when someone else is footing the bill. You don’t have to get fancy; you can buy pizzas or just get a cake. Going back to an earlier point, this just proves that people like to be recognized. I’m always shocked that when we celebrate something in one of our teammate's lives, how many other people come up to me and tell me that it meant a lot to them that we did that.
All of these tips have a common theme in that they show you care about your team. If you don’t care about the people in your company, sooner rather than later some other company will be showing them how much they care. If you create a culture of caring for your team, your employees won’t go running just because someone else offers them more money. I’ve heard this firsthand from some of our team over the years and it’s reinforced the value of caring for them.
