Time or money — what’s more important to people?

In this article Mike Haley will share his thoughts on how you can achieve a productive shop while offering your employees more free time. Four-day work weeks are being discussed in many companies, and the automotive repair industry is no different. Mike will share the benefits of offering a four-day work week along with the pitfalls. He will also give you his sample four-day work week schedule.

We all know how hard it is to staff a shop. Information varies but we are anywhere from forty thousand to sixty thousand technicians short. To say it is tough to attract a quality technician is an understatement to say the least. The pressure this puts on a shop is incredible. Almost everyone in the business has to change their regular job duties and take on a hybrid job. If the service manager or owner grew up a technician, they find themselves dusting off their box and turning wrenches just to keep the business going. This means other aspects of the business slip. It’s a couple of more rings until someone can get to the phone. A few more minutes before we can check on that part we ordered yesterday. The estimates are taking twice as long to build, and the selling effort is minimized to just sell what will fix the vehicle and get it out the door. After a few weeks or (let’s be realistic) months of this the morale and culture are at the lowest, and your best employees are wondering if you’re ever going to get them some relief or continue to whip the horse? 

Because the manager and owner are pulling double duty they will say they don’t have time to recruit and interview. We have written several articles prior to this one how important it is to recruit 24/7 and that is not the point of this article. A shop needs to have an attractive package for the prospective employee. You will probably not be the shop that can pay the highest wage or offer 100% health care coverage. But what can you offer? Well I believe it comes down to two factors that attract potential candidates. It’s time or money.  

When you think about your life and when you make a decision on a project, what do you consider? My wife would like to upgrade the master bathroom. Currently the shower is a builder grade one piece fiberglass shower. She would like to replace it with a tile shower. I consider myself somewhat competent with home projects and I love watching the home improvement shows. But I have never installed a tiled shower which means it will take me much longer to complete and I’m sure I would miss something a professional could point out to me. I have a decision to make. Do I take the time to learn and build the tile shower myself or pay a professional to come in and do it for me? It’s the same dilemma for everyone. Time and money are what we hold in high regard. If you’re under the belief your area will not tolerate a high labor rate, but can’t open the payroll checkbook to pay a tech anything they are asking for, you need to offer something else that is just as important to our employees — and that is time. 

At my last job as a service manager I took over a shop that was run into the ground. The best techs had already left because of their decrease in car count and morale was at an all-time low. The shop was open five days a week, but the owner just announced to me, within two minutes of me accepting the position, he wanted to expand to six days a week. I rubbed the skin off my temples, sat down and looked at the situation, and wondered what I could do to improve morale, get good technicians back and more importantly make employees happy to work Saturdays. I would say almost out of desperation I came up with the four-day work week schedule for this shop. I’m lying if I said I was 100% confident this was going to work and turn everything around. I actually thought this might be the shortest tenure at a shop in my career. 

I broke down what a four-day a week schedule would do for the business. Remember my opportunities for improvement were: 

1. Low morale 

2. Best techs leaving 

3. A six-day work week 

I thought the four-day work week would immediately address low morale, but it didn’t at first. Many of the technicians were concerned they could not turn the same amount of production in four 10-hour days compared to five 8-hour days. They grew up working five and a half or six days a week. That’s the way it’s always been, that’s what everybody does, so that must be the only way. Since I was opening an extra day during the week the techs were concerned with how I was going to keep the bays full and who was going to get stuck with working every Saturday.  

I sat down with every employee and went over my plan and how it was good for the customer, the employees and the business. I explained how the customers are going to embrace the extended hours and the extra day giving them more options on dropping off and picking up their vehicles. It also gave them a weekend day to have work performed on their vehicle when they could most afford to allow us to work on their vehicle. With a rotating four-day work week technicians and writers are only working four days a week. The schedule is also written out for the whole year so employees can schedule personal events and not affect their work schedule. With the extended hours and an extra day, the business was able to increase revenue and car count. I asked everyone to give it an honest 90 days and then let’s reevaluate.  

The transformation was one of the most amazing things I have experienced in my career. The customers immediately enjoyed the ability to have their vehicle serviced on Saturdays. They would even wait till the following Saturday if an appointment was not available the week of. I don’t think it was the first or second week, but it did not take long for the employees to start liking the four days a week. It also didn’t take long for me to become jealous of their schedule. They would stop by my office at the end of their week to let me know I would not be seeing them for at least three days and what they were planning on doing with those days off. Something else that stopped was the request for time off for dentist appointments or follow-up doctor visits. Once the employees had their four-day schedule they were able to schedule those events on the weekdays they were scheduled off. It was a beautiful perk I didn’t realize when I created the schedule. Our sales jumped immediately with the additional hours and day — we were always saying yes and never saying no or let me check. Needless to say, after the 90 days almost unanimously everybody had bought in. 

To get help with implementing a four-day work schedule at your shop, get ATI’s Four-Day Work Week Schedule. 

Now it was not all sunshine and rainbows. We did have growing pains with vehicles not being completed and a technician starting his three days off. With some careful planning and good communication, it typically was not any worse than a Friday job not being completed. Typically, the technicians were the best communicators in making us aware we might want to reassign, or they would get it to a point that another technician coming in could complete the repair without incident. I could also use the four-day work week to get my way. When the shop’s appearance declined or short cuts in procedures were starting to become more common I would always comment “we might need to go back to a five-day work week until we resolve this?” Almost immediately a resounding “No, Mike, we will take care of it,” and it always was. Another amazing thing that happened is my phone started ringing from other techs in the area asking if it was true the techs only work a four-day work week? Then the obvious are your hiring? In a day when you could fill up a baseball stadium with the number of techs we need, can you imagine having the phone ring and ask if you’re hiring? 

I hope my experience has at least got you to think about changing the way you currently run your business and there are win/win ways to help the customer, employee and the bottom line. Microsoft just announced they tried a four-day work week in some of their departments and reported a 39% increase in productivity (https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-4-day-work-week-boosts-productivity-2019-11). To get help with implementing your own four-day work schedule at your shop, simply go to www.ationlinetraining.com/2020-06 for a limited time.