Andy Savva provides an impassioned response to the question that has plagued the industry over the last few years: Why is there such a shortage of technicians?
Andy Savva is a former multiple independent garage owner who boasts over 30 years’ experience in the automotive repair sector. In every issue of PMM he’ll be sharing his advice with workshop owners who want to improve their business’ bottom line, but simply don’t know how to go about it.
Over the last few years, I have read countless articles and posts on social media which refer to the shortage of technicians in our industry. There is certainly a shortage and an overall declining interest in the automotive repair sector altogether from what I can see. This is due to a wide variety of issues, but I will focus on the top ones for this article.
I began my career as a technician for a large BMW dealership, before moving to own and run several businesses of my own. I have witnessed the technician shortage from the lens of a technician, a service advisor, a workshop manager and as an owner/director. The common problems are very similar in almost every business that I have worked with or consulted for.
Pay
The general pay scales across our sector, regardless of skill, position or job title, are very low. For a professional sector (and I use the word professional loosely), which involves working on and repairing high performance machines, it is certainly a major barrier to entry into our sector. Technicians that are experienced will expect to earn anywhere between £26,000 and £30,000 per year (average in the UK), if they’re lucky. In my opinion that’s not at all enough, considering the skill and knowledge that is required to work on these technological masterpieces, let alone the fact that techs have to continually buy their own tools.
Sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I see motor trade job advertisements which start by describing the role – often taking up about five pages – before going on to describe what credentials the candidate should have, which again takes approximately five pages. Finally, they advise that the basic salary is £25,000, but on bonus- related targets you could earn £50,000! I would love to see how many candidates actually achieve these bonuses or what metrics are used to come up with these figures.
If a candidate ticks most of the credentials that an employer is seeking, why not start them on £40,000 with no bonuses? I recently visited a business that struggled to attract and keep technicians. When I questioned the stakeholders about this, they explained that they only paid a certain amount per tech, and they weren’t prepared to pay more. If that’s your attitude then you will have little chance of attracting a better class of candidate – it’s a fool’s game.
Working Conditions
While some OEM dealers have figured this one out – usually due to the standards imposed on them by the brand they support – the average independent, fast-fit and other aftersales operations have seriously neglected this issue. I walk into garage businesses all the time and sometimes it feels like I’ve stepped out of a time machine into the 1970s.
Many premises are poorly lit, completely disorganised and chaotic, with no workflow or processes, floors covered in everything you can imagine, and technicians walking around in the same overalls that they wore in the mid-80s. Think about kids in college or a school; how many of them have hopes and dreams of one day landing a dream job in the dungeon of some aging building that time and cleanliness forgot? Take this one step further. If technicians aren’t attracted to your garage, what makes you think customers will be?
When I worked with OEMs, I used to set a little challenge for the dealer principles or department managers. I would come in and take about 30-50 pictures of the dealership service department and ask the dealer principal which of those pictures he would like to put his name and logo on and use for advertising. As you can imagine, the thought process changes quickly. Moral of the story: if the garage is not presentable to customers, it is also unacceptable for your employees.
Lack of professional development
Most, if not the vast majority, of new technicians and even those that have been in the field for years, see little to no future opportunity for advancement beyond a service advisor or service manager position. Even the technicians who may be asked to progress to a workshop manager or even overall manager are rarely given the training, coaching and feedback to become effective at those roles. Approximately 80% of the service advisors and managers I have worked with over the years were completely unprepared for that position when they were promoted from being a technician.
The service department/workshop is a very complex business when you actually examine the financial aspect and the proper metrics that need to be examined, not to mention the day-to-day management of the operations from the moment a call is taken, to handing back the vehicle keys to its owner. Most don’t have a grasp of the key performance indictors (KPIs) that are critical to measuring what state the business is in at any given time.
The uninitiated make decisions based on opinion rather than actionable and measurable data. Most have never been taught how to analyse the relationship between multiple data points beyond just efficiency and productivity. I am shocked at how many do not even monitor their effective labour rate or parts-to-labour ratios.
To take this one step further, how many of you that are proficient on the business acumen of service actually take the time to train your technicians on this subject? Do your technicians understand exactly how their role contributes to the profitability of the garage? This is a key thing to teach technicians, as it allows the them to better understand decisions you make and how those decisions affect the business. This also allows staff to acquire the knowledge of how training, workflow, process improvement and such can ultimately make them more productive and earn more money. More importantly, the better informed and developed your technicians are, the better your garage will perform.
Respect
I may hurt some feelings with this one, but here we go anyway. How many of you owners/managers have taken technicians out to lunch, or invited them to go golfing, or given them tickets to a football match, or simply just said thank you and well done? For those of you that have and do this regularly, I applaud you.
I can tell you from my time in running my businesses and what I see every day that most technicians feel completely invisible to management and the front end of the business. Have you ever really thought about why there is often contention between techs and reception personnel? When I was working for the OEM dealers, the friction between sales and service departments was incredible – you never would have thought they worked for the same business!
Conclusions
We have to work to change the perception of the technician career and we need to modernise the role. It is our own fault as an industry that we have not addressed these problems already. If we want to change this trajectory, we had better change our culture and we had better do it right now. The most important asset in your business is your employees. Every single one of them. I do not care if it is the young apprentice, driver or master tech; they are all equal. They all have a talent and all have potential, and it is your job as owners/managers to figure that out and then put together a plan to continually develop them.
Invest in your people. In business, the customer is number two, right behind the employee. If you do not take care of your employees, you won’t have to worry long about customers because you will not have any. If you take great care of your employees, they will take great care of your customers and your business will prosper.
