State of the Auto repair Industry

This is in reply to your Tweet, “Why Your Employees May be Looking to Quit”.

I am going to try and answer this complex question! As the owner of a small garage in the county of West Yorkshire UK then there are many factors. Long term then it all boils down to how you or your management treat people, (your staff of course).

In my opinion then this is why small/medium garages have always come out in the best health when times get tuff. I have now been running my garage for almost fifty years. Many of my staff are long term employees.

These good people are diamonds and should be looked after all along the way. Millions of small and medium garage and autocentre owners will know exactly what I mean.

We all hear horror stories about how the national garage chains treat there staff. Forcing them to work extra hours and always having to sell addons when they are not required.

Customers are not stupid

I always ake sure that my staff are looked after so they too can have a good living out of the business. Some owners prefer to do this illegally . However I prefer to use various bonus schemes. I must emphasise that these bonus schemes are not tied down to any targets in any way.

All my married staff have settled down into nice homes and have a good standard of living. This is how it should be. The only thing that I ask is that they are polite and helpful to the customers. All my staff are taught to be multi taskers.

Not only do they do the job of repairing cars but they can also take the customers through the whole procedure of paying for the work done and issuing sales invoices and dealing with credit card payments.

I find that this gives the staff and the customers a better shopping experience due to the personel contact. Another thing I ask for is that my staff should have total access to our computer system and also can answer any phones from incoming calls.

We do have receptionists and deopt managers. However should they be busy or on another call then any member of staff can take the call and have the power to deal with the customer if thet can. Customers are not stupid they can see that my gargae is a well run and happy operation.

We are not perfect and sometimes we do get a bad apple. However they are sussed out early and it is usually through my staff.

I could go on for ages but to bring things up to 2022 where we are now, then we do have staffing problems going forward !

At the moment because people are keeping their cars longer we are packed out. We are also an MOT testing station and are booked up for three weeks at the moment. I am struggling to find at least two new members of staff.

It looks like younger people do not want to get their hands dirty anymore. My only hope for the State of the Auto repair Industry, is for some return to the apprentice schemes we had in days gone by.

Once you get them then you must work hard to keep them ?