The New Workforce is Looking Beyond Compensation
The New Workforce is Looking Beyond Compensation
A Blog Post by Sean Reyes, Chief Marketing Officer for Recall Masters
One of the biggest challenges dealerships have had in recent times is employee turnover. This, of course, creates all sorts of chaos and affects not only productivity, but also company culture. Culture can only be established with consistency. In periods of high turnover, the chaos erodes consistency and, eventually, culture. Beyond culture, turnover also negatively impacts productivity, making it hard to deliver services to consumers in a timely manner. This is especially true when it comes to service technicians.
The shortage of trained technicians in service has led to extremely aggressive competition amongst dealerships to recruit trained and experienced technicians, luring them away from the competition through higher pay and better working schedules. This cat-and-mouse game, accompanied by a lack of much interest from younger generations to join the automotive career space, has put service departments in a bind.
With current inventory shortages, service revenue is even more important than ever. That revenue can’t come from untrained technicians recruited from quick service centers and low-tech aftermarket providers. However, it’s possible that entry-level technicians from the aftermarket, who may gravitate to the field, can learn everything they need to know in order to graduate to more complex repairs. Granted, everyone who works at a pizza joint doesn’t want to be a chef, but it’s up to dealers to build culture and opportunity for young people who show an aptitude. That’s the beauty of the auto industry – there are so many opportunities to grow and evolve within the dealership.
According to a recent article in Automotive News about the National Automobile Dealers Association’s annual Dealership Workforce study, turnover has dropped to the lowest level in a decade. In addition, for the first time, the average compensation rate for employees has surpassed the $100,000 level. Both of these trends are positive contributors for keeping employees around. Let’s be honest – employee retention has to include attractive compensation.
A stable workforce with lower turnover makes dealerships even more valuable by allowing customers the time to become more familiar with and ultimately trust the staff. Also, the longer the technician stays, the better trained and more efficient they are at getting repairs done right the first time. And staff should also be that much better at catching and fixing recalls. Like having the right set of sockets, the ability to check for recalls efficiently helps technicians safeguard owners with minimal disruption to the workflow.
Many consumers don’t even know if their vehicle has an existing recall. It’s also not surprising to learn that dealerships are not much better. According to data collected at Recall Masters, the average dealership allows anywhere between 2 – 8% of all vehicles affected by a dangerous recall to traverse through the dealership service experience without being flagged for the recall and repaired. That’s not only bad customer service, that’s also a massive liability should that vehicle subsequently be involved in an accident caused by that recall. For consumers, whether that’s because they are second or third owners, or they simply threw the recall notice in the trash as junk mail, we have to do better as an industry. Building a culture that protects consumers from deadly defects is also another reason to invest in employee retention.
A stable staff that knows the dealership’s customers and is familiar with their vehicles, accompanied by solid processes and technology solutions, should set the stage for satisfied customers and content staff. Let’s be honest, not all customers are the same. Some skip routine maintenance by thousands of miles, while others bring their vehicle in for service consistently. The key factor here is that by earning the customer’s trust, being familiar with them and their service habits, knowing what they need (or needed, but didn’t do in their previous visit), working proactively to address recalls and surpassing expectations will ultimately create lifelong service customers and fortify service revenue over the long haul. Making customers happy is also important to your employees. Dealerships may be able to do anything to appeal to employee prospects looking for work-from-home opportunities, but we can foster better interactions with customers and provide the tools to empower employees to resolve conflicts.
Early in my career I worked in healthcare. I had the pleasure of working for a very forward-thinking CEO who took it upon himself to build a culture where “uncommon” courtesy prevailed. Bob didn’t compromise on customer satisfaction, but also recognized that empowering employees with the tools to facilitate a heightened customer experience would also translate into more satisfied employees. He put his money where his mouth was, announcing the “1-to-1 Customer Service Program” at an employee recognition event where he explained that the hospital would recognize amazing feats of service daily, rather than annually. A novel concept at the time.
What brought it to life was the “1-to-1 Fund” accessible to all employees with no management oversight or approval. The fund allowed any employee, for any reason, to have access to up to $1,000 to pay for any act, service, product or expense that would benefit a customer that was either upset, wronged or simply was in need. All that was required was that the employee identify themselves, the patient, the amount and a short explanation of what led to the need. Again, NO management approval was required. Almost immediately, customer service scores skyrocketed. Most employees used less than $100 to carry out acts like buying lunch for an upset family member, flowers, taxi service and the like.
Great customer service shouldn’t be about some program enforced by management, but brought to life within every employee to carry out in every interaction. Bob brought building the culture to every employee’s doorstep. We also experienced the highest employee retention and recruitment stats in the history of the hospital. This generation of new workers is looking for altruistic companies to invest their lives in. It won’t be measured in compensation or upward mobility, but it’s very real to those who seek real job satisfaction.
About the Author
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Sean Reyes oversees all marketing efforts at Recall Masters as Chief Marketing Officer. Sean’s experience spans more than 30 years of business development and strategic marketing experience, having developed go-to-market products and solutions for the automotive, healthcare, insurance, finance and technology industries to serve Fortune 1000 clients like American Express, Toshiba, Western Digital, Cox Communications, Novartis, Microsoft, IBM, Compaq, HP, National General Insurance, MyCustomer Data, DigniFi and several automotive affiliates and dealerships. Sean lives in Napa, CA with his wife Kathryn and spends his free time hiking, kayaking, playing guitar, going to concerts, rebuilding project cars and helping his kids embark on adulthood. |
