A Clever Solution to Tech Shortage

There was this article.

In Automotive News that was sent to me that kind of sparked the idea of.

Turnover for new technicians is usually about 60%.

So in the first two years, depending on the car line, etc, the drive, but on average it's about 60% of new techs coming in. In an environment where we're losing two technicians for every new one coming in.

60% of them will leave within the first two years.

That's really sad.

It's a, it's a terrible batting average. Right. And so this article in Automotive News, it's a couple weeks ago now, new school solution for recruiting auto techs. And they're talking about how Magic Toyota and Edmonds Washington, kind of close to.

You, my neck of the woods. Yeah.

Edmonds Washington hired their own full time trainer. So they were going from, they were moving into a building and they were going from 28 bays to 54 and they needed to hire techs and they found that just hiring the traditional way wasn't effective and they were just either stealing from the competition.

Or you know, trying to hire techs that weren't really committed to it. So they hired their own in house trainer. They're giving the, the technicians $8,000 in tools up front. They lease them back from the dealership for $25 a week for four years, at which point they own them if they leave or they own them for a cost of 5200 if they leave. The tools go back to the, to the dealership. They also created a thing where if they, they upsold specific items like cabin filters, wiper blades, alignments, tires, they would give them 20. The $25 a week towards our tools was forgiven.

Oh, that's really clever.

Yeah, right. I thought that was the, probably the most clever part of it.

All together. So when we, when we talk about the turnover, why do we think that kids that decide, hey, I want to be a technician and then a couple years later don't want to be a technician anymore. What is causing that? Because there, there is some sort of commitment to it. You don't decide you want to be a technician most of the time and then change your mind just because something has to be causing it to that degree. Right.

Yeah. I would say it probably boils down to false expectations when they actually go into the workforce, whether they are leaving school like a vocational school or any sort of training, maybe they're being promised something that they're not getting.

What do you think, Christone?

I think that really what we fail is to give our technicians coming in two things One is the career path. Like we're not telling them, okay, so you're coming in, you're going to start for three months, you're going to do this type of work. From three to six months, you're going to do this type of work. And they get to see the progression and everything like that.

Telling them this at like the vocational school level.

Yeah, whatever we need to. Well, I think that the vocational schools and the dealers have to get on the same page for sure. Or independent repair shops for that for that matter too. So it's the same either way. But the vocational schools and then the end user has to be telling the same story. My belief is right now they're not on the same page and they have to really, really work together. Because I think that as an industry we have to recognize that we need to do something to attract people in. I love what you said about that dealers, because the first thing that kind of came into my mind was that's a lot like a scholarship right now in the state of Illinois back in the 90s, just to kind of give you an idea, they had a real shortage of special education teachers. So what they did is they offered scholarships where if you went to school and you got a degree in special education and then you worked for two years afterwards, they paid for your whole school, they forgave the whole thing. And that's what that made me think of. And then all of a sudden what happened in the state of Illinois, they didn't have as many special education deficiencies and teachers. So this is a very similar program to that. And then the other thing that I think that we don't do a good enough job with, with the people coming into the industry is we don't give them that sense of like, what, what, what do they contribute? Like, how do they belong? What's the purpose for them doing what they do? Like they're part of something special and we don't even tell them that. So I think those are the things that are missing.

Yeah, I think.

Most indicators would say that at the, the service drive level, the top reason why those kids are disenchanted is because they don't see a career path. So I think quick lubes are the biggest contributor to this because we have seen a change.

In the turnover by putting the technicians in the shop with the regular techs and pairing them up with like a mentor. Right. Because if you come into a quick lube and all you're doing is oil changes all day for a couple years.

You'Re never doing Breaks, you're never learning anything. You never see a path for advancement. You get disenchanted. Right. So how we set up quick lubes.

We need to take into consideration the career path of the kids we're putting into the quick lube. Right. How do they see it if they come in every day and they're doing this, do they see a future? Or does this feel like a dead end? Does it feel impossible? Right. And there's a lot of decisions that have to be made there about investing in tools and, you know, going flat rate and those sort of things which they're looking at the other tax, and they're. They're thinking, oh, that's unobtainable, or that they're miserable. So why would I want to do that? You know, there's probably a lot of things that play into that. The second one is the. The boss. Like, most of the time, they feel like their boss doesn't genuinely show interest in them or care about them. And I think a lot of times we have a generational gap there. So we're gonna have a baby boomer is a manager with a gen. What is it? Gen Z or Millennial? One of the two. And.

The baby boomer, that older manager, is managing those kids like they were managed. But unfortunately, things have progressed to the degree that that doesn't work anymore. You have to manage them from their perspective, and you have to learn some new tricks. You have to become a better leader and spend more time and understand them. Because to some degree, they come. They might come off as entitled, but you also might be misreading what entitlement is to them. Right. What they expect from an employer to you and your generation in time was entitlement to them. It's just showing up. So there's a gap there that I think as leaders, we have to close that gap. They're not developed enough to do that on their own. We have to get them to care before we can get them to learn. Right. So we have to show genuine interest in them. We have to spend time with them. We have to understand their wants and needs. And so that's a big part of it is the leader. And money is lower on the scale. Usually money is about four.

It's funny because everybody thinks that's the number one, but it's not.

No, no. And what's crazy is they can make a lot of money being a tech. They're just not shown the path and they don't believe it.

Right.

And so they're sold this bag of goods going into school, and they think it's one thing, and it ends up being something else. When they get out, they show up at the dealership, and then you have this baby boomer manager, you know, treating you like you're entitled and just get to work. And you, you know, you don't know what you're talking about, kid. And they're used to being told that they're great at everything and they always win and they always get a prize.

Yeah. They're special no matter what.

And so the more we tell them they're not special isn't doing us any good. We. We have to understand them and why they want to feel special and how they feel special. And then we got to harness that into mentoring them into becoming adults. Right. Taking boys and making them men or girls and making them women in that scenario. But most of the time, we're. We're just pushing them back into their little rabbit hole.

Like a sit down, shut up kind of mentality.

Yeah. And get to the quick lube. And so then, you know, you have your least talented people touching the most customers in a quick lube, which is a recipe for disaster every time. And I don't understand why we're so committed to that model when you can achieve the. The customer experience that we want without running everything through these young kids and just burning them out. Because burnout is an. Is another thing. Like, they're. They're making a very low wage, killing themselves, and they just. They. They can't see themselves doing this the rest of their life. Yeah, we have to. We have to slow it down and kind of have a more strategic approach.

Yeah, I think it's hard.

You guys agree with that?

Yeah. 100.

You know, we were talking a little bit about. About crazy people.

Like, about why.

Why are you smiling already? About, like, Bundy and everything.

You can tell he's smiling.

How. How can you.

Oh, yeah, his eyes.

Oh, just the squinty eyes. He just.

Okay, so, yeah, the. Did you hear about that lunatic that. That won the Tour de France?

No.

He took the psychopath.

I shouldn't have taken a drink at that.

Oh, I almost got you.

You almost got me.

Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driving Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333. Ask SDR for special deals on our books and training. Head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.

Sam.