Episode 073: FleetCon Preview: Retention Starts with Culture

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All right.

Welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Josh Turley, joined today by Jeff Jenkins.

Hey, how's it going?

It's going so good.

So good.

Here we are. So today we're going to talk about, uh, kind of a little preview. Uh, we're going to FleetCon next week.

Uh, 2 weeks. 19th.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's next week. So here we are. Calendars are hard, dude.

I'm telling you, September is crazy.

It's flying by. You know what I was telling my wife the other day? I'm like, you know, in 4 months Christmas is here. And she's like, no, don't say that.

Well, it is 4 months.

It's 4 months, right? And normally she's done with all of her Christmas shopping and everything else. Like, she's done.

She hasn't started.

She hasn't even started this year. So it kind of panicked her a little bit. So to everybody listening, right, like, you know, it's 2 months until Halloween, a month, 3 months till Thanksgiving, and 4 until Christmas. Like, we're— if you're not shopping right now You know, like I go to the store and Costco's already got Christmas stuff out. It's crazy.

That is crazy.

It's September, like it's a bit nuts. Like, come on guys, keep that in the back shelves at least until October.

But so you know what Jeff does at Christmas? He doesn't buy presents for his kids anymore. No, I'm a vacation guy. Yeah, we go on vacation at Christmas.

Like, you're kind of getting me on this bandwagon because we're enjoying that.

It's great. Yeah, I love it.

Maybe we'll, uh, we'll do that. It's a lot cheaper.

Well, it is a lot cheaper, but also I guess it depends when you have 8 kids, it might not be probably not cheaper, but they play with a toy for a couple weeks, it breaks, or they forget about it, and then it's gone. So we're just like, you know what, experience over materialistic things, whatever.

That's not what we were going to talk about today, but I thought it was a fun segue. So, uh, anyway, so FleetCon next week.

FleetCon next week in Las Vegas.

We're going to be there.

Yep.

Um, and We wanted to give a little preview of the topic because I just saw this come up on a LinkedIn post last week, uh, and it's a topic I'll be presenting on is, you know, how do you go about— one of our biggest challenges in our industry, and it's been our biggest challenge until probably the last couple years, um, was technician retention. The last couple years, the biggest challenge has really been getting vehicles, right, like supply chain issues.

Yes.

But technician retention, I think, is still like it's still the number one thing. It's just not the most prevalent thing, but it's quickly going to come back to being the number one thing again.

Well, it is because that old equipment— because of supply chain issues, you're going to have more and more equipment break down. The turn cycles aren't going to be as, as good. And the problem with the technician shortage is no one wants to be a technician. Like, right, you talk about the stigma behind it. Yeah, you know, Mike Rowe really pushes, right, technical skills, trades. Yes, right, let's go into the trade, right? Which is fantastic because someone with a trade makes a ton of money. I'm I almost wonder if we get him to speak at Fleet Success Summit.

Gosh, that'd be great. Yeah, I want to— we're going to find out what his speaker fee is.

That would be awesome. But, um, so that's part of the problem is like people nowadays, they don't want to go in to do something like that, right? And a lot of it is stigma. A lot of it is actually having to be out in the heat or working with your hands, which isn't as glamorous as some of the other things that are out there. So it definitely affects people's perception of that trade.

Yeah, and like, you go to the high schools, and the high schools— I know even as far back as when I was going through school, there was a huge shift in the curriculum to like where they're pushing everybody to STEM, right? It's, hey, go into tech, go into computers, go into application development. And there's still a lot of job opportunity out there, and so a lot of people are still going that direction because they see it as— like, you talk about working conditions in some of these shops you don't have those same issues in a computer shop, you know, where it's, it's all bright colors and it's well lit and it's air conditioned and you work with, you know, keyboard and mouse and it's not hard labor.

Well, in the last 2 years, like, with the push for people to work remotely, right, that's also like people think about entirely white collar. Yeah, I don't, I don't want to go into an office every day, or I don't want to go into a shop every day. Yeah, I could just sit at home or go somewhere else and work at a computer in an air-conditioned building.

Yeah, it's so— but they're— because of that stigma, like, these schools are— they're pushing everybody STEM. Even if somebody wanted to get into the automotive trade, uh, like, if you wanted to find a school that offered a shop, you know, automotive shop used to be in every school. And now, like, I know here in Peoria, like, I think it might still be at one school. I don't even know if Sunrise still offers it.

So it is— so my kid, he had marketing this year and he wanted— he didn't like it. So he wanted to get out. So he, day 2, went to auto.

Okay.

Right? Spent all day in the auto shop that they had there and was like, "Yeah, I'm going back to marketing." Great.

Failing our own children. But that's, so at least they still have it.

They do have it. Right? Yeah.

But I think they're the only school in a district of 8 or 9 high schools that offers that. And so like they actually have to bus the kids from, you know, other high schools to that high school for the auto shop class.

Right?

And so it's interesting is seeing that shift, you know, if somebody wanted to do marketing or some business classes or computers, guaranteed every high school is offering that.

Yes.

Right. And so like you don't have necessarily the obstacles there. Um, even if you were looking around at like trade schools, you know, here locally we have UTI, you know, Universal Technical Institute, um, which is a terrible abbreviation by the way. Like they should have really thought that through a little bit better.

He should have. I agree.

Um, you know, you have MMI, the Motorcycle Mechanics Institute.

Yes.

You have the, uh, Maritime Yep, uh, I think DeVry even offers some stuff like that, but you don't see a ton of those trade schools out there. WyoTech and maybe some others in each state, like some local community colleges maybe, but you don't see the necessarily the, the same level. I see coding boot camps everywhere. You don't see that with auto.

No, you used to see commercials all the time on TV. Yeah, when it came to these trades or technical colleges.

Not anymore.

Remember the last time I saw one?

What was the other? AAI Automotive something or other. Yeah, there was another one, but that was on the commercials all the time. Yeah. Um, so we've got the society issue, right? There's a stigma towards the trades. We can't fix that.

No, right?

Like, us as shop managers, you know, we can, we can try, we can try to get in with, you know, like some of the community colleges programs. We can try to get in with some of the local schools and like offer mentorships and offer like, hey, come take a tour of the schoolyard or something like that. But man, we're so busy with everything else, like who's got time to, you know, that's really something for like more of a NAFA level, like these trade associations, like that would be an excellent use of their time and some of their resources. So what do we do as, you know, fleet managers and shop managers? I think the first thing is recognizing that there is a scarcity of talent, and whenever there's a scarcity that's when you have competition, right? When there's no scarcity, then like there's no competition. You just go out and do whatever you want. But when there's a scarcity, that means that you are in competition with other people for good talent, which means you have to set yourself apart. You have to figure out what your competitive advantage is against somebody else. Um, not everybody's going to have a full staff of technicians available, and that's like, that's an unfortunate reality, but it is the reality. You You know, in the words of Jim Collins, we got to confront the brutal facts sometimes. That's a brutal fact of where we're at right now. Um, because of that, that means that we have to find things that we can use as a competitive advantage to recruit and retain our technicians and our talent, right? And then the biggest one that always comes out first is, well, we just need to be able to pay more, right? And, and I agree. I was looking, I was watching this video that I saw on LinkedIn and it talked about the average median technician salary is somewhere between $35,000 for somebody starting off and they can get all the way up to $76,000 in the 90th percentile.

It's crazy, right?

I will tell you, it's like our receptionists start off higher than a load, than your junior technicians.

And they didn't go to school.

And they didn't go to school. They're like out of high school just answering phones. Yep.

Right?

Like, that's crazy to me. The median salary was $49,000, which is just painfully low. It is painfully low, and there's not a whole lot we can do about it. We want to see that raise, and that will help draw in more talent from outside, right? Like, as an industry, we want to see that go up. The other brutal fact that we have to recognize though is even if we increase our wages, right, like let's say I'm a, you know, a dealership and I want to start paying my technicians, you know, uh, $30 an hour instead of $25. There's always going to be somebody else that has more resources than you.

Yes. So on that note, when I was running Fleetwood, yeah, we had the same issue that we could not get technicians. And so the solution was always from the shop manager, we need to pay them more. The moment we increase pay, the Peterbilt dealership down the road increased it higher. Yeah, because that was our competition.

It's an arms race.

Yeah.

And then there's always somebody that's got more arms, you know, like they just have more. You guys want a fun history lesson? The way the US beat the Soviets, it wasn't that we had better technology, you know, like we had good technology, but it wasn't necessarily that we had better scientists either, is that we had the better economic engine. We could bread our— we could butter our bread, like, and that's They couldn't do that in the Soviet Union. And so not only could we pay for the nuclear reactors and the nuclear missiles, but we could also pay for everything else.

And— They had to pick and choose.

They had to pick and choose. They had scarcity. And that's what happens in an arms race is like you can't get sucked into that trap of just, well, we just have to raise our rates because there's always going to be somebody that, yeah, you go from $25,000 to $30,000 and the dealership down the road is now at $32,000, right? You have to find other ways to entice technicians and keep them.

Well, what you also have to think about in that pay is what other benefits do you add that's included in that, right? Because there's a lot of places— like, we used to charge for, you know, our technicians. We used to make them pay to get their uniforms that we required them to wear cleaned by Cintas. So we would charge them $35 every single week to clean something we were forcing them to wear. So I got on there, I was like, yeah, we're not doing that anymore, right? But you think about pay. So you're getting paid X amount, but then what am I charging them, or what are they not— the benefits of not, right, not having a, a, uh, a tool stipend or something like that.

Yeah. And so you look at those things. I was shocked as I watched this video. They said that a lot of these technicians— and maybe this is just a dealership thing versus, you know, like a county job or a government job But a lot of these technicians at the dealerships, they don't get PTO and they don't get 401(k) and they don't have— oh, what was the other thing they mentioned that was like kind of an obvious, like, wait a minute, why aren't they entitled to that? But like, there's just standard benefits, health insurance, health, you know, and like they weren't entitled to health insurance. And we weren't sure as well, maybe they're cutting their hours or something so they're not crossing the full-time threshold. Maybe they're lower than 30 hours.

Or they're 1099ing them.

Or they're 1099ing them or something, or they're a different class of W-2 employee. But I thought that was interesting, is like, that's a huge thing that, you know, if you aren't offering just some of the basic benefits that a normal position— you're like, we offer 401k to our receptionists. Yeah, I can't think of a technician wanting to work at a job where they don't have either a pension or some type of retirement plan, health insurance benefits. Like, that's a basic staple of life, you know. Like, I can't imagine going through life without health insurance or having to pay for it on my own out of the exchanges.

Oh, it's a big deal.

And so if you're looking for other ways to maybe not necessarily increase their direct pay but offer other benefits, you know, their total compensation packages, those are things that you should be looking at.

Well, because they'll look at it, right? They, they— it's funny because a lot of people when they first start a job, they don't actually ask about benefits. At least that's been my experience, especially on the technician side.

Yeah.

However, once they're in the job and they're working and they start to see what they don't have or what's not available to them, they'll start looking other places. And the moment someone offers them something that you are denying them, they'll jump ship.

Yep.

And that's not just based on like what their pay is, right? Because that total comp is what they actually will look at.

So the other thing that I think a lot of shops overlook, and they actually got into this in a little bit in this video, and this is what my whole session is on next week Um, is if you can't outspend your competition, you have to find other ways to have a competitive advantage.

Yes.

Getting in the ballpark— like, this is my opinion— is you have to be in the ballpark with your pay. You can't be at $20 and somebody else is at $30. No, like, you're not even playing in the same league, right? But you have to get close. You don't have to match. And, you know, if you're within a dollar or two, you're fine. You know, you, if you talk about the difference for somebody at a dollar an hour over a year, $2,080, right? Like, it's not that big a deal, right? Or if you're within the ballpark, you don't have to be the top, but you got to be in the ballpark. Uh, at $5 an hour, that's $10,000, right?

So now you're starting to make some—

you start to see the difference, right? But $2, $3 an hour, you could probably stomach that. The main difference, the main thing that you have to really create is you have to focus on— and it's something that you could totally have control over which is why I love doing this, is that you focus on your culture. You focus on the environment and the shop environment. You focus on things like how do we treat our employees. I got a video the other day, somebody sent it to me, and he says, you want to know if a company really cares about their employees? Go look at the kind of toilet paper they buy. If they buy cheap-ass one-ply toilet paper, they don't give a crap about you.

Literally.

Literally don't give a crap about you. And, and I bet you if you go to their house, right, like they're buying themselves that quilt melted Northern Charmin squeeze puff stuff, 5-ply, that's like super soft and you could butter your face with this, right? But, um, you know, so actually like I saw that video, I'm like, I wonder what kind of toilet paper I buy. Thankfully I buy the same stuff I buy for my house, which is all Kirkland Signature stuff from Costco. We're all good, we're all good, right? And I even go a step further, I got the flushable wipes too, you know. But it's little things like that, like what kind of environment do you create And there's some just intangible perks, you know. Do you have a well-lit area? Do you have a, you know, HVAC installed in your garage?

It's a big one. Uh, how clean is it, right?

How clean is it? Is it, you know, it's like, do you take pride in the cleanliness and the appearance? Is everything organized? Um, do you, do you make your technicians pay for their uniforms? Do you make them pay to get them cleaned, or is that a service you provide? Do you offer them— Walmart pays for all their tools. You know how many people— like, Steve and I talked about this on an episode— was that technicians have to go out and buy their own tools. No other company, no software company does that. Like, I wouldn't make Tim go buy his own laptop, right? Sorry. Hey, thanks for coming on and being a part of my company, Tim, but you're gonna go ahead and buy your own computer.

Yeah, that is like— that's a $10.99 person right there. Yeah, like having to provide your own, which is— and tools are not cheap.

No, it And so you take somebody that's making $50 grand a year and they have to go out and buy $30,000 worth of tools. That's a big investment that they now—

right?

And, and where do they leave those tools? They got to leave them in your shop. So now you have to ensure their investment.

Like, oh well, and some places won't even do that. Yeah, they'll say lock them up. Yeah, lock them up in your, uh, in your toolbox.

Yeah, take them home there in your truck, right? And I'm like, that's just the— it's the weirdest part of this, of this industry that I've never understood. But it's something that we as, you know, shop owners, as shop managers, we can kind of control that a little bit, right? If we can't increase their pay, what are other areas that we could do something, right? And if it's a shared toolbox, if it's, well, look, we buy these tools for us and we keep them, and, you know, as technicians rotate through, they just, they don't have to bring in their tools and we can keep, you know, it's something like you invest in once and it's a cry once, buy once kind of thing.

It is, and I can already, I can already hear the dissent about, well, they just, tools tend to disappear. I mean, hell, they disappear at my house.

Yeah, right.

Tools disappear. And it's like, okay, well, guess what? If you have the right people.

And it's also, you know, and that's where you do inventory controls, you know, parts disappear out of parts rooms. That's why we do inventories to look for shrinkage and things like that. Shadowbox your stuff up on your pegboard and make sure that, you know, like it's part of the nightly processes. Is everything back in the place it's supposed to be? That's part of Six Sigma, right? Is everything's back in the appropriate place, or what do they call that, 5S or something like that. But you kind of go through that, and it's, it's those little things, you know, offering 401k, health insurance, looking at those things, creating that kind of culture where you have good leadership. We talked about one-on-ones and stay interviews. You know, do little things like just do a barbecue every month, or, you know, just celebrate the wins, celebrate people doing an awesome job or giving awesome customer service, uh, celebrate anniversaries, just help people feel appreciated and engaged. And like, they won't want to leave because they'll enjoy their environment. And when you build a culture— this is something that Patrick Lencioni talks about in The Advantage— is a lot of people neglect organizational health and having a healthy team as just fluffy stuff. But you build that kind of a culture in an organization you won't have people leaving for $2 or $3 more an hour. $5 maybe, but even then, like, you're, you're now able to do more with a lot less because you focused on the overall organization instead of just the pay.

And the thing that people don't think about is, yeah, they may leave you for $5 more, but they're probably gonna come back.

Yeah, they'll regret it because it's not about money.

They're gonna have a much rougher go-round at a terrible culture and what exists there, that the money just won't be worth it.

Yeah. Somebody else on LinkedIn posted a story about, hey, you know, you can sit there and work in a terrible environment, you know, and if you just work hard enough, like, you can succeed. And I agree with that. Like, you can grind through anything. Yes. But my analogy was, yeah, you could pretty much go, you know, off-roading in the jungle, but it's going to be slow going. It's going to be rough. And you're gonna get dented up and beat up, but you can do it. Or you could go to somewhere that's paved the road and open up the throttle and coast along with way less energy, and you get way further down the road, right? So like, why wouldn't you want to work at a place that's already paved the road and create an environment that's smooth?

Yeah, and I will just say, people cannot survive anything for a period of time, right? My first VP job I had the most lucrative executive bonus that I've ever— like, it could have been worth millions of dollars over a 5-year span.

Yeah. And I kept telling myself, I can last 5 years, I can hold out 18 months, I can hold out.

18 months is as long as I could hold out, right? Just because— I mean, if you guys listen to the podcast for a while, it was the place where the CEO came in and wrote fuck, the F-word.

We'll edit that out.

Yeah, all over the, all over the whiteboard and threw the marker across. But it was that place, and That culture was terrible, and I tell you, I just couldn't— you can't take that for so long.

As much as mentally you think like, okay, I can white-knuckle through this, like your willpower eventually just is like, ah, I can't.

Yep.

It's not worth it.

It's no amount of money.

So on that, hopefully if you're going to FleetCon, you come by, check out the session. We'll have some awesome tips and tricks on different things you can try to implement and improve your culture so you can hang on to the technicians you like and you can recruit and use that as a tool, as a competitive advantage in a scarce environment, you know, in an environment where technicians are in short supply and you're having to compete against, you know, nationwide chains or dealerships that seem to have unlimited resources to throw at their disposal.

Yep.

And how you overcompensate for that. So that's going to do it for us for today. As a reminder, we do have the Fleet Success Playbook with a lot of this stuff in it, a whole section, 150 pages on building an intentional culture. You can email us if you're interested in a copy of the book, podcast@rtfleet.com. And then we have Fleet Success Summit coming up.

We do. And we've got our third speaker we can announce.

All right, go for it.

All right. So we are very excited to announce that Mr. Don Osterberg has agreed to come and speak with us as well. And he's going to be talking about risk management. If you don't know who Don is, I met him when I went to work at Schneider. He was there. I think he was the EVP over there, over their safety program. Great guy, very intelligent, a lot of great stories, just a lot of great experience. And he is a leader in the area of risk management. So we're really excited to be able to say that he's going to come to the summit this year.

I heard all about him and I was like, all right, this is going to be fun.

Oh, he's great. So I'm telling you, he probably could speak on any topic that we asked him to and do a great job. He's that good of a guy.

Awesome. Well, and we've already got Mike Pitcher signed up, and we've got Sam Bradford coming again. This is killing— this is going to be a killer lineup. We've got some good ones in the wings too that I'm like, ooh, we do. 2.0 is going to be even better than 1.0, and 1.0 was awesome.

If you can imagine it being better, it's going to be. It's going to be for sure. Absolutely.

All right, well, go to fleetsuccesssummit.com if you want to find out more about that. Get registered. Until next time.

Adiós.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Fleet Success Show. If you like the show, we'd appreciate your 5-star review. Be sure to subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts and come hang out with us on social media at Fleet Success. See you next time.