Hydrate Your Business
A recruiting and training plan now can stave off your thirst for employees later.
Eliminate the ‘Fear Factor’
A group of your technicians confronts you with a list of demands and threatens to leave if those demands aren’t met. But there’s no need to panic if you’re running a sound business and have a plan to introduce new employees.
Effective Job Descriptions
Effective job descriptions ensure that potential hires will know exactly what’s expected of them. And that, in turn, will result in them being happy and productive.
In SOPs We Trust – Standard Operating Procedures
Standard operating procedures could offer a body shop owner more freedom and the ability to attract new insurance business by creating ‘verifiable’ trust.
Stand Out from the Competition – Gates Auto Body
Gates Auto Body believes that standard operating practices allow companies to do what their competition doesn’t – turn their employees into top performers and maximize results.
Re-Inventing Collision Repair
DCR Systems is using standard operating procedures to drive consistency, quality and continuous improvement.
Standard Operating Procedures – Working Smarter, Not Harder
Maximize productivity by standardizing “best practices” across your organization. “Since we started truly implementing standard operating procedures, it’s a statistical fact that I only spend two hours a week in three locations and that we grew from five employees to 50 in a four-year time period,” says Troy Gates, owner of a three-shop operation called Gates
Send Me Your Best Student – Partnering with Vo-Tech Schools
Looking to take the local vo-tech school’s best and brightest? Fat chance – unless you’ve been partnering with that vo-tech school all along. If you’re all take and no give, don’t expect instructors to do you any favors when you suddenly need to hire.
Training Techs – A Guide for the Do-It-Yourselfer
Our workforce is incredibly knowledgeable, skilled and talented. But this didn’t just happen. Someone had to train them; someone had to be their instructor or mentor. The ways people learned the craft are probably as varied as the number of techs out there. Schools trained many, but probably not as many as you might think
Scaring Off New Recruits
n on their business. Much to my encouragement, I’m seeing a slowly increasing trend toward addressing these issues by some of the best shops in country. And that’s good for this industry because a slowly rising tide lifts all boats. Scott Irwin – the BodyShop Business reader who asked about our industry’s viability – is
Image is Everything
You might perform top-quality repair work, but if your shop or employees look bad, smell bad or seem bad, your image is alienating potential customers and perpetuating negative stereotypes that the 20/20s and Datelines of this world so like to exploit.
May the (Work) Force Be with You
The collision industry’s workforce is dwindling at an alarming rate, and journeymen are just about as hard to come by as Jedi Masters. To combat this shortage and to stay competitive in the years to come, take a cue from the Jedi Code: Pair an apprentice with a mentor.
