A. Little Help

Author: Art Little
Subject Matter: Management
Issue: Minimizing employee turnover

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Remember the feelings you had when you were a kid standing outside waiting for the bus to come on the first day of school? New bus driver, new school, new teachers, new kids. Everything was new, even your shoes. Remember? When the bus pulled up, it was hard to put one foot in front of the other. That bus was about to take you out of your comfort zone.

These same feelings and emotions start up when people change jobs. The transition period is killer for everyone involved. For the employee it is all about fitting in with the new team. For the shop owner it is about replacing the departing employee with the right person.

When a shop owner loses a team member, his shop loses money. It is on him to fill the position. Every day is money lost. Today’s shop owner has to have a damage-control plan in place because employees are going to come and go. It requires a long-term recruiting strategy so that when someone gets off the bus, the owner has a good replacement waiting to get on.

The shop owner without a long-term recruiting strategy is forced into a panic-hiring situation when he loses an employee. This shop owner waits until the seat on the bus is empty to start recruiting. The problem with that strategy is that recruiting effectively has a procedure. It takes time to find skilled labor. This is not the time to start looking. This approach leads to a cycle of consistently hiring the wrong people for the job.

When an employee loses his job, it is on him to fit into his new environment. There is a lot of pressure on him to perform as a team member and be productive. First, he has to work with a completely new team. Then he has to learn a new workflow system and figure out how the new shop owner wants things done. He has new policies and procedures to learn while he is trying to be productive. On top of that, he has a whole new shop to work in that is organized differently from the last one and has different people with different skills and different attitudes. He is definitely out of his comfort zone, but – bottom line – he has to find a way to fit in.

Turnover problems also put pressure on the other employees. During the time when their teammate leaves and until another one is found, the rest of the team has to do the work for the missing employee. Then, they have to adjust to the new skills and attitude the new team member brings onto the bus. As I said, the transition period when people change jobs is killer.

What can we do to make the transition easier on everybody? The bus metaphor is a common tool managers use to evaluate team building in corporate America. Let’s see how that imaginary bus might travel through the shops of the transmission industry and try to answer that question.

Your bus is on a journey to Profitville. As a shop owner you bought the bus. You are the driver. You pay for the gas and everything else it takes to keep the bus going. It is a long journey. Everyone on the bus needs to understand that. The trip is full of roadblocks and potholes. Your bus has not been to Profitville in a long time. So, before you hit the road, you need to get the passengers who do not want to go to Profitville off the bus and replace them with passengers who do. It is your responsibility to put the right people in the seats and keep them there.

There are no shortcuts in recruiting. It takes a long-term recruiting strategy and demands that you put some time and effort into it. The alternative is to settle for whoever is on the bus at any given time, and the bus driver who does so is in for a long, miserable ride that will probably end up somewhere besides Profitville.

The people on your bus with you have to contribute their part in the journey. The manager has to sell, the builder has to build, the installers have to install. The seats must be filled with people who have the education, experience and skills to perform their jobs. Even then, there’s no guarantee that the bus will get to Profitville.

Team building is about putting together people who want to work together. Working in a good team that is productive is fun and motivating. The best motivation I ever had in my career was when I belonged to a good team. I enjoyed getting up and going to work with my team every day. I looked forward to contributing to the team and the pleasure that gave me. There is no better motivation than wanting to excel for your team.

So it becomes obvious to the seasoned recruiter that he needs to put together a good team that travels well together on his bus. They have to be qualified to perform their jobs. They have to get along. They have to like each other and respect the bus driver. But, most important, they have to have a good attitude and work closely together as a team. When they bond as a team and start clearing roadblocks together, the road to Profitville is a much smoother ride.

Shop owners have to build and maintain their team. We know that teams change as time goes on. People get on and off the bus. Look at the professional sports teams. They are continually changing personnel. You have to continually evaluate your team. Is it a good team? Do the members produce a quality product? Do they all have good attitudes? Do they meet your production demands? Are they making you money to buy gas for the bus? If not, you have to put a new team on your bus.

I have ridden on a lot of buses with a lot of different people in my career. Buses are filled with three types of passengers: quitters, campers and climbers. I like to ride on a bus that has all seats filled with climbers. The campers like to keep everything the same and will not want to travel the new roads that will take you to Profitville. The quitters will quit when the going gets tough. The climbers, however, want to use their skills and attitudes, as individuals and as teammates, to get the bus and the team to Profitville as safely and quickly as possible. They are the true road warriors I want on my bus.

Every bus needs rules. Look at your bus. Is it one you would want to ride on? Is it clean? Is it safe? Are the rules for riding it clear? Do the passengers know what you want them to do? Are there procedures for entering and exiting the bus? Are the passengers carrying their weight? Does someone need to get off at the next bus stop?

We need some bus rules before we take our road trip. So, to get the wheels rolling, here are some suggested bus rules for drivers and passengers that you might want to use on your bus. These rules are designed to help slow your turnover rate and help make those transition periods that are killing us all a lot easier to survive.

For drivers

• If you are a shop owner, you have to become the bus driver if you are not already. If you are delegating that responsibility, you are a passenger.
• The bus driver has to be in total control. No one else drives the bus.
• Make sure the bus is safe and roadworthy
• Make sure the passengers know the rules. Teach the passengers the rules before they get on the bus.
• Issue clear, concise work assignments to each passenger.
• Make sure the bus runs properly and everybody eats on time.
• Enforce all rules for riding the bus. Passengers must follow the rules or get off.
• Make everyone on the bus accountable. Passengers must be productive. If they are not productive, the driver must kick them off the bus, ’cause gas ain’t cheap.

For passengers

The owner of a shop I worked in put up a plaque in the lobby for all to see. I do not know who wrote it or where it came from, but it is titled “The 10 Demandments to my employees.” This could easily convert to the bus rules for the passengers on this imaginary bus to Profitville. It is old but still good advice to employees.

10 Demandments

1. Don’t lie. It wastes my time and yours. I am sure to catch you in the end, and that is the wrong end.
2. Watch your work, not the clock. A long day’s work makes a long day short, and a short day’s work makes my face long.
3. Give me more than I expect, and I will give you more than you expect. I can afford to increase your pay if you increase my profits.
4. You owe so much to yourself that you cannot afford to owe anybody else. Keep out of debt or keep out of my shop.
5. Dishonesty is never an accident. Good men, like good women, never see temptation when they meet it.
6. Mind your own business, and in time you’ll have a business of your own to mind.
7. Don’t do anything here that will hurt your self-respect. An employee who is willing to steal for me is willing to steal from me.
8. It is none of my business what you do at night. But if dissipation affects what you do the next day, and you do half as much as I demand, you will last half as long as you hoped.
9. Don’t tell me what I would like to hear, but what I ought to hear. I don’t want a valet to my vanity, but one to my money.
10. Don’t kick if I kick. If you are worth correcting, you’re worth keeping. I don’t waste my time cutting specks out of rotten apples.

Looking back as a bus passenger, the atmosphere was much different in the buses that were going to Profitville than in the others. If the shop was not profitable, invariably the bus driver and the passengers were miserable. They did not work together as a team. Each was trying to blame failure on someone else. The passengers complained a lot and the bus driver ran the bus off the road all the time. It was either the bus driver’s or the passengers’ fault. Sometimes it was both. Either way, the atmosphere was hard for me to take on a daily basis.

However, the profitable shop’s bus ride was much different. The atmosphere was fun. Every seat was filled, and each passenger was productive and worked with the team. Everyone knew what to do. Everyone respected the driver and followed the rules. Everyone was happy. We were glad to be on the bus. We wanted to be there. We all desired to be successful as individuals and enjoyed contributing to the success of the team. We all knew the way to Profitville.

As a bus driver, I had a lot of teams. With the great teams, it did not matter what my bus looked like or where it was going. The teamwork and the people in the bus were most important to us. That is what motivated those buses. If we got lost or ran into roadblocks, it was no big deal. We weren’t afraid of anything on the road. As a team, we always worked together to get back to Profitville no matter what. We were road warriors. We knew how to survive on the road. Getting a team like that on your bus is the key to getting down the highway. So get the bus road-ready, make some rules, find some road warriors you like to travel with and hit the road to Profitville. I will meet you at the bus stop.

Art Little is the founder of TransTeam. His website is the home of the National Employment Headquarters for the transmission industry. He has been an industry pioneer in Internet technology since 1997, and his background in shops goes back almost 30 years. He is respected nationwide as an owner and manager who specializes in multiple-shop management. Today he is a software developer for the transmission industry, offering apps that make everyday tasks in a transmission shop easy by using today’s technology. TransTeam’s mobile technology puts transmission-shop production on a smart phone. Art invites all Transmission Digest shop-owner fans to go to his website and become a TransTeam fan. Visit www.transteam.com.