In our previous Repair Shop Leadership blog, we discussed the importance of defining your shop’s culture, so that everyone understands what the shop is working to accomplish and the appropriate ways to get there. Once this has been accomplished, you can focus on mentoring your employees with the highest potential.
With so many things competing for your attention, why should you focus on dedicating time each week to mentoring your shop talent? After all, that time could be used to bring in revenue – to help finish a backlog of cars, dedicate some time to customer contact and marketing activities, or search for new technicians to fill the jobs lying empty in so many repair shops.
The answer is that mentoring employees is the only way you’ll ever find time to get to those items. As your top talent gains the management skills that you’ve learned over the years you’ve been in the industry, they can be entrusted to remove tasks that you used to reserve exclusively for yourself. With training and experience, they can learn to re-earn the trust of dissatisfied customer, re-focus and improve the work quality of nonperforming staff, or just be trusted to keep the shop running in your absence while you escape to handle longer-term strategic planning for your shop.
You’ll also have a better chance to retain your top talent. Your employees who most enjoy being challenged and growing professionally are probably your best performers. They’re also the most likely to leave if they feel their career stalling – and once they’ve reached the highest levels of expertise they’ll require to be successful in your shop, the next step for many people is business and employee management. If you have people who have reached this level in their careers in your shop who have the desire for management experience, you’ll need to provide that opportunity or you’ll lose them to a shop that will.
So make sure to take time out of each week to discuss with your employees what they’ve done well that week, what needs attention, and how to get them the experience they are seeking in order to advance their careers. It might be tough to find the time at first, but if you can relinquish ownership of some of the challenges your shop faces, you’ll soon discover that it creates far more time than it costs.
To learn about how Repair Shop Websites can help your repair shop get found online, call us at 866.665.1605 or email Team_RSW@RepairShopWebites.com