Being aware of your staff’s stress points

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Every employee in your shop is carrying baggage from a previous employer. If you don’t know what it is, you may inadvertently trigger those stress points somewhere along the line and lose a good employee, a shop coach warned.

When hiring, Rick White, founder and president of 180Biz, stressed the importance of recognizing “what that baggage is before you step on it.” Even if it’s someone new coming into your personal life, you need to find that out.

He explained how he’d speak to technicians who would tell him they worked at one shop for a few years and then another for another few years. A key question to ask them is why they left those shops. Their answer is important — so you don’t make the same mistakes as their old boss that would push them out of your shop.

“You want to make sure you’re not doing what that last shop did. Or at least explain it before you [do] it,” White said at the Midwest Auto Care Alliance’s Vision Hi-Tech Training & Expo 2023 during his session Trust is the Real Currency.

Tell them, “Hey, I’m about to do this and I know it’s going to trigger you. But here’s why we’re doing it,” he explained as a way to talk to your staff. “Get them to understand. You got to understand they got baggage.”

Your employees are your internal clients. Just like your external ones, if you don’t make them happy, they can pick up and leave.

“If you’re not happy where you’re working and you don’t feel like you’re appreciated and trusted and such what you’re going to do?” White said.

Shop owners can’t make employees trust them; they can only be invited to trust you.

“And if [you’re] not going to do that, then the only thing [your employee] can do is get out of that relationship,” White observed.

“People that work with us can leave anytime they want. And they’re going to do what’s best for them always. You can’t understand why somebody’s been with you for five years, all of a sudden they’re leaving? It’s because all of a sudden they’re not getting something they want or need. And you haven’t been aware of it.”