This is absolutely fascinating look at recruiting and retaining employees (9-minute video): A Seattle Toyota dealership took technician retention from 30 percent to 95 percent … by starting their own school.
The general manager hired away an auto repair instructor (and former tech for the store) who teaches in the store’s conference room and service bays. This, along with a program where techs affordably lease tools up front and own them outright after a few years, has the students’ friends applying to the school/workplace.
If you are in automotive retail, you certainly get the need–and probably have questions (pay plan? flat rate?).
But regardless of industry, what principles here apply to ANY efforts in recruiting and retaining employees?
Help them feel safe. They know they aren’t expected to know anything at the start. They know they’ll have tools. They know there is a path for them.
Connect them to the big picture. Why is it important to follow the processes they are learning? What is the importance of other roles at the company? How does their current role fit in to the value the store brings to customers?
Dedicate somebody to owning their development–and have some patience. Learning takes time. Not in the week after hiring. Not occasionally when managers have some down time.
(Who should own it? The one thing managers can’t delegate is growing their people. Which is perhaps why perhaps why the store promoted the instructor to service manager.)
An ancient method
In short, you can’t “throw people against the wall and see who sticks.”
The store’s school seems to follow the classical approach of the “three roads,” the trivium (something Hip Socket uses in coaching and consulting):
- Classroom training for grammar: foundational knowledge of cars, diagnostic processes, etc.
- Service bay training for dialectic: discussion and hands-on wrestling to get confident in their understanding
- On-the-job training for rhetoric: trying out those skills with customers’ cars, applying their wisdom to solve incredibly complex problems.
If you think “rhetoric” is too grand a word for automotive technicians, I assure you: Most of the good ones are absolute poets.
How could you make use of this approach to enhance your efforts to find and keep good people?