AutoVitals is joined by Jay Goninen, co-founder of WrenchWay, to analyze the results of the Voice of Technician Survey. This year’s survey includes insights from over 4,700 participants, including technicians, instructors, students, shop owners, and other industry leaders. Listen to the discussion on:
- Technician satisfaction in the automotive aftermarket industry
- The importance of communication in technician retention
- What technicians are looking for in a shop
- Technician pay preferences
- and more!
Episode Transcript
*This transcript was generated with Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you identify an error, please contact us at [email protected]
Lauren Thunen (00:00):
Well, hello everyone. Thank you for joining. I see folks trickling in that were already here early, so thank you for joining early. My name is Lauren and today I’m really excited. We have Jay from WrenchWay joining us and we’re going to go through the 2025 Voice of Technician survey results. If you’re not familiar, this is the second year doing the Voice of Technician survey report for WrenchWay. And Jay, why don’t you take it away and just introduce yourself and introduce the survey that you guys have produced.
Jay Goninen (00:28):
Yeah, so thank you for having me on. My name is Jay Goninen. I am one of the co-founders here at WrenchWay, and the voice of technician report was one that we had started back in 2023, so a couple of years ago. And it’s now turned into something that’s an annual report because of the feedback that we got. And it really, when we first took a look at doing this, we didn’t want it to just be maybe another survey or another piece of content that wasn’t useful to many people. And we also at the same time wanted to be able to get good candid feedback from technicians that are out there to be able to help educate the industry. And I think we were able to do that. And so the first year we did it, we had, I don’t know, probably like 800 respondents to it, which isn’t a lot, but it was still a good amount of information and I think really put that piece of WrenchWay on the radar for a lot of folks.
(01:29):
And then as we went through the course of 2024, developed a great relationship with ASE Dave Johnson, the new CEO there shouldn’t say new anymore. He is been there over a year now. But Dave and our team, along with many others at ASE, worked together on how can we make this more impactful and effective in. So we joined forces with them this year to be able to get that out to a lot more people. It was very, very well received. Had about 4,700 respondents all in all this year. And I think it did such a I, it does a couple things, right? One, I think it really did allow that technician to feel safe to give their true feedback on the industry without having ramifications of maybe it not having ramifications of maybe them getting punished for giving that feedback. I think in a lot of ways if I’m that technician and maybe I’m in a smaller shop or even a bigger shop, I hesitate to get feedback or give feedback because I’m afraid of what that’s going to do to my perception within the leadership’s eyes.
(02:46):
So we were able to do that as well as kind of dive into some things that maybe a technician doesn’t immediately think about or maybe that shop owner that’s out there doesn’t immediately think about. And I really hope it just drives really good conversations within the shops that really take a look at it, maybe talks through it with their technician team and says, is this accurate? Is this something that you guys feel about our shop? And if it is, maybe you start chipping away at things and start to really work on that technician satisfaction. So all in all, the report itself has been wonderful. We’ve really enjoyed it and enjoyed the feedback that we’ve gotten. Not all of it’s good feedback. So just being able to dive into that and not take a defensive mindset to it to really just go in with an open mind and say, Hey, what can we do to help make this industry a better place to be?
Lauren Thunen (03:43):
Nice. And so then I presume from your guys’ perspective, really the purpose of the survey is to help shops address the technician shortage and retention of technicians. Is that when you guys were like, we’re going to do the survey? Was that the goal that you had in mind?
Jay Goninen (04:00):
Our mission as a company is to promote and improve technician careers. My business partner, mark and I joke about this a lot in that I think we’ve sat through so many meetings over the years where you hear a company say their mission and you kind of roll your eyes like, okay, that’s the corporate speak. You’re just saying that just to get in the good graces of people or something along those lines. But it is what we live by each and every day. And this was a piece of that, of being able to bring that message to shops so that shops could act accordingly. And we did a webinar with ASE about the survey, and that was one of the things that I had suggested on that webinar was use this list and go through it and rank your own shop one to 10 on each of these.
(04:51):
And if you’re brave enough, do the same with your technicians. Have them rank you one to 10 on each of those categories and see if it aligns. Because that might tell you if you have those rose colored glasses on where you’re only seeing the positives rather than really looking at the critical things that we could do to fix not only your individual shop, but our industry as a whole. So I think again, if you use it as a tool to drive conversation amongst your own team, I think you’re going to come out better because of it.
Lauren Thunen (05:24):
And you made a great point earlier of if you just ask your employees, your technicians, how they feel about your business, you’re likely going to get something that’s probably in between the truth. The goods is probably, they might be over exaggerating the good a little bit. They might under exaggerate the bads. This is a really great tool. It’s a third party perspective. It’s fairly, I think you guys, like you said, over 4,000 respondents, fairly representative of the industry as a whole. So great starting place now. What were the key categories that you were asking technicians for their feedback on before we get into the survey results? How was the survey laid out for the technicians?
Jay Goninen (06:01):
So it was laid out in three different sections. What technicians want, and really I should say two primary sections, what technicians want and technician satisfaction, so how satisfied they are with their current employers. And I think when you look at the results, that’s one of the concerns that we’ve got is we’ve almost gone backwards when we look at the results from the current technician satisfaction. Some of you might be familiar with net promoter score, basically how willing somebody would be to recommend this industry to a friend or family member. And we went backwards this year. And at some level that’s really, really discouraging because I think in a lot of ways there are technicians that have never been treated better than they are today. And to see that number go backward is really I think discouraging for a lot of us in the industry, especially a lot of us that are pushing to get this industry in a better place.
(07:07):
And when you see that we got more people to respond and they responded largely in a negative fashion, it just tells us we have so much work to do to really get on the same wavelength as our technicians. What is it that makes you happy? What is it that we can do to improve your life? But it’s the same time not give away the farm. We still have to stay in business, so we’d love to do a lot of this stuff, but how do we make you happy? And what’s funny I think at some level is that I think technicians struggle to answer that question in a lot of ways. They struggle to, if you just ask them directly what would make you happy, it might at first surface level say pay pay is always a big thing. Everybody needs to take care of their families. But when you go deeper than that, it’s hard to pinpoint that for a lot of technicians. And so that is where we wanted to get maybe a little bit more granular with this and try to figure out what are those things that really either drive you to love your current employer or maybe respect an employer from afar. Just being able to really dive into that mindset of a technician is really, really challenging, but really, really necessary.
Lauren Thunen (08:28):
Yeah. Let’s say on the satisfaction piece, it was very interesting, like you said, almost, well, every category that you ask technicians about is down over compared to 2023. And like you said, there’s pay training, all of those things that cost money, which obviously is going to be hard for a shop to improve depending on their revenue, how they’re breaking down. At the end of the day, you have to take care of your family as well, as well as your employees. But the things that I thought were interesting was down 13% overall were things like I feel valued and respected by management, and then the shop management communicates well. And if you’ve been on the digital shop talk radio before, we talk a lot about culture and it seems funny as a software company, AutoVitals, a software company, we make software for shops that we spend so much time not talking about software because this piece is fully in the control of you as an owner, how you treat your employees, how you respect your employees. It doesn’t cost any money to be respectful, and yet that is a key thing that is going to influence someone’s job satisfaction. So can you talk a little bit more about from your perspective, you’re all about attracting and retaining technicians. What advice do you give shop owners to help their technicians feel like they’re valued and respected by the owner or service manager, et cetera?
Jay Goninen (09:48):
It’s not easy. I don’t think anybody claims that it’s easy to build a good culture. And for those of you that have worked in a shop that doesn’t have good culture, it sucks. It’s not fun at all. So I think most technicians, that’s what they’re looking for is that place to call home and the place that treats them and makes them feel respected. And communication is such a big piece of that because we so easily get buried in our day-to-day fires that we kind of forget just to ask how people are doing. And there are times where maybe your shop is very, very busy and tempers are running high, and that can kind of just equate into a lot of head butting. We’re maybe not seeing eye to eye on a lot of things in a lot of cases, and especially my own experience in a shop, a lot of it could have been avoided with just an easy conversation, but we don’t make the time for those conversations because we’re just going like crazy.
(10:50):
And so for the leaders that are listening, the leaders of shops that are listening, be intentional about taking time out of your schedule. And if it takes putting it in your calendar that, Hey, you know what, I’m going to go around the shop and talk to the guys a couple times a day, or I’m going to do those one-on-ones that are so easily avoidable by just saying we’re too busy to do them. I think you can nail that piece of it and it does help you truly get to know the person and to understand that, hey, maybe you’ve got somebody that’s typically a really, really happy person, but maybe something in their personal life happened that’s driving them to think like, Hey, this place stinks. And it’s not reflective of the shop at all, it’s just that you haven’t been communicating with them enough to know how they’re truly feeling.
(11:40):
The other thing I’ll add to that is I think at times if the wrong technician is in the wrong shop, that can drive a negative culture, a negative environment as a whole. And I think this happens because we make desperate hires when we are in that position as a shop where we’re desperate to find that technician that’s out there. And I’ve gone to a lot of conferences over the years and given presentations where people will tell me constantly, Hey, I’ll hire anybody that can fog a mirror. And you’re like, you got to get out of that mentality a little bit. You’ve got to get a little bit more proactive with your staffing because really what happens is when you’re desperate to make that hire, you make that hire and they don’t fit who you are. Maybe they’re a good person, they have mechanical ability, but they don’t fit who you are.
(12:38):
They have a really negative attitude and it’s not really what you’re looking for, but you’re so desperate that you just made the hire. And that is hard to build a culture around when you’re constantly just desperate hiring because you’re not hiring the right kind of person. And I think so often technical ability can overshadow are you a good person? And so my challenge to anybody listening here is to slow that process down a little bit. They say hire slow and fire fast. I think we’re so quick to hire and anybody that shows interest in our shop, we hire them because hey, they have a toolbox and some mechanical ability. We’re going to bring ’em in and just slow that piece down and say, do you fit who we are as a company? Do you fit our mission, vision, and values? And when you’re doing your interview process, are you asking actual questions that are around your mission, vision and values, and really trying to figure out if they truly fit who you are. And if you’re not, you probably are making bad hires. Or if you’re hiring in a hurry all the time, it’s setting yourself up for failure. So I think being able to slow down a little bit, as easy as that sounds, it’s really, really hard to do. Slow down a little bit and your next year or two will be better, even though you have to sacrifice this next week or two to make sure that you’re making the right hire.
Lauren Thunen (14:11):
Yeah, yeah, no, that definitely makes sense. And what kind of interview questions do you typically give us some examples recommend to shops when you are looking for, are they going to be a good personal or cultural fit? Very easy to figure out if they have the mechanical skills that you need, but how do you interview for the culture and personal piece?
Jay Goninen (14:35):
That is such a good question and there are times where I still stink at it. I do my best to prepare ahead of time with some questions that might help me understand them ethically, kind of their personality. I think just maybe asking scenario type of questions of if this happens, how frustrated are you? Or tell me a time when a manager made a decision that you didn’t like. How do you react to that? And I don’t know that there’s a perfect, you can have the best prepared questions in the world and you can have somebody that’s a professional answering questions and will spin whatever you’re saying into whatever sounds good. I think at the end of the day, and this is more my style, I know there’s probably plenty of people with HR backgrounds that do this differently than I do. I do a more casual laid back interview.
(15:34):
I like to get to talk to the person, get to know them. I like to talk to more than one person. And I think because it’s so hard to find technicians, a lot of times if you do get that one applicant, you have that one interview and you’re just like, all right, this is the person we’re going with them. And if you get a chance to talk, and I just actually went through this with our own family shop probably, I don’t know, three or four months ago where we were bringing on an entry level kind of general service type of technician. We’re going to train up, we’re going to put them through a training program within our shop. And had I made the first hire that I felt good about, it would’ve been a mistake, but we actually sat down and talked, I bet I phone screened 25 people and actually phone interviewed truly went from the phone screen to the phone interview probably seven of them, and then in-person interview with two. And then by the end of it, it was crystal clear on who I felt like was the best candidate. And it was because of our just good discussion and kind of getting a feel for their personality. Our shop’s personality is probably far different than a lot of other shop’s personalities. So truly just like, Hey, are you going to fit us and are we going to fit you? And then we can move on to the other things and try to figure out could you actually do this job?
Lauren Thunen (17:04):
Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense. And that fits well into communication is a two-way street. So in your survey you’re seeing that a lot of shops are unhappy with the communication style of the shop that they work for. That doesn’t always mean that the shop owner has a bad communication style. It just means that it’s not aligned with the technician that’s working in their business. And a lot of hiring is not only can you do the work, but can you work well with me? And I’ve had to hire here at AutoVitals, obviously different industry, but something that, like you said, I always try to keep top of mind is people are going to be their best self on their interview. So if you’re not absolutely blown away by the person that you’re, it really is probably only going to go downhill from there, especially if you’re in a shop that things are moving very, very quickly.
(17:59):
Typically folks are not their best communicators, not their best selves when they’re under stress. So you either want to make sure you hire someone that has a communication style that’s compatible with you under pressure, or obviously on the flip side, which is something that auto vital helps with is how can you alleviate the stress in your business so that you can be a more effective shop owner and your employees can work more effectively. That might mean taking in less cars in a day and focusing on increasing the average repair order value. That might mean you need to get some help on your scheduling, et cetera. There’s tons of different ways you can improve that communication piece. It’s not just, Hey, you as the shop owner need to change your language. That’s probably not the answer. That might be a very small part of it, but it’s probably can you reduce your stress and can you hire the right person that’s going to communicate effectively with you?
Jay Goninen (18:48):
I love what you just said there, right? Put them in less stressful areas of their day and if one of the comments or the categories that we ask is, does the shop provide the equipment I need to get my job done? And that 58% said that they do so just over half, which probably isn’t all that great for us, but when we talk about equipment or any other tool, that could be some of those other things too, like using an AutoVitals or something that does make their life easier and maybe puts them in less situations where they are angry or frustrated. I think that the more you can take pressure off of that, the better. Especially in our industry, it’s not like every shop is free of stress. We all have stress, there’s always stress somewhere within the shop, but being able to get that out or avoid the situation entirely in terms of putting them in stressful situations is a great best practice.
Lauren Thunen (19:53):
And having, like you said, no matter how well you run your shop or your business, you’re going to have stressful days and having a plan in place and a review process too after you have some days are just going to be bad days. And are you checking in with your employees after that to make sure that hey, they know that you know, that wasn’t a good day and we’re going to try to prevent whatever issue caused that. Whether it was a scheduling issue, whether it was a technician called out sick and someone had to cover for him or her, is making sure that they are aware that the bad days are bad days. And that’s not just how we want to operate our shop day to day, especially when someone’s new because they don’t know if that one bad day that happened on their first week is going to be how it is for the next year or if that’s just a fluke.
Jay Goninen (20:39):
Well, and I do think that’s where we as an industry could do a better job at least helping the narrative turn to a more positive direction. Because if you’re that technician that’s in the shop and you’ve had that bad day, and I don’t care what type of job you have, you’re going to have a bad day here and there and some more often than others, but if that technician has a bad day, then goes on Facebook when they get home and sees all of the negative conversation about our industry, it just continues to snowball. And so then it’s somebody going out and saying, okay, I’m not the only one having a bad experience in my shop, and it might just be that bad day that all of a sudden you start reading into that negative narrative and it kind of takes over and consumes you and it’s really hard to get back out of that rut. And so I think again, there’s going to be bad days, but how do you stop that from going into making it a bad week and then that bad week going into a bad month and that bad month going into a bad year where it’s just all of that negativity around it. And at some level, I don’t blame the technicians because they’re surrounded by it everywhere right now and it is really hard to pull them out of that.
Lauren Thunen (21:57):
So speaking of pulling them out of it, so we talked a lot about satisfaction piece and that satisfaction is down overall, but what is the survey telling you that technicians want from their employers that’s going to keep them at a shop and is going to help pull them out of just a bad day or a negative sentiment of the industry overall?
Jay Goninen (22:16):
Yeah, I think I’ll start by saying number one is still pay, right? They still want to be paid accordingly and everything else that we’re going to talk about kind of comes after that. But if you look at it, we just talked about proper equipment in the shop, that was the number one ranking thing that technicians wanted to see. 87% said it’s must have to have proper equipment in the shop with another 13% saying nice to have. So that’s literally every technician saying that that is something that they look for yet only I think 58% of respondents said that their shops actually have that right now, vacation has actually moved up. 83% said that it’s must have 16% said nice to have. I do think when we look at paid vacation, that’s one for those shop owners that are out there that you really have to look at.
(23:08):
I don’t know that the traditional you get one week after one year of working there and then two weeks after five years and then three weeks after 10 years. I don’t know if that’s going to be the thing that draws a technician to you. Their expectation in a lot of ways is that I should get that week of vacation or that two weeks of vacation right off the bat. And I think you’re seeing that more and more in technician conversations or negotiations with the shop is that at some level though, maybe even sacrifice. I’ve had this in my own experience where a technician has sacrificed money to get more vacation, don’t give me that extra 5,000 or that extra $10,000. I want that extra week of vacation. And so I’ve seen that in my own personal experience. So that’s been a big one. Retirement fund is high on the list as well.
(24:00):
Again, if that’s something that you’re not offering as a shop, go talk to your local financial advisor. Go talk to somebody that can help you get a 401k or an IRA plan set up for your team. And if you’re able do a match, that’s something that a lot of big companies do, and if you want to stand out and you want to be that best in class employer, make sure you’re offering those types of things. No weekends has been a big thing. I know I kind of just always put myself in a technician’s shoes. I was a technician at one point, I don’t like working weekends. So it’s hard to ask others to work weekends unless they really want to. And there are some, and I saw that more on the diesel side, that they’ll work as many hours as they possibly can. They want to make a lot of money, they will work as many hours as you’ll give them.
(24:57):
So there are those exceptions, but it is a real challenge if your shop is open six or seven days a week to get that fully staffed. And maybe you can, I’ve seen some shops out there that have done a nice job with that and maybe they’re giving their weekend during the week for some of their staff or there are creative ways to maybe get around that. But all in all, I think you can see that in the survey, it wasn’t something that a lot of technicians were overly looking forward to. So on top of that, I just think a lot of the other things are career path. Maybe that doesn’t sound like communication, but that is communication that’s communicating to somebody about their career path and where they’re going. They want to know where they’re going. And so often we pin that on genzer or millennial that hey, they need this vision of where they’re going.
(25:53):
And I always kind of fight that back and I say, don’t you think that 55-year-old wants to know what their next 10 years looks like? And maybe if their body’s breaking down and they really are unsure of what their next 10 years looks like to get them to retirement, that maybe they’re a little bit concerned about it as well. And so it’s not just young generation that are looking for that career path. It’s some of us that have been in the industry for a long time as well. So there are a number of things on there around communication. Just think all of you should just look at your communication within your shop and be honest, are you good or you have some or do you have some work to do?
Lauren Thunen (26:35):
Yeah. Yeah. I want to go back to what you said about vacation. I think that’s something super interesting. I know too, a lot of shop owners, maybe not everyone on this call, but are probably thinking, well, I’m not taking as much vacation time as I want to because I’m working in the shop day in day out, managing everything. So how do you recommend shops start to plan for giving vacation time? So if they’re like, okay, I want to give, let’s just call it two weeks, are there any effective strategies that you help shops work with to make that package more lucrative for a technician?
Jay Goninen (27:14):
We at WrenchWay don’t work with them on that type of thing.
(27:18):
What I will say is so much of it depends on where you’re at with your business. If you’re just getting your business off the ground, you’re just, it started just opened your doors, it’s going to be a real challenge to be able to do that. So if you’re doing that, maybe you might have more of that early adopter type employee that’s coming on fully knowing that you’re just getting it off the ground. They might be a little bit more understanding and they might want to be a part of something bigger. So being able to talk to somebody candidly about that, Hey, I’d love to offer you vacation, but we’re still getting this thing off the ground. Now, if you’ve been in business for 20 years or 30 years, there’s no excuse why you can’t work toward that. And I think most shops now that I talk to offer pretty good compensation packages, pretty good benefits packages, including the vacation.
(28:08):
But there are still a fair amount that I’m shocked when I hear how little they offer their employees and honestly kind of makes me scratch my head as to why an employee would stay there when there’s so much demand for them all over the place. So my big thing is to make sure you’re doing your research of what your competitive shops are doing to make sure you’re not just so far out in left field with your offering that nobody would want to come work for you. In fact, I would argue that it’s better to be the opposite of that and be maybe a little different from the standpoint of we offer maybe too much vacation to our people and it’s really easy to say because people like vacation, but it doesn’t drive profitability, which is a killer. And so it’s one of those things where you have to weigh the benefits.
(28:59):
In my eyes, I’d rather maybe lean a little bit more toward offering better benefits, and that might cost me a little bit of short-term profitability when they’re gone, but then I’m not looking for technicians every six months, then I’m not looking for technicians every year and chasing my tail and really struggling to build that culture because nobody’s around long enough to build a culture. I just think there’s a huge argument for that. But going back to your initial question, so much of it depends on where you’re at as a business and if you can afford it, if you can, I would challenge you even for your current team, make sure you’re taking care of them.
Lauren Thunen (29:44):
Yeah, yeah. No, that’s great advice. And I think just listening to you, one of the biggest things is just plan for it when you’re setting up your profitability targets, your revenue targets, when you’re looking through your 2024 performance is make sure your budgeting extra line items for that paid vacation for benefits. Because as you continue to grow, like you said, you can’t develop a good shop culture if you’re hiring someone new every month, every two months. And then again, just like you said, being open with your employees. I think too, sometimes even shops that I talk to that don’t have big comprehensive benefit or vacation packages, they make up for it in terms of being flexible with individuals. If someone needs to take off for their cousin’s wedding, they’re going to be more flexible about that, even though they don’t have a big comprehensive package of just working individually with your employees or if someone spouse is sick and they’re going to need to be out for a week, is just those little things that you do to take care of people can also help if you’re not in the place yet to say, I’m going to offer everyone in my shop two weeks, one week paid vacation.
Jay Goninen (30:51):
Well, just good candid conversations with your people and just saying, being transparent enough to where they understand your business while also not scaring the heck out of them by thinking that you’re going to go out of business. It’s a hard thing as a leader to have those conversations, but I think they’re really important to have to just give an idea to your team of where you stand as a business and if you truly do care about taking care of your people. This is an interesting one, this is probably, I dunno, a couple years ago we had a shop call us up from the Carolinas wanted to sign up on WrenchWay, and part of WrenchWay on the job board piece of it is that we really, really want to highlight transparency. We want to make sure that a technician can do their due diligence by just looking at your page.
(31:47):
And so we shared that with this shop and said, Hey, part of it is you share salary information. And he kind of poked his chest out and said, I don’t share my salary information almost like in a cocky way or a condescending way, I dunno. It was very weird. And so our salesperson had said, well, can I ask you more about that? Why don’t you pay your people well? And his answer of what was next was, what is the detriment of our industry as a whole? His response was, I don’t pay my technicians well because that would give them disposable income to be able to take their families on vacation and therefore they wouldn’t be in the shop taking care of our customers. And right there you’re like, okay, this person should not one own a shop, but two understand I you’re not a great employer to work for.
(32:43):
You’re just kind of argumentative. That response right there kind of almost shows a level of arrogance. You didn’t want to pay your people well so they could take their families on vacation. What kind of leader doesn’t want to take care of their people? And at some level, I think that’s where a lot of dissatisfaction in our industry comes from. I know 90% of our shops are pretty good people, pretty good ethically, they want to take care of people, but you get that small percentage of shops that just are not great people and they don’t take care of their people and they’re not great leaders and it’s such a detriment to our entire industry when something like that happens.
Lauren Thunen (33:23):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, and I was looking at the numbers again, and I think it’s really interesting because everything that you’re talking about right now costs money to be a good employer, it costs money. People are expensive, employees are expensive, but when you download the report, you can start to make trade-offs in your business based on what is important to your technicians. So if they are representative of the folks that were surveyed, they’re going to care about obviously paying number one, proper equipment in the shop, paid vacation and their retirement fund. Those are their top four. And then you go, and interestingly, and the bottom is things like temperature controlled building, adequate tool reimbursement policy, and then paid company lunches. So you can kind of start to make trade offs of maybe I don’t have to turn on the AC to like 65 today and I could save a little money there.
(34:17):
Or maybe instead of we’re going to trade off some of our big company lunches or maybe do a company holiday party and we’re going to invest that money and we’re going to tell our team we’re going to invest that money into some vacation time for 2025. 2026 is, I think that’s really the beauty of the survey and talking to your technicians is based on what’s important to them. How can I change my budgeting decisions as a shop owner to put more money where it’s going to actually help versus where if you don’t ask or you don’t read the report, you might not know exactly what your staff actually cares about and you might be putting a ton of money into things that are great and are just going unnoticed by your team.
Jay Goninen (34:57):
Well, one thing I want to point out that you just said there is doing what your team wants or understanding what your team wants. And to me, that can’t be a guessing game. You can’t guess at what they want because I think you’re going to miss the target most times. And I myself just had a conversation with a technician at our family shop, I dunno, two or three weeks ago, around Christmas time, and I was thinking something that was of a benefit that I thought would just be really cool. And he had come in and we were sitting down, we were having lunch and he had talked about former employer and how they had done this, I can’t even remember what it was, this one thing. He’s like, what a stupid waste of money that is. And I’m like, in the back of my head I’m like, oh, I thought that’d be a really cool benefit.
(35:49):
But hearing directly from him and saying, yeah, they went and bought this whatever machine and it didn’t help us as technicians at all. We didn’t like it, we didn’t appreciate it. And here I’m thinking in almost an empathetic way to his former employer saying he was trying to do it, he just didn’t get the right thing and maybe he didn’t get the right thing because he wasn’t communicating correctly in the first place. So again, it does go down to communication. A lot of those benefits, if you go on and read the report, they don’t cost money. We talked about the ones that do, but there are things like communication that if you work your tail off to be best in class in communication, that might out shadow a lot of those other things that are costly. And maybe you’re not in a position to do those things yet, and that’s fine.
(36:43):
But by having proper communication and treating people with respect, what a concept, people like to be treated with respect, actually listening to your people and caring about their personal lives and not caring about their personal lives so much that you’re gossiping and getting deep into their personal stuff. But you know what, I do know their spouse’s name. I do know their kids’ names. I do know when their birthday is. Just little things can go So, so far and oftentimes we overlook them again because we get busy and it’s really hard to stay on top of that, but do yourself a favor and get really, really great at that. And I think a lot of other things come into play there then too.
Lauren Thunen (37:28):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay. I want to spend a little bit of time before we run out of time talking about pay, because when I was looking at the report, this was probably the most surprising thing for me. So the survey asked, how do you want to be paid? What’s your preferred pay structure? And very surprisingly to me, especially for students, hourly or salary was by far the most popular outweighing hourly with production bonus that seems to decrease over the year. So can you talk a little bit about the results from a pay perspective and what folks are looking for in terms of how they’re paid by their employer?
Jay Goninen (38:07):
That one surprised us too, by the way. When we got the data back, I was not expecting that that actually flip flopped from a year ago. So the hourly or salary versus hourly with production bonus, they flip flopped in terms of the hourly with production bonus went down 9% hourly or salary went up 10%. So they stole hourly or salaries kind of stole from that. And that is one of those things where I wish maybe we would’ve done a better job at providing a little bit more clarity there on the question or getting more information about the answer. And I think since the survey results have come back, have started to talk more with technicians about that, and I think when they took the survey, a lot of them were thinking hourly plus a production bonus meant that your hourly was going to be a lower hourly rate, which in a lot of cases could be correct. So as I looked at it, I was very surprised because in my head I was thinking hourly at the same, and then you get a bonus on top of that. But I think everybody else read it as hourly is going to be lower because you’re getting a production bonus and that’s why it flip flopped share.
Lauren Thunen (39:29):
Right. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think what it really tells me is that folks, especially with I feel like so much economic uncertainty right now, so much inflation, they want to be sure they want to guarantee of how much they’re going to make in a year. That’s what always tells me because we have commission structures here at AutoVitals as well, and when folks just will take less money to know that, hey, if my salary is, let’s just call it $70,000 a year, no matter what I do, as long as I stay employed for a year, I’m going to make $70,000 a year versus with a production bonus, maybe I know, again, no matter what I do, no matter how many cars I fix, I’m going to make $50,000. But if I do a killer job, I could make 80, $90,000 When things are uncertain, especially when things are uncertain in the shop with how the shop’s going to be doing from a revenue perspective, how is car count?
(40:29):
How is your a RO? If you can’t prove those things to your technicians that hey, you run a highly profitable shop, that production bonus is going to be way less lucrative for someone because they might not assume that they’re going to get that bonus, right? So if you are working with, I think it’s a great structure to have the hourly rate with the production bonus because it incentivized people to do their best work. But as a shop owner, what that tells me is you really need to be clear and prove to your employees what the pathway to get that production bonus is. And the best way for that is data, historical records and being able to pull their performance and reporting month over month so you can show them, Hey, I’m going to use the AutoVitals thing is, Hey, you only inspected 60% of the cars that came into the shop and then your service advisor only sent 50% of those to the customer. You’re not going to hit your production bonus because you need to be inspecting 90% of the vehicles that come into the shop. Then as a technician, that’s very clear. I have a path to, okay, if I want to make that thousand dollars this month, I know exactly what I need to do. Versus it just feeling like a mystery at the end of the month and then your employer writes something on your paycheck and that’s that.
Jay Goninen (41:43):
Absolutely, and I saw UVA had put in the question area, what about flat rate? So flat rate on the pay side was 22% of automotive technicians preferred flat rate with a guarantee 21% traditional flat rate altogether. So altogether about 43% voted flat rate, which I think is actually probably higher than a lot of people would imagine. And I do have conversations with techs constantly that love flat rate, and it might not be the general perception amongst technicians across the industry, especially if you read social media, but there are a lot of technicians that live for flat rate and love flat rate. So it is one of those where I would’ve honestly probably assumed that was a little less just based on general conversation with technicians.
Lauren Thunen (42:36):
Awesome. Cool. Good question, Eva. Nice to see you. Eva said, the most successful shops I know tend to use flat. Right? Nice, good insight. And
Jay Goninen (42:47):
A lot of that, Eva. Yeah.
Lauren Thunen (42:50):
Yeah. So we have two minutes left, so if you have any other questions for Jay, throw them in the q and a, just the bottom right of your zoom in the last couple of minutes. Jay, can you tell folks how they can access the survey results? Obviously we’ll send the follow-up email, but if folks want to get it right now, how can you access the survey results and then how can you stay in touch with WrenchWay moving forward?
Jay Goninen (43:12):
Yeah, you can go out to WrenchWay.com. There’s a spot to download the report out at WrenchWay, so go check that out. You can also, there’s a variety of different ways you can stay in touch with WrenchWay, but all over social media, so through Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, we’ve got a pretty good following on TikTok, YouTube, pretty much anything. And if anybody wants to connect with me, they can find me on LinkedIn. I’m very active on LinkedIn and just love Talking Shop whenever I can.
Lauren Thunen (43:47):
Awesome. Cool. In just a second, I’m going to throw your LinkedIn profile into the chat here so folks have it. And then I say, thank you so much for joining us. It’s always a pleasure to talk with you. I know also you’re still doing your guys’ podcast, correct? Right?
Jay Goninen (44:04):
We are, yes. Beyond the Wrench podcast, the
Lauren Thunen (44:07):
Wrench.
Jay Goninen (44:08):
Yeah. It’s crazy. We started that, that was the very first episode we did was March of 2020 and I think it was around how Covid was impacting shops at that point. So going back, it’s crazy that that’s been five years ago now, but a lot of podcast episodes, we normally release them on Wednesdays and each and every Wednesday. So yeah, go check it out. The one thing I’ll say about that, a lot of dealers, a lot of diesel, a lot of collision, some other things that might not be exactly like your shop, but there are so many best practices that come out of it that are not, it doesn’t matter what kind of business you are, you’re just listening to smart people, myself, excluded, whoever the guest is, you’re listening to them and hopefully taking something out of it.
Lauren Thunen (44:59):
Awesome. Cool. Well, thank you again, Jay, for joining us and we will see everyone next month and have a great rest of your day.
Jay Goninen (45:08):
Thank you everybody.
Lauren Thunen (45:09):
Thanks. Bye.