Have you ever had a great employee before?
The kind that shows up on time (or early), works hard, and treats your customers with respect?
…Have you ever had that employee leave for greener pastures, leaving you wondering why?
You aren’t alone. There isn’t a single industry that doesn’t have to eventually deal with finding ways to reduce employee turnover rate.
While you can’t keep every single employee you ever hire—as they say, “life happens” from time to time—you can take a proactive approach to providing the incentives and a healthy work environment that will encourage your best team members to stick around.
In this post, we’ll explore a few ways auto service providers like you can reduce your turnover rate and improve overall workplace satisfaction, which has the happy side effect of keeping your best customers longer as well.
Reducing Employee Turnover Rate With Brutal Honesty
The beginning of your relationship with an employee is perhaps the best way to reduce your turnover rate. For those reading who already have a team and don’t want to see anyone quit, don’t worry, we’ll touch on how to keep pre-existing employees in just a moment.
If, however, you’re looking for a new employee, how you conduct yourself during the hiring process will have a surprisingly important and lasting impact on the duration of your relationship with the employee.
Most businesses want to present themselves in the best possible light while interviewing employees. It makes sense, right? You show your best side so that you can entice the best possible candidates to join the team.
This, however, can backfire if you’ve oversold your company to a prospect. Once they get into the swing of day-to-day work, they might realize that things aren’t quite what they expected. This can lead to resentment and, ultimately, the employee may decide to move on to another company.
Brutal honesty should come into play during the interview process. Let the prospective hire know about exactly what they’ll be doing and under what conditions, what kind of supervision they can expect, and what interactions they may have with customers. Let them know what problems you’re working on resolving and that it may not be an overnight process.
In a manner of speaking, you need to let it all hang out—the good, the bad, and the ugly. If this results in a good candidate passing on the job, you’ve probably just dodged a proverbial bullet. The right candidate will come along who will sincerely appreciate your transparency.
Show Your Appreciation, Be Generous, and Regularly Reward Your Employees
It’s amazing what a pat on the back at the end of a long day will do for an employee’s motivation. It sounds simple and maybe even a little corny, but think about it for a moment. When was the last time you sat down one of your team members and told them point blank how much you appreciate their hard work?
Of course, words aren’t always enough. Pay your employees well, give them benefits whenever possible, and offer bonus rewards appropriate for your sector of the automotive service industry. These things go a long way for employee retention.
Ask Questions… And Listen!
Asking your employees questions related to their job can give you a lot of insight into what issues may exist that you need to address. Often enough, these will be problems or difficulties that you weren’t even aware of.
Consider implementing an annual anonymous survey for your employees. Ask questions designed to suss out their overall satisfaction at work and what changes they would like to see. Keeping the survey anonymous will give them the confidence to be brutally honest. Are you seeing a pattern here?
Sometimes you may learn things you didn’t want to hear, but the end result should always lead you to ways that you can create be a happier, safer, and more satisfying workplace that your employees wouldn’t dream of leaving.
Give Your Employees The Best Possible Products
It might seem a bit like we’re plugging our line of awesome products here—and all right, we are—but hold on a moment, because there is a bigger point.
If you’ve ever worked in an environment where you’ve had to work with sub-par tools, equipment, or products, you know exactly how frustrating it can be. It may have even been one of the reasons you started looking for greener pastures.
When your employees have access to the best tools and automotive products, they’ll have an easier time doing their jobs, and that makes for an employee that wants to stick around.
Even better? It’ll make your customers want to stick around too. If that got you thinking, feel free to get in touch with us if you have any questions about the BG line of products and services!
