Believe it or not, you can learn something from everyone
Column by CHELSEA STEBNER
A long time ago, our fearless leader decided to grow from the ground up. At a time when many shops were not interested in young, green labour and wanting only the heavy hitting journeypersons, he chose to begin the building process. It was a process, fraught with challenges throughout, and the understanding that profit might take a hit, as would cycle times.
But build he did, and we had a team of young, smart, passionate technicians and support crew. We’ve continued this path, with both success and failures along the way. Working this way, we have learned that we can build technicians with superb skills in one specific area but might lack in other areas teaching us some heavy lessons along the way. It is easy to recognize this after the fact. It’s also easy to plan and fall backwards to default—the fact that someone is great in a role and the reality of needing to produce work often forces us on a path of here we go again!
We’ve learned it is both hard and necessary to instill values and passion and commitment into people; that just ‘showing’ by example does not always work. That the value of hard work and showing up needs to be taught, repeatedly.
We’ve learned that we find gold in many young teammates, and they soak up the opportunity and understand that with great work comes great reward. Those young people turn out to be superstars and work in the business like ‘intrapreneurs’, treating the business like it’s their own.
We’ve learned the hardest thing to do is to hire quickly and fire fast. We keep learning this lesson. We get better at it but boy, that’s a tough one every time!
We recognize that as a training shop, we will have folks that take their learning and step into the next opportunities that come their way. We also recognize we don’t have room for everyone after they are trained. We’ve sent some wonderful people out there into the world, with values and learnings and know that they are out their making a difference in their own ways.
Every leader takes care of their people differently. It’s interesting talking to other
shops, hearing the challenges abound from every perspective: dollars, benefits, holidays, flexibility, team pay, flat rate, profit sharing, RRSPs—and great people to work with. Those all make up the whole of the renumeration package. I don’t think a lot of folks realize how all those things work together to feel satisfied and happy at work every day.
One of the biggest challenges this industry faces is attraction and retention of young people. We live in a world where we hire young folks who are often at their first job and we train like crazy, indenture them as apprentices, send them off to school at all times of the year—whether our shops are busy or not. Amid all of that, we continually are training ALL our team, learning, and adapting the ongoing technology and equipment requirements and keeping up with all our insurance company’s requirements. Whew. The time and energy and dollar investment are steep.
Our industry is state of the art and the vehicles we repair are often worth many thousands of dollars. The ongoing equipment investment is hundreds of thousands of dollars. The investment in young apprentices and all our outstanding team is priceless. For our businesses to be sustainable and worthwhile, we need the ability to pay our people well and have enough cash left over to put back into the business, we need to know that our partners are invested in the industry and its longevity.
CHELSEA STEBNER is the CEO and managing partner of Parr Auto Body in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She can be reached at chelsea@parrautobody.com.
