Brad Larsen
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dturcott[left][/left]e, I agree. This guy sounds like he had apprentices thrust upon him, but never had a sitdown with the boss to lay down the ground rules. Those of you that know me, know that I am a huge fan of Steven Covey and his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. One of the habits is making everything you do win-win. It has to be good for both of you. Or in this case all three of you. The owner, the technician and the apprentice.
Owners have to give technicians the right to participate or not. Some technicians make lousy mentors and lack the ability to teach. Doesn’t mean they can’t. But owners need to work with them.
Technicians need to be able to choose who they work with. It is their job to supply, train and motivate the apprentice. They had better be able to get along.
Technicians need to help owners set the wage of the apprentice. If the technician is giving up his time to train and supervise, and use of some of his tools, he needs to be compensated for it. Apprentices need to be monitored and documented on their performance. How many hours are they actually performing in a day? In the case of Mr. Kowal it sounds as though all technicians labor is put into a pool, the hourly guys are paid first and the technician gets what is left over. This being the case, there had better be more left over than the technician could produce on his own or why is he doing it? Apprentices need to understand that when they are in the learning curve that they are not going to make much. Their wages need to be set so that the technician is compensted for training them. As they learn, they will naturally produce more and should be eligible for a raise, set by the technician. In return technicians do have a responsibility to supply, train and motivate apprentices. This arrangement is literally a business within a business. It allows the technician to rack up more hours without working longer and allows the owners to rack up additional hours as well.Owners need to understand that it is their responsibility to obtain more work to feed these apprentices. If they are out of work, the technician will send them home or the owner can pay them to sweep the floor.
Once the apprentice is thru with his time required to get licensed (in Canada) and has enough skill & tools to do most jobs start to finish. He may wish to break off on his own. Or he may not. I have a friend in Phoenix Arizona who has four apprentices under him, two of which have hardly bought a tool in two years. They would rather pay him $2-4 per hour of the money they flag, and forego having to layout $10,000 plus for hand and power tools and a box. Of course he has a lot of tools himself, to run four guys. He pays them both about $15 per hour and both require little or no supervision. He makes about $150-$300 per week off of each of them. That is $300-$600 more per week than he would make if he was solo. He told me he makes over $20,000 per year off of these four guys and part of that buys more tools.
Lets not forget that we were all apprentices at one time. Some of us were able to side step the requirements now in place for new techs, but someone still put up with our mistakes and covered for us. Lets give these new guys the same breaks. Treat them with the same patience and love that you give your kids. Make it worth the time and effort for the both of you.
Gentlemen as always: Opinions Please!
Brad Larsen
While you are on the topic of apprenticeships, would you guys give this a read and comment on it. I would like to hear your thoughts. Article is on page 33, entitled It’s your turn: The trouble with apprentices.
http://www.canadiantechnician.com/mag.cfm?year=2010&date=2010-03-31&page_view=1
Brad Larsen
That is at the local NAPA store and others as well. I swear they get together and price fix here. I am more of a hobbiest than a shop at this point. Discounts were not even mentioned when I complained about the prices. I may need to open a store here, with that kind of markup. My old jobber told me he would set me up.
I asked them about a certain aftermarket clear that I have used for years and never had a problem. He proceded to bad mouth it up a storm. So I called the distributor up and asked where I could get some and he refers me to this same guy. After I got done telling him what the guy said, he was primed to give me the account.
Whatever happened to helping the customer and giving him a good deal?
Brad
Top was all bondo cracked and had to be reworked. Near is I can tell it has never had a fender bender. Bondo on roof was from vinyl top going bad many years back. Rusted real bad in a few places under the mud. Owner had it removed and repainted back in the late 1980’s
I painted it with a Kirby Vacuum Attachment and some lesonal.
Can’t get this to upload. To many pixels [img]http://www.refinishnetwork.com/media/kunena/attachments/legacy/images/maverick_007.JPG[/img]
Happy Birthday! :exci :wak
Stone if you had fish tanks they would freeze. Maybe a nice baby seal instead.
There are a lot of nice shops like that around the country. I have even been in some small ones that blew my mind. I would rather have cash in my pocket than a fish tank, but I think equipment and training are premiere.
Brad
Canuck, I agree. The manager asked the owner point blank if he was taking a 12.5% decrease as well and the owner said the had taken an automatic decrease back when this recession first hit in 2007. He told the owner that he had worked thru that same recession and had actually five percent increases in sales and 10% more profit after inflation both years. His simple answer to that was that the rest of the dealership wasn’t fairing so well and that we were all in this together.
Over the years I saw a lot of dealerships let their best salesman go, because people would only deal with that individual (because he took good care of his customers) Dealership owners saw this as a threat because if the salesman left, so did most of his customers. So dealers (like insurance companies) took the personalities out of it and hired a bunch of college kids and a tough sales manager (that customers never meet) to sell cars.
Brad Larsen
This dealership allowed the body shop to make 25% on all parts. The shop itself was making profit based on his profit-sharing bonuses. Management claims that the dealership is losing money and everyone needs to tighten their belts. I am sure car sales are down, and possibly parts and mechanical sales. The body shop has not been shown the numbers from all depts. Still is it right to take part of the one guys pay who is a proven performer? If everyones pay was performance based, like the bodyshop manager, then they have a motivational and promotional problem in other depts and that needs to be rectified. Depts. losing money need to be put on a fast track to improvement. It is a little hard to eliminate any of the sales or service depts in a dealership. If you do then they cease to be a dealership. But you can eliminate poor performers who are drawing salaries.
It seems there is a socialistic trend in the USA to penalize the performers and give the lazy people a handout. Socialism is simply everyone being broke at the same level. It kills incentives to work hard and get ahead.
Gentlemen as always: Opinions please!
Brad Larsen
Years ago when I work for a shop my boss made the comment that the only reason he felt like I worked there was for the money. I told him to quit paying me and see if I hung around. It is nice to be appreciated and to like the people you work with, but ultimately the only reason any of us go to work is to pay for food, shelter, clothing and hopefully have a little left over after taxes.
Gentlemen as always: Opinions Please!
Brad Larsen
Which school are you in?
Welcome as well.
Welcome! Good to have some boys from Australia here.
Brad
