Good morning everybody, this is Bill Mays and I am pleased to present to you the program So You Have Hired Technicians, Now How Do You Keep Them brought to you by AED and the AED Foundation. Anyway, good morning to you all or good afternoon depending on where you are if you're far enough east. Let's see if I can get this thing rolling and move it forward. Okay now finally I've got a little lag here so let me just go ahead and figure out how much lag I've got. Okay, what's the purpose of this program? Today we're not going to discuss how to find technicians because that's really a different topic. We've talked about that before and it is a large topic but it's not one that we're going to get in today. So the idea here is now that you have technicians, how do you get them to stay longer because one of the things that I hear all the time going to the dealers is it's frustrating. It's frustrating to go to all the work of finding and hiring and training these people, of going to the tech schools and putting together programs and supporting them with their tuition and doing all this and then they just turn around and as soon as they get just a little bit of a very, very jump ship and they go to somewhere else. So that's a reality. That's a reality that we're going to have to live with. Some people are better at keeping the people on board than others. So what is it that you can do to reduce the likelihood that your people are going to leave you after they join you because technicians are different than your other employees, right? They have a skill and that skill takes a long time to develop. They're in very short supply and they're in very high demand with that and so with that, it's easy for them to jump ship. People are going to come looking for them and then once you lose them, they're hard to replace. So it's important that we spend some time and we figure out how do we keep them. What can we do? And that's what I want to concentrate on in this next 50, 70 minutes or so. Now before I get going too much, if you have questions, you'll see on your screen something that says, a box that says audience questions. Just go ahead and click there and then when you do, you'll see at the bottom of the screen, it will say send it to leaders, send it to all or send it to attendees. Just go ahead and send it to us and we will see that. The microphones are off so you can't talk to us but we will handle any questions that come up or if we lose audio for some reason or video, send that and the technical people behind me will take care of that. So how do we get going? How do we start this process? Well, it starts by knowing yourself. It starts with you. Ask yourself, am I the type of boss that I would want to work for? Would I want to work for me? Now how many of you have actually done some kind of a behavioral analysis on yourself, a 360 or something else or you've taken a profile so that you begin to understand yourself? Now most of us take those and we look at that and we go, that's not me and then we show it to someone else, especially someone that might be close to us and they go, they're more due to a T. The reason I mention this is because there are a number of these on the market and I'm going to talk about one just because it's a good way to talk about what they do for you. I think it's important that you understand yourself and formally commit to learning about your own management style and your own personality because how you react to people or how you try to lead people is so important today, more than it was in my generation. I'm a baby boomer and I showed up for work and they said, do this and I did that and if you did that well, then you might have an opportunity to make more money or move up the ladder. If you didn't do it well, you'd get screened at. That doesn't work today but there's still too many people that are doing some form of that. While they may not be screening as much as they used to, it feels like it to the people, to your employees. Take a behavioral analysis because everybody has natural tendencies. That's just the way you are at your fundamental self. It doesn't mean that that's the way you're going to behave in every situation but it does mean that there's something that you may have to deal with in your own personality to be able to maintain and even heal as you deal with situations or try to lead your people because not all people are alike. This is the thing. There's only one way to do anything with our people as far as leading people. You need to understand them and where they're coming from and whether they hear you or not, communication is your responsibility. If they've got you turned off, they've got you turned off and you can do whatever you want but the message is not going to be heard. It's your responsibility to make sure that they want to receive the communication. I won't even say hear you because the communication is a lot broader than that. Take a course on communication or come to one of the AED courses where we talk about that but it includes your body language, it includes written communications, it includes sluggish you've got on the walls, it includes the way your dealership looks, you're sending signals to your people, you are communicating the kind of business you are with everything you do and with everything you surround yourself with. You have to make sure that you understand it's your responsibility to control that environment and you must adapt to them. It's not their job to adapt to you. That was old thinking. It's their job to adapt to us but we're not the military. We don't mow them the same way the military does. We have to do it in a different way but you can lead them into your way of thinking. Let's talk about this lead analysis and then I've got the next two slides. I'm going to show you a graph about how you can interpret this. This is called the Leadership Effectiveness and Adaptability Description, LEAD. Like I said, this is one of many different kinds of behavioral analyses but I want to talk about this one because it gives you a good example of what you should look for and how you should use it. This one says there are four basic styles of management. Other ones say there are more. I don't know of any that say fewer but this one is simple because it's four. They base it based on whether you are task oriented or people oriented. Are you a task oriented person? Let's get things done. Are you a people oriented person? Let's build a team. Coming into this, you can see there's no one correct leadership or management style. That goes back to the fact that people are individuals. You are an individual and you're different than I am and you're different than everybody else on this conference. The people that you're leading are different and so however many people you've got, you've got that many different styles of personality. You must adapt to the situations and the personnel that you're trying to lead. As things change, it becomes a problem. You're trying to do the problem. You're trying to motivate someone. You catch someone doing something right. You've got to adapt to the situation. You've got to adapt to the person and you've got to match the style, your style of leadership to where they are in the job and I'll talk about that in just a second. So again, based on those two axes, based on action or people oriented, this will come up with four styles of leadership. One is called telling, one is selling, one is participating or joining in and one is delegating or consultative. Then you must change your style from whatever you naturally would be in those four to whatever it needs to be based on the situation, based on the employee readiness level and I'll talk about what that is. So here's what it looks like when you look at the graph. You see this graph and the y-axis vertical is your relationship behavior. The x-axis horizontal is your task behavior. So starting at the bottom left, that S4 box, that is low task behavior and not very relationship oriented. You move across the bottom towards the high task behavior and that's where they just get it done. So let's go to that bottom right box and what you see is the S1 box is high task behavior but low people. This is a very directive manager. They call this the tone manager. High task, low relationship. So you just go on and tell them how to get it done. Do it my way, no questions, get it done. You move up, you keep on the right for task behavior but you move up the scale on the vertical as you become more relationship oriented into the S2 box. Now you're both high task and high relationship person. This is called a selling type of personality. One of the reasons actually is I teach managers, probably 70% of the people I work with including myself have an S2 type of behavior. Does it mean it's good? No. Does it mean it's bad? No. It just means it is what it is. I like to direct people. I like to say here's how to do it. But I'm totally willing to convince you to do it my way, meaning I want to involve you. I know that I'm relationship. I want you to like doing it but I still want you to do it my way. So you can see some challenges with that, right? By the way, if you look at the bottom here on the right, Paul Hershey and Ken Blanchard back in 82 actually first developed this but it's been refined since then numerous times but it still comes back to the same basic criteria. Let's move across the axis now back to low task behavior but let's stay on the high relationship behavior into the S3 box. This is high relationship but low task. So this is participated. What this is is a person, a manager that's not a real directive manager. They're not saying you got to do it this way. It's not just about getting it done but they're very high on relationship and so we call this the participating manager. So high relationship, low task. And then you come down that curve down to the S4, low task, low relationship. We call that the delegating manager. This is a strategic type manager, if you will, is someone that really doesn't care to relate to their people. They don't spend a lot of time worrying about whether the people get along with them or whether they like them or trying to build teams. They depend on their people to know what their job is and they just delegate it to them. So they're low on the task. They don't care how you get it done, just get it done. And so it doesn't mean that they're not managing, they're managing from a distance, if you will. So you see these four types, telling, selling, participating and delegating are the types. Most of the people I work with are S2, then the rest of them typically fall into S3. There are very few now in S1 that are just the old directive style and there just aren't people in our business that I've seen that are willing to step back from how to get the job done and become that S4. It doesn't matter because you just have to know who you are because now that is a task or chart employee readiness. Now you see the R1, the R2, the R3 and the R4. R1 is an employee that's unable to do it and unwilling to do it. They're insecure. They just really don't know. This may be a brand new employee or someone that's got problems with motivation for that matter. What I like to look at is someone that just doesn't know how to do the job and they're unwilling to try because they're afraid to do it wrong. They need to be told how to do the job. They need to be instructed, detailed instructions on what they're supposed to do. This could be any new employee you've got, even though they've got capabilities, they come in as an R1 employee as they learn your organization. If you are an S2 manager or if you're an S3 manager, for instance, that's even harder because you're high person and low task and they're high task and low person so it's harder to relate to them. That means you have to quit being a leader that steps back and worries about the relationship. What you need to do is get more into the telling mode and become a telling S1 type manager for these people. As these people then move to R2, that is they're unable to do the job but they're willing and they're confident. An R2 would match well with an S2 manager. An S2 manager says, okay, I don't know how to do the job and so I want you to tell me. An S2 manager says, I want to tell you how to do the job. They're confident so they can do it. They need you to work with them. You go on and you have an R3 person, they're able but unwilling or insecure. You have an R4 person that's able and willing and confident. An R4 employee works well with an S4 manager. An S4 manager says, I just want you to get it done. An R4 manager says, get out of my way, just give me the tools and I will get it done. I don't need you to learn these two graphs. What I want you to take away from this is that everybody as a manager has their own propensities. You need to understand what yours are and you won't understand them until you take a formal analysis because you think you know yourself but the way you behave is the way your employees react to you. Without a formal analysis or with a formal analysis, I'll say it that way, you will learn things about your behavior that you need to take into account when you're trying to manage people. On the other side, you have to be able to understand where your employee is so you can meet them where they need to be met so you can give them the kind of coaching and help or instruction or just give them the tools and get out of the way and let them do their job so they can feel like they are a capable person. If you frustrate an R4 employee, they will leave you. If you demean an R4 employee, they will leave you. I actually don't want to demean anybody but if you make them feel like you don't appreciate their value or what they do, especially if they have a skill that you don't have. I was a non-technical manager of technical people. I understand technology. I can fix things but I never turned wrenches. I managed technicians. How did I do that? I had to understand that they knew things I didn't know. I had to appreciate them for those things. I need to let them know that I appreciated them and that I was going to depend on them to make some good decisions for me but then I would use my ability as a manager to help them make good decisions. They would do the technical side of it but then the business side of it, what we want to do, how should we do it. That was left up to me and it gave me an opportunity to coach them because some of them I was getting ready to become a service manager. Service management, as you know, is way different than being a technician. So that has changed the subject. Let's talk about compensation. Compensation is something that we say, well, they're just going to leave me for 50 cents an hour and they might and they might. It is an important part of the job but it is not everything. You have to have a competitive system. You have to have a competitive pay rate but you don't have to make that the only thing you have nor is it the most important thing you have. It just has to be competitive. Now, I say you don't need to have an incentive system. You don't. Do I like incentive systems? Yes, I do. I like incentive systems because there are some people that want to do more but you have to reward them for doing more. Otherwise, you can train people to do no more than anybody else, especially if they see that they are doing more and getting the same pay as the people that are doing less. All you're going to do is do incent those people that are doing more. You will not incent the people that are doing less. I'll talk about that in a minute. In your compensation system, structure is very important. There needs to be levels. I'll talk about that. There needs to be something that people can understand. It's simple. It's easy to understand. It's not convoluted. There are two parts of the compensation system. There's your base compensation which is based on the hours worked typically. If it's not salary, then most of us do not have salary positions unless we have some kind of a shop foreman that we turn into a salary position. Most of us don't. It needs to be simple and easy to understand but that carries forward if you go into an incentive system as well. Why can you afford to pay? The market is going to demand. The challenge we get into is that we're not just competing against other equipment dealers for these technicians. We're competing against the industry and our customers for these technicians. Many of them have a different cost and revenue structure so they can afford to pay more to the technicians. They wear that dollar sign in front of our guys and gals and there they go because it looks so appealing. There are things that I'm going to talk about that we have that the other people don't have mainly job conditions, working conditions, a future, consistency, things that mean a lot as a technician especially as a few years under their belt and they understand how difficult it can be when the oil patch in Canada says let's go and it's 30 degrees below zero and they can't test your tools because their hands will freeze to them and not everybody has those kind of conditions but frankly the West Texas oil patch is not much nicer in the summer. So let's talk about it. The key here is understanding how to manage your business. You're managing it based on gross margin percent. How do you get a gross margin percent? What is that a function of and if they come to my classes on service management you'll see this wage multiple and revenue recovery chart. The revenue is a function of how many technicians you have, your build out rate and I use low dollars here just to make it easy, This is not real. Double everything, at least, for yourselves. And the hours that you bill out, in this case, 1768, is 85% of one year. So there's 2,080 hours in a year. 1768 is 85% of those. If you bill those out at $70 for five technicians, you would have $618,000 in revenue, right? Well, what's your cost on that revenue? The same five technicians, let's say I'm paying them $20 an hour. Again, like I say, this is low. For 2,080 hours, even though I only billed out 1,700, I had to pay them for the whole year, right? So that gave me $208,000 as my cost. So if I look at the rate that I pay them versus the bill out rate, I've got a 20 versus 70, or a 3.5 times multiple. It can be 40 times versus 140, which may be more realistic to some of you, which is still a 3.5. A lot of you I'm seeing are about $35 an hour against 120 to 25. That's still 3.5. The wage multiple is really the determinant, one of the key determinants for whether you can make money. Then how efficient are you at billing those hours out? If I'm buying 2,080 hours and I can bill out 85% of those, I'm billing out 1,768 hours, or 85%. That gives me those dollars that I talked about, which gives me a gross profit of $410,000 and a gross margin, gross profit percent, of 66%. If I change through the revenue recovery by becoming more efficient, or if I can raise my shop rate without raising my technician pay, that rate will go up. If I raise my technician pay without raising my shop rate, that percentage will go down. But the point of this is that you can then manage your gross margin percentage. Let's say I take that 20 to 25, move that 70 to 70. I'm going to go to about a 3 times, 2.9 times wage multiple. Can I make money at that? 2.9, 85% I will have in the high 50s is my gross margin percent. Can I make money at that? Absolutely, absolutely. Typically, if you're doing 40% of your labor, billed out, you're breaking even on your technicians. Any more than that, you're making money. So at 55% to 60%, you can make good money. The reason I mention that is while we teach working toward the 66%, you can raise, if your people are efficient and you've got good bill out programs, especially if you're using standard charge, you can afford to pay more. That's how the auto industry and the truck industry do it to be able to pay their technicians a higher wage rate. And that's how you can compete with some other industries that just want to throw a high dollar at them. So if you want to talk about this more, call me after the program. So the idea there is maintain your gross margin percentage and understand how to control your gross margin percentage. And then you are managing to a profitability rather than just reacting to a wage rate. Now let's talk about pay scales. You want to be able to show a technician a career path. How much am I going to make? How do I start? How do I get a raise? I've been here six months. Do I get a raise? Have any of you heard this? If you haven't, you haven't hired anybody in the last five years. So this is just an idea of a career path pay scale. It's based on having technicians' skill levels, starting with a trainee, apprentice, a C, B, and an A. The A would be a master level technician. And then having pay scales. And these pay scales can overlap if you want them to, as they do with most pay systems. The reason we do that is because some people want to factor in time on the job so they can get cost of living increases. And sometimes that would push someone out of their pay grade. So the pay grade scale is what we're talking about here. It starts at a low rate, goes up to a higher rate. And at the top, that is your hourly rate. So then your skill set, the next one, 1, 1 to 2, 1 to 4, 1 to 5. 1 to 2 means I can do 1 and 2. 1 to 4 means I can do 1, 2, 3, and 4. 1 to 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. These are based on tests, standardized tests that you can take, and the ability to understand, read schematics, do tests, understand hydraulics, et cetera, et cetera. So can you understand and do you have the skill to do the job? And that's not only in taking a test. It's in exhibiting your ability. And you can ask someone to show me how you do this. And they've got to be able to do it by themselves without instruction to qualify for that next technician level. Then finally, to be able to get paid at the grade, they have to have the productivity. Productivity, in this case, is my revenue recovery rate, which is how many hours did I pay them compared to how many hours was I able to bill out. So if I'm only able to bill out 75% of their hours, I don't care if their skill set is A, meaning they can pass all the tests. They don't get that wage rate. They have to be able to not only understand how to do the job, they have to be able to do it efficiently enough that I can bill that work out. So to be an A level tech and get that, in this case, $28 to $32, raise that 20% now for your markets. And they have to be able to not only do all of these skill sets, but they have to be able to bill out, at the end of the month, 95% of the hours that they were paid. So when you have that kind of a structure, it's logical. People can understand it. You can publish it. And when it says, how do I get a raise, you say, here you go. Now, in there, you have to define what the skill set is. What tests do they have to be able to do? But you can go to AED, the foundation. They actually have skill set tests. They are working with a number of the colleges and tech schools on their programs and certifying their programs. The AED foundation is actually probably the number one rated group for qualifying technical colleges in the United States. And they also fund them. So that's where your money goes if you support the AED foundation. The idea is that there are people like that that will give you this foundation and this fundamental. You don't have to create it yourself. Next step, then, let's jump over to incentive pay plans. That was a non-incentive pay plan. You can grow with that. You can earn money with that. You can make a living with that. But I like adding an incentive on top of that. An incentive pay plan, though, it must be very simple or it won't work. You have to be able to understand it in two or three minutes. You've got to be able to explain it to someone in less than three minutes and have them repeat it back to you and be correct. I've seen too many dealers try to drive too many behaviors with incentive systems. So they have five or six different criteria that you have to make. And then you get paid a certain amount based on each one. And at the end of the day, I'll ask the technicians, do you have an incentive pay system? After all we do, I say, how's it work? They go, I don't know. I just wait. Sometimes they get a check. Sometimes I don't. You need to find out if that's the way your technicians look at your incentive system. Because if that's the way to look at it, it's not an incentive system. And you're wasting your money. It needs to be able to drive behavior. And then you can be able to understand it. But at the same time, they'll play games with it. That's one of the problems with making things too complicated. You've got to figure out a piece that they can game or work with. And they will make sure they get paid on that one, regardless of their performance. That means you can't pay on productivity alone, which means how much, how often am I on revenue work? Or they'll stay on revenue jobs. And they'll milk them. You can't pay on efficiency alone. Or how fast can I do it? Or they will get off the stuff, jobs, and make it look like they're doing it faster than they did by not cleaning the bay, by not doing a good write-up, by not putting their tools away, by not giving good write-ups to big ones. So they'll be able to game the system and make it look good on paper. So what you've got to do is, for me, do a revenue recovery. And that's bottom line, what percent of their hours or what number of their hours are they billing out? The auto industry does it based on number of hours billed. They do a flat rate system. You get five hours for doing this job. You get three hours for doing this job. And they pay you five hours or three hours regardless of how long it took you. If it took you two, you get paid three. If it took you four, you get paid three. We don't do that. Why? Because we don't have enough standardized jobs. And our work is different enough. But we can still do a lot of that. And the idea is that we can build one that says, what percentage of your hours are you billing out? They can't game that. If they stay on a job too long and you have to write hours off, it goes against them. If they do rework, it goes against them. But if they get off the job and they haven't finished and done it right, they have to get back on the job. And that goes against them. So what it amounts to is they have to do the job right, do it efficiently, do it as quickly as they possibly can, and you bill the job out. And if they bill out 100% of their hours, they get the high rate. If you're on standard charge, they may be able to go above 100% productivity. That means if you're billing a five-hour job and they only took four hours, they're 120% productive on that job. So they're able to beat it. So with that, you can drive an incentive pay plan that is productive and drives behavior. When you do that, you can also publish these numbers. Not the dollars, but you can publish the recovery rates. I find dealers doing that, publishing them for everybody to see. And it motivates their people. The people at top want to stay at the top. The people at the bottom don't want to be at the bottom. It's also something that you can do legally. So let's move forward. We're in compensation. So that's my quick idea for compensation. We've only got an hour, and I want to get through this. So what motivates people? It's more than compensation these days. It's going to take more than money to motivate people. People want to feel welcome. They want to feel like they belong. They want to feel important. That's what I talked about earlier. They want to feel like they belong in this work environment, and they like being here as far as a place to work. It's clean. It's safe. It's productive. And today, they want it to be fun. In my day, we didn't worry about fun. Fun was what you get on your own time. Now, fun is something that we've added into the workplace. And frankly, I like it. I like it because it makes it, it breaks up the monotony. It makes you feel appreciated. It's good to laugh. Laughing is good for you. It doesn't mean that we're doing it all the time, but it's good to build things into your work environment. Well, one of the things I like to do is I like when the sales department, the Hogan sales department, hosts a barbecue for the rest of the dealership once a month. And it turns into a potluck, and everybody gets to bring in a dish that wants to be in a dish, and it becomes something that people look forward to. That's a thank you from the Hogan sales department for all the work that the service and parts departments do, and the accounting department does. And they become the servants. The Hogan sales people become the servants of the other departments as a chance to say thank you. But when you do that especially, and you know your technician's names, and you say, thank you for what you did. Thank you for this job. It gives you a chance to sit down, share a meal, share a burger, share a steak, and just relate to people on a personal level. That means the world. Now, I already talked about people have different personalities. How many of you are introverts? How many of you are extroverts? Well, read the books by Susan Cain on introverts, the power of silence, in a world that can't stop talking. And what she's doing here, she's making a case for being an introvert as one of the most productive kinds of people you can be. And in many ways, I agree with her. At heart, I've always been an introvert. I make my living acting like an extrovert. How do I do that? I've learned to cope. I've learned to enjoy certain extroversion type of things. I like people. I've got a slogan, a poster that says, yes, I am an introvert. No, I don't hate people. All that means is that introverts are comfortable with other people once they get to know them. And once they get to know them, they act like extroverts. They will open up. They will talk. They will share. But if you're a manager and you're managing an introvert, you have to ask them for their feelings. I'm not going to read this whole chart to you, but you can go online and download this presentation. And all you can better yet, buy the book and read it. Because what it'll do is it'll explain to you how you must relate to an introvert. Or some of you are introverted managers, right? You're technicians. You're technicians because you like fixing things, not working with people. And now you're an introvert, and you have to deal with people. How do you get over that? Well, you first have to learn to accept the fact that there's no problem being introverted or extroverted. The difference is that introverts see issues. They mull them over internally. And then they may or may not share the results with you. An extrovert sees an issue, talks about the issue before they've made up their mind, which makes them look like they've changed their mind a lot, and then finally comes to a conclusion. The challenge is that if you're dealing with an extrovert, you have to make sure that you recognize their extroversion and let them run their mouth a little bit, because what they're doing is actually processing. And you can't tell them, just shut up and listen for a minute, because that will shut them down, and you'll lose them. And an introvert, you just have to check and say, are you with me? Do you have any questions? And you have to solicit to see if they're with you. Read the book. It's really worthwhile. And as we get into this, me being a baby boomer and dealing with five different generations, now six, of workforce, this is something we haven't had to do in the past. And if you go to the bottom of the slide and say, this all leads to more generations in a single workforce, and they're becoming shorter and shorter in time, in term. They're becoming mixed. We like to talk about millennials, because baby boomers wrote most of the books that are out right now. And so they like to pick on millennials, because the gap was so different. Why was the gap different? Because technology was hugely different, hugely different. I mean, I literally had to look for a pay phone. OK, what's a pay phone? Go look it up. I had to go Google it to be able to check in. I could get lost on my job when I was a field manager, when I started out. So it weeded out the bad ones, because they just disappeared, didn't do their jobs. Today, you can't hide. Your job follows you. Time management is a huge issue, because your phone is strapped to your side. In fact, it's not strapped to your side. It's in your hand 90% of the time, because it's not a phone anymore. It's a computer. It's a technology device. It's a connection device. It's a way of getting information. It is what used to be a set-aside computer is now out there. The difference is now you have to find out if the information is real or not. Who wrote it? Who put it there? So with this five-generation workforce, we have to recognize that each of us came up in a different environment, but recognizing that everybody's an individual is the way to get around this. Treat people where they're coming from. Baby boomers are staying in the workforce, some because they like it, many because they have to. There was a financial crash, and the rules changed about 15 years ago that forced baby boomers to stay in the workforce longer. And so now we've got this mix. And now you, as a manager, have these people with pushing 40 years of experience standing next to people that are fresh out of tech school or off of high school. How do you manage that? One of the ways is you recognize it. Again, I'm not going to go over this slide, but it just shows. If you look at the different generations, of course, psychologists make their money by labeling us. And I hate the labels because we don't fit them completely. But what you do see that does make sense is what was the world that they each grew up in? What was going on? What was happening in society? What were the historical events that happened at that time? Because all of those things shape the individual. And you have to understand this, not because, OK, this person was there when the voting law came down. They're not thinking about that. What you're thinking about is, OK, this person has a different set of experiences that I have that has caused them to have a different outlook on some of the things. Some people will be more skeptical. Some people will be more readily available to listen to your ideas. You have to be able to accept them where they are and understand that's where they came from. This chart is even older. But I like it because this goes into, if you look at your vertical axis, the other chart was things that happened during the generations and have the generations as we define them. This one is older, so it doesn't have the same generational descriptions. But what it has is, OK, what are their values? What's their work ethic? What is their leadership style? How do you give them feedback? How do you communicate with them? How do you motivate them? This is a chart that's worth looking at, not across the top, but understanding. Let's just look at leadership style. Directive is minus, and then consensual. And then everyone is the same. The millennials, it's too soon to tell, not too soon to tell. Millennials are motivated. They don't like the structure of the work environment that they grew up in. You need to give them some latitude. The good news is for this, I needed people to work hard six months out of the year, eight months out of the year, and disappear. I actually could find that in millennials. And I found people that would work for me six months and then go away for six months. And I created a contract labor force. I couldn't do that with baby boomers because they could not consensualize what we're going to do in another six months. So, that being the case, let's jump forward. Millennials. Each generation had their differences. And that's what we want to recognize with these millennials. In 2015, millennials became the majority of the workforce, and I actually wrote an article that said the new normal, because they are the majority of the workforce now. Does that not make millennials actually the norm? In 10 years, there will be 75% of the workforce. That's the only reason I bother talking about millennials, because they, as a group, do see some things similarly, but they are the majority of the workforce, so we have to deal with it. Now, some of you are millennials, because millennials are now becoming the managers. So, as millennials have been seen as demanding, demanding about work environment, demanding about how do I fit in, demanding, asking questions. So, we, as an older group, saw someone that asked a lot of questions as being demanding. That's not demanding. They're seen as demanding. They're seen to have an anti-work ethic. Well, that found out millennials have a very high work ethic, but they don't like the structure. And so, if you find a way to structure the work, they can be the best people you can have, because they'll work different hours. They'll work different schedules. They will flex time. Those things can benefit you greatly, especially as you go into things like maintenance contracts, where you have to work at night. A millennial would be your best opportunity to find someone who says, that fits my schedule perfectly, because I have things that I want to do during the day. I'm continuing my education. I'm doing something else. I am taking care of my family. And they expect to have fun. I don't mind that, because I like having fun, too. Paycheck won't satisfy them. I already talked about that. So, let me tell you, what are some things that they bring to the workforce? Now, this is based on the company Talent Harvest, which is a search firm. One of the things they bring is networking. They know how to network. They know how to reach out to other people. They know how to talk to people. They know how to communicate. That's what they do. They know how to, well, they're very confident people. They don't know what they don't know. They don't know that they can't do anything, because they've been told all their lives that you can be anything, you can do anything, and, yes, they've got a ton of participation ribbons and trophies for showing up. One thing that did for them, it gave them the confidence. They don't know that they can fail. That can't be a good thing. They're also innovative and resourceful. They don't need to have things done one day. They're used to just jumping onto a computer program, hitting the button, and starting to figure it out. If you try to explain to them how a computer is built, they will check out, and they will start playing with it and trying to see if they can break it. They don't mind being innovative. And for most, they're tech savvy. They've been around tech devices their whole life. They have not lived without a tech device for most of their life in their hand. Along with this, they've become very entrepreneurial. This whole you-can-do-anything mentality, said that they, by and large, expect to own their own businesses by the time they're 30 and retire by the time they're 35. That may or may not happen. It has for some of them, but at least they're entrepreneurial. How can you use that spirit inside your leadership? How can you include them into new projects? How can you say, how do we develop something here? This is a good place to bring them on and grow their job so that they begin to feel more important. They're enthusiastic. They're positive people by nature, and they're adaptable because they're used to the rules being changed. Technology has changed so rapidly that they're used to having a new tool, a new program, every few months. I mean, iPhone depends on this. Their whole sales for the following year depends on having a new phone out that is significantly different than the last one so that people have to have it. They're adaptable, so they've lived with that. With that, they're social media opportunists. You can use social media to your benefit to help find more employees or to do other things, and they're collaborative. They like working in teams. They like working with other people, whereas some of the other generations tended to be the type that worked better by themselves, so collaborative can be a good thing. Now, some of you are leaders. You're millennials, but now you're leading, and so on the left side here, I've got some things that millennials want, and so what I'm going to do is, how do you take that? Now, millennials want this. Millennials want this. They want the opportunity to learn and to develop, so you've got to give them that, but if you are a millennial and now you're the leader, what that means is you've got to take ownership of your own education, of your own development, because you may be working for a baby boomer manager that doesn't understand this. Now, a baby boomer manager that has been through the courses and understands how they have to relate to the people will, most won't. Take ownership of your own education. Millennials want balance between a personal and a work life. Well, if you're a millennial manager, what does that mean for you? You have to do that. You have to schedule that. You have to figure out how you're going to make your job and your personal life work together. Money isn't everything to a millennial, and if you're a millennial and you truly believe that, that means that you have to find something that gives you personal value. Trust me, you need more than a job to give you personal value. I've often had to have been through this a few times, and truly it's my ability to work with you all that keeps me going. I love it. I love dealing with dealers. I love dealing with customers and being in the field, and I love the opportunity to step ahead once in a while, but it gives me value. You want career advancement. Your people want career advancement. How are you going to do that? Well, why don't you develop your people? As a manager, if you want career advancement, develop your people. Become a servant leader. Read books on that because you will grow as they succeed. They need mentors. They don't need bosses. Bosses tell people from behind how to get things done. Be a mentor's coach and make the people understand how to do the job and help them improve themselves. If you don't have a mentor, find yourself a mentor. If you don't have one, find one. I know people, actually I have a story about myself and I'm not going to go into it now. He, in his industry, wanted a mentor, one of the most famous people in his industry. He tracked them down, called them personally, developed a relationship. There was a shock that he did it and he said, I want you to be my mentor. And he and that person are now very close and that person is helping him guide his career from a distance. You can reach out to people and make them or give them the opportunity to become your mentor. Millennials want a strong company culture. Well, now you're finally in a position to create that company culture. Don't complain about your company culture. Do something about it. Millennials want recognition. Well, you want recognition as a millennial, so learn to recognize others first. If you recognize others, you will be amazed at how much recognition you get personally. They want to self-promote to drive up in your area. They want if your boss doesn't praise you, recognize the generational difference and then don't worry about it. If they have a problem with you, they'll tell you. That's really about a old style boss, a baby boomer boss. So if you're not being told you're doing a bad job, that means you're doing a good job. But if you need to know, go ask. Millennials like to use social media. So harness that power. Use that social media ability of your people and of yourself to make your job easier, especially for family technicians. So those are some of the things you can do to be able to be a better manager. Now, the next thing you want to do is you want to un-nudge your people. As you bring on new people, you've got to impress them. Impress your new employees. Paint a picture of your success. Have all your processes and procedures mapped out so they know how to do their job. Have them writing. It shows their organization and it's a great training tool. Have clear job descriptions. Make sure they understand the compensation Share your training program. Have an individual training program for each of your people and share that to them. Get their buy-in. Get their input. Because what you're doing is you're selling your dealership. You're always selling your dealership to your people. Having these things prepared, especially when they come in on their first day, shows that you're at a top-tier firm and this is a professional organization. That would be a good place to work. It's also a good recruiting tool for that matter. So, what do you do now that you get them on board? Okay, I've got them on board. This on-boarding is very important. If they're in the workstation, have it ready. If they're in the battle that's going to be theirs, have it ready. Have their computer. Have their laptop. Don't forget to go up and send them over to HR and say, okay, we're going to get you a laptop. Have that done in advance. Make them feel welcome. Put them on the leaderboard. Make sure that everybody in the dealership knows that there is somebody coming to work, somebody new. Because there's a 90% chance it won't take you to leave your dealership within 18 months based on the work we've done and the stuff we've written. 90% chance that a new tech is going to leave you in 18 months. That doesn't mean that you don't bother to hire them. It means that the things I'm talking about are highly important to maintain them. Total return is expensive and it creates more work on your part. Have their ID ready so they understand how to work with them. Their onboarding training program, go over it with them so they understand the plan that you've got for them and use them around. Make their first day a really big deal. Then to make sure that it's really effective, assign them a mentor. Make sure that this person is someone who's not their boss, not someone they report to, because it's someone they can go to to ask those kind of questions that they don't want to admit they don't know. Everything from who do I talk to about this or what time do I take breaks or where's the bathroom. I don't care what it is. They've got to have a mentor, just someone, go-to person. And that means you have to assign mentors. Find people that want to mentor new people. And so it's your job to help this person be successful and help them be comfortable here. Be the person that can coach that person through the hard time of becoming a new employee. Everybody needs a coach. And when you do that, make sure that it's done with the right spirit. It's not an employee review. It is a way to help them build their skill set and a way to help them build the ability to do the job and do it in your structure. So make these reviews formal, meaning regular. Schedule them formally. Just sit down 30 minutes every Friday. But you go, what did you learn this week? What did you come into? Not how's it going. How's it going is okay, but you need to have more structure than that. Tell me about things you ran into this week that gave you a problem. And you can have a mentor. So jot things down as they come up so that when we go over them at the end of the week, you don't forget and say, oh, well, nothing, because there's always something. Person services hands-on. That's what kind of job these are. People need to not only know how to do the job, but they need to feel comfortable. So make sure the training, not just book training or sending them to school, let them get on the machines. Let them go run the machines. They need to know the controls. They need to know how to make the machine do what it's supposed to do or to see if it's doing it, if they're going to diagnose it. Give them time to go to the lab and get on the machines and to schedule this time. It's training time. So I know it's expensive, but it's more expensive if they have to not know how to diagnose a machine, not know what the controls are. With all the electronics and all the computer controls, they need to know where the logic of the function is buried in that menu. So they need to understand that. Train them on it. This is something a mentor can help them with and then having a one-hour session every week. Go over a machine. Talk about the remote location and that sort of thing. Make sure they get comfortable. The faster they get comfortable with the machines and the mentor, the better the relationship is for you. And then make sure everybody in the leadership is coached on having a serving others attitude. Serving our customers. Create a culture at your leadership that says we're all about the customer experience. Greeting customers when they come in. Being nice to one another. Not having practical jokes. I can go and get all day long practical jokes. I hate them. When I say having fun in our leadership, it doesn't mean doing pranks on each other. Because pranks on each other typically rise from picking on somebody and then saying it was all good fun. No such thing. You've got to get that in the bag. Have a serving others attitude. Can I help you? So when you do that, we'll talk about just some real quick things that you can do or look at. Again, you might want to write these down. Because you might then go ahead and not download the program. Number one, communicate your goals and expectations to your employees. What are you doing? What are you doing? You have a mission statement. I'd like to have a value statement. Who are we? Mission statements get me along, and I've never found an organization yet that someone can recite the mission statement back to me, including the people that wrote it. That means it's like an incentive system that people can't understand. Give a value statement. Keep it short. It's a slogan. We take care of our customers. Customers come first. We take care of our people who take care of our customers. I don't care. Make it something that people can understand and get behind, that says who are we, where are we going. People want to be part of a competitive future. They want to know that this is important work they're doing and how this company fits in with the environment. Share your information with others. Most leaders are very reluctant to do this, and that's a problem because most employees assume that everybody at the top is getting rich. They don't understand the risk that's involved or the level of investment that's involved to make a leadership run. They see the results of things better when times are good. Share the numbers. Show them how they drive the numbers. Don't show them everything. But share the stuff that they drive, especially the numbers for your department for profitability so they can see why it's important to go out every hour. Encourage them in communication. That doesn't mean that they get to waste your time. It means that you will listen. If something's coming up, you want to listen. Now, to keep people from just wasting my time, I simply have a topic on my desk that I will turn over and say, or I'll stand up and say, go, I've got a minute. Not communicating or communicating right is a real problem. You want to actively promote your organizational effective reputation, values, and ethics. You've got to be talking about it all the time. You've got to have a culture. What is your culture? How do they fit in your culture? And then let them talk about how they are doing things. Ask questions. What have you done? What have you seen? What customers have you supported? What is the problem? Build trust. Make sure they trust you and make sure they trust others in their leadership. And tell them they should expect that people trust them to do their job. I hear that all the time. If I would just do their job, my job would be easier. Make sure they all understand that. Build engagement. These little programs you can have, the lunches, get people engaged. Ask them how to do it. If you've got to give them a job, ask them, how long has it got to take? Encourage innovation. You've got to have your rules and regulations that say that, ask them, if something doesn't fit, improve it. Don't go just change it, but come up with new ideas. Create a strong team environment. Make sure they understand that we're all men together, but we all live together. Make sure there's a sense of belonging. We're part of this team. Give them feedback, especially when you catch them doing something right. Say, nice job. And make it immediate when you catch them doing it. Show how the feedback's been used. If you do have them give you a suggestion and it's something that you can follow up on, do it and then point out that it was their suggestion that caused this change to take place. Support them in their work and their growth. Send them to schools. Give them things that will allow them to develop and talk to them about a development plan. Collaborate with them on problem solving. Ask them for advice that will really be important to some of these people. And then delegate to them. Give them parts of the project. If you have a manual to write or a process to write, let them make up part of it. Or get the team to write and make it up. Incentives. Have incentives. I like it. We'll talk about it several years later. And then celebrate both the financial and non-financial achievements. It's important that you do that for your people. And at the end of it all, have yourself a personal action plan. Good leaders and managers are always learning. We all understand that there's always more to learn. Technology is changing. The world around us is changing. As Steve and I have said many years ago, but it continues to be real, you've got to sharpen the axe. You can't just always cut down trees because your axe gets dull and you quit being productive. You've got to stop once in a while, sharpen the axe, work on yourself, make sure you're learning, make sure you're growing, and that gives you the ideas that you can apply. With those ideas you apply, you learn more. With that more learning, you can develop better people. You then become the kind of leader that people want to follow. You create the kind of work environment that people want to work in. And you can compete against some of these other places, but we'll talk a little bit more. They have a lousy work environment and a lousy boss. People do not quit bad jobs. People quit bad bosses. So with that, work on yourself first, work on your environment, and good luck. I'm available to talk to you anytime you want. Again, my name is Bill Mays. You see my information here. Write down that number or that website. You can also go to AEV and the AEV Foundation. Use their materials. Use their courses. They're your best resource, and that's what they do. They provide these as a service for the industry. So that being said, thank you very much for participating, and I will see you next time.

technicians

retention strategies

work environment

career development

competitive compensation

clear communication

millennials

managing

mentoring

company culture