Running an auto shop might be a rewarding business venture, but this comes with multiple challenges, much like other businesses. To operate profitably and successfully, you need to overcome these challenges. One of these is maintaining the productivity of your entire auto team.
Auto technicians and mechanics require support from their employers to work efficiently. Ideally, they must feel reasonably challenged and comfortable at work, receive fair compensation and recognition, and feel that their job is valuable. But there are more that must be done to increase the efficiency of your car technicians or mechanics. Listed here are other effective ways to boost your team’s productivity and shop’s billable hours.
1. Check current shop performance
Before you could solve anything, it only makes sense that you first look into the current performance of your team and auto shop. You can start measuring progress by identifying the current productivity level of your auto technicians or mechanics.
However, this isn’t the total working hours per week, but the adjusted capacity. You can get a worker’s adjusted capacity by calculating the total hours they work in a week and estimating how many of those hours are used for performing car repairs or services.
For this, you’ll need to deduct structured lost time like paid vacations, sick days, holidays, lunch, and breaks. Non-revenue jobs like repairing another technician’s errors or warranty repairs are also excluded. Lastly, deduct the hours spent on underemployed lost time such as stocking parts, cleaning the work, and other non-billable work.
2. Assign the right amount of work
Low productivity is often a result of the workers not having enough tasks to work on. It is either due to inefficient task assigning or your entire auto shop’s operations are just chaos. If you want to boost your team’s productivity and increase the number of cars repaired, you need to pay attention to job count and check the amount of work lined up in your shop.
After that, you can start assigning specific tasks to your mechanics so that they can better schedule their working hours. Visualizing their workload can help your team minimize wasted time and better accommodate the customers.
3. Foster a supportive environment
People are more likely to be motivated to work when the environment is supportive. If you want to improve the efficiency of your auto shop, you need to start engaging with the people working there every day. After all, your technicians and mechanics are the ones who directly welcome and talk to the customers when working on their cars.
That means that they may also know about the tiniest efficiency in your operations. So, by setting up an environment where your people can work and communicate confidently, your team can start working together. They can even help the management in identifying hidden issues in the shop.
4. Purchase time-saving equipment
Your auto technicians need the right equipment or machines to get their work done fast and adequately. One of the biggest barriers to high productivity in auto shops is jockeying vehicles. The last thing you want to happen is for them to waste time in finding keys to the right vehicle.
You need them to service or fix the cars. Buy some on-site forklift wheel attachments to increase the productivity of your team. To make things easier for your technicians and mechanics, you must also invest in mobile column vehicle lifts. This time-saving equipment helps your workers to easily check the vehicles without the need to lie down on their backs and slide underneath the cars.
Both these lifting pieces of equipment are also helpful for promoting safety and health in the auto shop. You can safely move the vehicles using the lift wheel attachment and securely perform under-vehicle tasks and reduce worker fatigue with mobile column lifts.
5. Promote proper breaks
Last but not least, always encourage your auto technicians and mechanics to take their breaks. These professionals tend to work non-stop until they find a solution for the car problems, making them more vulnerable to physical and mental fatigue. If workplace fatigue arises, the productivity level in your entire auto shop can be affected. Encourage them to rest their bodies and brains for a moment by taking their regularly scheduled breaks. They can get back to work refreshed and can work more efficiently.
The customers aren’t the only ones who need your attention. Every worker in your auto shop also requires the proper support so that they can feel motivated to work. The strategies in this guide can help you increase the productivity of your auto team and ensure that you offer quality and quick service to every car visiting your shop.
