Are you struggling to hire the right people for your body shop?

Ask any body shop owner what their biggest frustration is, and chances are they will all tell you the same thing: hiring the right people. From skilled technicians to dedicated administrative staff, we’re all looking for superstar employees who will embody our shops’ values, go above and beyond, and deliver a world class customer service experience. 

So how do you find these body shop rockstars? And how do you convince them to work for you?

It’s surprisingly easy -- you don’t! Hiring exceptional staff members is difficult and can be a drain to your resources because, as we all know: 

1. They’re expensive.
2. They’re like unicorns...super hard to find!
3. They’re in demand.
   

Instead, follow the example of some of the most successful shops in the business and create exceptional systems within your company that will allow ordinary employees to perform at extraordinary levels.

Writing the Playbook: Creating a Culture of Consistency in your Shop

One of the best ways I have come across to level up your current employees and make sure new team members are going to be successful right away is to build a company playbook. That’s right, just like football! Your employees are your team, and just like athletes they’re going to work together better and achieve much more if they all know the play before they step out onto the field. 

Writing out your expectations and simple step by step instructions for repeatable tasks takes some time up front, but a little planning goes a long way: a solid playbook sets standards, increases productivity, and ultimately saves you time and money. When your systems are clear, your employees will be operating more efficiently and new hires have a manual that lays out the quality of work you expect from them and how they can achieve it. 

And don’t just write a playbook for your repair process -- learn from my mistake! A couple years ago a hail storm came through my town and I got 13, 000 claims in one day. I was in over my head. I brought in a whole bunch of temporary staff to help with the administrative lift, but I didn’t have any playbooks in place.  Some of my new staff didn’t even know the name of the company they were working for when they picked up the phone! A simple playbook could have allowed them to learn the ropes self-directed, freeing up my time and getting them up to speed much more effectively.

Hire for Personality, Train for Skill

Once you’ve got your systems in place, lots of doors start opening up. Being able to plug someone into a system through a playbook means you can hire people who look pretty average on paper and ramp up their skills in no time. We don’t just need systems for onboarding new employees, though. We should be using a tried and true process for the actual hiring process as well! Building out a thorough hiring process with steps like personality assessments and test projects may strike you as over-the-top, but as your candidates work through the steps, they will start to value the position more. The result is going to be new hires that are already familiar with your company's values and expectations, and who you have built a relationship with over the course of the recruitment process.

Keep your People Happy with a Healthy Pipeline

Going hand-in-hand with finding the right staff, is keeping the staff you already have. Focusing on making sure you’re bringing the right work to your people goes a long way to keeping them happy. Your technicians will thank you for using tools like photo estimating that will allow you to triage repairs and make sure the work that is hitting your shop is the right size for them to be productive and profitable.

Still Struggling to Find Staff?

You’ve written the playbook, you’ve stepped up your hiring process, your pipeline is humming, and you’re still having trouble getting the people you need to get the job done. What now? Consider automating certain tasks to make the people you already have more efficient. If your estimators are swamped, or your CSRs are too busy, find ways to automate the repetitive parts of their roles and make their time stretch further. For instance, I was working with a shop that was making 150 outbound phone calls a day. Through automation, they were able to turn 120 of those calls into ringless voicemail messages, buying back hours and hours of time for their staff that they could then spend on less repetitive tasks. I routinely see shops gaining back an hour and a half of admin time per customer -- just think about that! If you’re serving ten customers in a day, that’s already 15 hrs worth of manual labor that you’ve just automated. Scale that out over a month and it really adds up. If you’re interested in automation, but don’t know where to start, book a free demo [link] from one of our experts, and see firsthand how automation can boost productivity and increase job satisfaction.

To Recap: 

Hiring is hard! It’s a time consuming process and finding staff who are highly skilled and align with your company’s values can feel like an impossible task, especially when you’re stretched thin. However, remember that these four things can help you take the pressure off your existing staff and pave the way for new employees to excel: 

1. Playbooks: If it’s repeatable, write it down!
2. Overhaul your hiring process. 
3. Keep your workers satisfied with a solid, steady workflow.
4. Automate repetitive tasks to up efficiency. 
   

Hope you found this helpful, keep crushing it out there!

- Ryan