Management's role in the pursuit of technician happiness

For last year’s "Technician Issue" of Fleet Maintenance, we featured a rather sullen cover model wearing a hoodie and burying his face in his hands. It seemed to best represent one of the biggest threats to uptime—unaddressed physical and mental health problems. And like with any issue in the shop, we did our best to troubleshoot why this malaise continues to fester.

Joshua Taylor, a Canadian shop manager-turned-podcaster, surmised the root cause was poor leadership. More specifically, the “Wrench Turners” host, who often talks about techs' mental health, blames managers and supervisors who don’t listen, and those lacking the power to instill positive changes when techs do open up.

According to Training Industry, bad bosses in general cost companies $500,000 annually due to lost onboarding and training costs when employees can’t take it anymore. This also factors in additional health costs from stress-related maladies and lost productivity when workers waste time agonizing about their office oppressor or hiding from them.

But this year I thought we should focus more on the positive aspects of being a tech, hence the smiling tech on this issue’s cover. I want readers to feel happy, not hopeless. (You can check out the whole digital edition here.)

I thought a lot about it—and how managers have a lot to do with their employees' state of mind. In many cases, how they lead can determine if a tech stays at a shop and produces for years or uproots the family and finds greener pastures. WrenchWay found that two-thirds of technicians have quit or considered leaving their job because of a manager. As a testament to techncians' grit, they can put up with a lot more bunch of B.S. then most; GoodHire said 82% of American workers would quit because of a bad manager.

But what about the inverse? What impact do good manager, the ones who do their best to instill happiness, have on their employees?

Stats can't answer that question, so I had a conversation with my oldest friend and most trusted master tech, John O’Brien, on happiness and how bosses affect his state of mind. The Toyota tech, who has supported himself by turning wrenches since his teens, noted on the flat rate side, they can mess with your money, which in turn can affect your mood if at home bills are piling up and there aren't enough hours in the week to pay them all.

For instance, in the past, managers have asked him to accommodate customers who just bought a new vehicle. He recalled a recent one where he had to address an issue with the Bluetooth speaker, a new technology even experienced techs need time to troubleshoot.

“You have to give yourself a crash course and become an expert in this one thing that nobody's ever seen, nobody's ever heard about,” O'Brien said. He doesn't mind a challenge, but this warranty work pays less and takes longer, keeping him from far more profitable jobs that could be done far quicker.

The overall dealership wins by earning a customer’s loyalty, but it could cost O’Brien’s wages. That all depends on the manager, though. Some recognize the disparity will try to make it right.

“You'll have some managers that are cool and flag some internal time for that, and you'll have some managers that are [ducking chicks] about it,” he explained. He believes the motive for the latter type of manager not giving him a fairer rate is “that it will raise their unapplied labor rate and affect their bonus because it digs into profits.”

This isn’t the case with his new manager, who he noted is great about quickly approving things like lift repairs and costly scan tool updates, but it has happened in the past.

As his friend for decades, I’ve known exactly when he has a good or bad boss by his mood off the clock.

That’s a powerful ability leaders wield, and weak leaders who refuse to provide the tools techs need, or care more about their bonus than what they are paid to do—support their techs—should absolutely be accountable. As the saying goes, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

Lighting the way to job satisfaction

There can be many ways to reinterpret this maxim, first attributed to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and made about corporate and government corruption and transparency. What if, as a fleet maintenance leader, you prioritize beaming sunshine—in the form of proactive decisions—on employees. Not to disinfect the bad, but to promote the growth of what’s good in the shop? In short, focus more of your energy on the positive than the negative.

After all, do you want to be the boss who goes around pointing out every ticky-tacky way a tech is being inefficient by having a messy toolbox, or the one who rewards a tech who cleverly configured their rolling diagnostic cart to improve troubleshooting and repair time?

In the former scenario, you are shining a light on something technically inefficient, but likely infecting that worker with resentment towards you and leadership in general, with them wasting even more time ranting to coworkers about what a jerk you are.

In the positive situation, the rewarded tech gets their efficient and creative behavior reinforced—something that messy tech might want to mimic (Grease monkey see; grease monkey do). And the cost is a minute of your time and that $25 gift card to Chili’s your boss gave you for saving the company $10,000.

I have no way to quantify the happiness you’d bring into the shop with such a little-ray-of-sunshine-type gesture, but there are ways to track this unconventional KPI by looking at how certain decisions impact measurable KPIs.

The obvious one is productivity. We address that in our latest deep-dive into tech pay, where we tackle the flat rate vs. hourly debate. One shop bases individual pay structure on skill level, while another submits to the techs’ preference. In both cases, the techs are happy with the arrangement. You can survey your techs and see how they want to be paid. If productivity and profits go up after, you can assume the techs are happier. Or instead of assuming, just ask them.

Another is safety. In our latest story on hand and eye PPE, we talk about how compliance starts with focusing on what best protects the tech, while also being comfortable enough to wear all the time. The converse is techs don’t wear gloves or safety glasses, and could get hurt and miss time. Here, you can talk to your distributor and test out a few brands and styles to find what works best. Such an emphasis on safety culture tends to trickle down into better throughput, fewer comebacks, and higher morale.

Plus, we cover several ways you can improve retention, the top metric for technician happiness. If you follow our experts' advice and mostly try not to be a [ducking chick], I’m confident it will lead to brighter days for your shop (and career), too.