Culture in the garage
Tina Drayson from CCM examines whether a positive culture within a garage is possible, and how to create one for your own business
Published: 23 November, 2020
What is culture in the workplace? Is that not something that you would normally associate with big corporate companies? Can we have a good culture in the independent garage sector? The answer is yes.
Culture is about having a place of work where every member of staff feels valued and respected. How do we achieve this? It is not just about giving them Christmas parties, Christmas bonuses, breakfast on a Friday. These things are important, but it is not the whole story. You need to tap into their emotional side.
Vision
Have a vision, this will define you, your passion and your values and every member of the team needs to match your work ethic and your commitment to your customers. It is vital that you have a good company culture if you want your staff to perform their best and having a vision sets the standard.
Our industry is evolving daily, who can ever say that they are fully qualified, whatever role you do, there are always things to learn. Do your best to enable your staff to keep learning, give them every opportunity you can to train and learn new skills, allow them to do this in your time, why not, it is to your benefit. Quality family time is short enough without getting your staff to do training outside of work.
Do not micromanage. If you cannot trust someone to do the job that they have been employed to do, then you have the wrong person. Set parameters, processes and measures, I do not mean the financial kind. Create conditions that give them autonomy, ask them to set their own goals, this will be empowering and staff are more likely to strive to achieve if they are reaching for goals that they themselves have set rather than being told to.
Listen
Your staff carry out their roles daily, they are the ones at the forefront with the best knowledge of the processes and what is working and what is not. Listen to their views, you the manager do not always know what is best. Embrace their ideas and viewpoints, allow them to reach their full potential, it will not only make them feel valued but could save you time and money in the process.
Communicate, the more the better. You cannot overdo this. Tell your staff what is going on in the business, how well things are going or not, else they will only speculate.
Mistakes. They happen, we are all human. How we deal with them is crucial. Embrace the concept of ‘Assume Positive Intent’. Do you want your staff to be afraid to own up and cover up mistakes they make? Alternatively, you could generate a positive place for your staff to be open and honest about their mistakes and use those instances as opportunities to learn and not to criticise or blame. This will encourage your team to engage more. Be aware that everyone has their own areas of expertise, strength and weakness and encourage your team to ask for help.
True colours
Do you allow your staff to come in late or leave early so that they can go and watch their child take part in sports day or other activity? Why not? Life is precious and you do not get a second chance to make these memories.
Say thank you! They are only words but often go an exceptionally long way. ‘Be kind, loan someone your strength instead of reminding them of their weakness’. Be empathetic and approachable you will be pleasantly surprised. Be that manager that you always wanted.
Some of you will be thinking, that you have staff that would take advantage, maybe you do. By having a good culture, these people will soon show their true colours. The question you need to ask yourself, do you want a member of staff that on paper ticks all the boxes for the right skill set but has a negative approach or do you want a member of staff who fits with your culture? New skills can be learnt, but you cannot change a person’s mindset, only they can. You can change the culture that they work in and that in turn will have a positive impact on those individuals.
At CCM, we are not perfect, but with the help and guidance from others, we are continuously striving to give our staff a better culture. We have discovered, during this recent pandemic, that it is paying off. Our team were great. They stepped up, went above and beyond what we asked of them because they wanted to give something back.
- LEADING the team
Unless you are a one-man business, you will probably have staff to manage. The art of managing your team is one of the most challenging, but ultimately, one of the most rewarding
- Managing a winning team
Most businesses need staff to operate effectively and this means that those staff need to be managed. However, what does ‘managed’ really mean and how can the ‘business manager’ also be an effective manager of people?
A good manager of staff should fully understand the roles and responsibilities of all of their team members, but ultimately, each of those team members should be better at doing their own jobs than the manager could. Secondly, the manager should be able to ‘get the best from the team they have and only change it when all other possibilities have failed’. In summary, the manager needs to know how to structure, manage and motivate his team to optimise their performance.
Critical
It is a well-known saying that people don’t quit their jobs, but they quit their bosses, but in reality this means that they left their job because it wasn’t enjoyable, or that their strengths weren’t being used or that they weren’t growing in their careers – and who is responsible for this – their manager.
Recent research showed that 31% would swap their manager if they could and 22% felt that they could do a better job themselves if they were given the chance. Ineffective management not only impacts negatively on staff retention, quality of work and morale, but also on customer service and your company’s image. Not good for either your staff or your bottom line.
The best managers know what they are doing, where their businesses are going and ensure that they have the right people in the critical roles to make it all happen. They then communicate and delegate effectively to their staff who have been trained, supported and motivated to fulfil their responsibilities. Businesses with well managed and competent employees are the best performers and frequently handle problems before they escalate to become real issues.
Guiding principals
So what are some of the key guiding principles for good people management?
1. Build solid and respectful relationships
Don’t aim to be liked, but aim to earn and keep the respect of your team
Take time to talk to members of your staff. It will show that you are interested, but it will also be both motivational and allow you to better understand their position and any concerns that they may have. Be confident, strong and professional, whilst remaining transparent, approachable and encouraging.
2. Strengthen your communication skills
Your ability to listen and communicate is vital to your success as a manger of people. I don’t just mean your ability to listen and speak on a one-to-one basis, but also your ability to capture people’s minds in order to present your ideas, values and visions as well as your ability to listen and soak up the ideas, values and visions of others; that is true communication. Whether you are speaking with one person, or presenting to a whole audience of people, strong communicative skills are a must.
3. Actively develop your team and be the team leader
As you build and strengthen relationships throughout your team, you should begin to identify the individual talents, abilities and strengths of your employees. Knowing this detail will help you develop your team so that everyone is positioned within a role in which they can succeed and excel. Take time to communicate with each employee individually, as quite often employees will be forthcoming about what they see as their strengths and where they aim to be; they may also spark ideas to strengthen your team and its performance as a whole. Sometimes low morale and performance can be due to a lack of support and training. Ensure that your whole team are up to date with regular training appropriate to their role.
To establish what your employees really appreciate and value, or to discover their training and support needs, use surveys, one-to-one appraisals or focus groups to talk through each key area to identify the good points, skills gaps or areas that should be improved. Quite simply, support your team.
4. Be transparent
Hiding things from your employees is a recipe for disaster. Remember that you have spent time building relationships with these people, relationships based on respect. As part of that mutual respect you also need to engender trust. By remaining transparent, honest and trustworthy with your employees you will further develop their respect and loyalty.
5. Take responsibility
This can often be tough, but is a sign of truly exceptional people management. As the manager, leader or head of your company, all responsibility should end with you. You are accountable for the performance of your employees. Remember failure is not a weakness; it’s an opportunity to learn, strengthen and improve. Take responsibility for your team and they will further respect you for it.
All of these people management principles are important internal management skills, but these will also be seen externally by customers in a variety of both obvious, and not so obvious, ways.
Perception
When customers experience your business, whether by telephone, e-mail or physically visiting, their perception will be significantly more positive if they feel that they are being looked after by a well run, well managed business with highly motivated and professional staff. Often it is almost imperceptible how this can be picked up, but for sure, if your staff are not working within a well led and motivated environment, it will be reflected in their attitude to their work and frequently, to your customers in a negative way.
The reality is good managers are not born, but learn the skills as part of learning how to understand people as individuals. Most of us work much better if we enjoy what we are doing. It has been said that the best qualification for running a business is not an MBA or a qualification in accountancy, but in psychology. Ultimately, good managers plan, monitor and review before delegating the work, but they can only do this effectively if their team is working well.
As a small business, it may be a difficult to become recognised as one of the Sunday Times ‘Best companies to work for’, but the same good management practices will still apply. Work hard with your staff and they will work hard for you.
xenconsultancy.com
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- Wow or WOAH factor?
Do you work in a quality business? Or a quantity business? Is it possible to have a garage business that has both? How do we define quality for that matter? You see everyone’s perception of quality is different, which makes it difficult to work towards a particular grade of quality.
If you examine the excellence and quality movements in detail as I have in the last 15 years or so, you will see that what the really offer is to turn back the clock, applying the standards of bygone days to today’s profit-based material age. The premise is that if you get back to product or service supremacy through quality you cannot fail. Sadly, it is an entirely false premise.
Customer satisfaction is no longer enough. Satisfied customers are not loyal customers. They shop around – they may like you, but not enough to resist the temptations of your competitors. Truly loyal customers can’t imagine doing business with anyone else. They become advocates for your garage.
Companies who have such customers have managed to create a customer experience that is consistent, intentional, differentiated, and valuable. To do this they use all aspects of the business, marketing, operations, and the most important factor the human element.
Superior service
You could have a quality product or service but if not matched with a superior WOW factor service experience you have no hope in succeeding. Let me give you an example, Curry’s sell quality products, yet the service in most cases and what I have experienced is really lacking. These stores are huge, selling hundreds of lines yet hardly anyone works in them, and if you do find someone to assist you they have very little product knowledge.
Now, take off your business hat and ask yourself, as a consumer, how many genuine quality businesses do you know? If you can think of one, perhaps even two or three, where you are constantly and consistently super-impressed, not just with what they do but how they do it, you are doing well. You have seen the WOW factor at work. You may even have glimpsed a miracle. My guess is that you will be thinking of a business that puts its relationship-building substantially in front of making the next sale.
These are the kind of businesses that share one of my philosophies about customers: that it’s far better to concentrate on what you do for customers than what you do to customers. Despite all the new technology, and the mind-blowing rise of call centres which in my view do very little in increasing the customer experience and other magic customer service-enhancing devices, companies still frequently fail their customers.
The reason is not so often that the computer system has gone down, although that happens frequently enough!) it is mostly because the culture, philosophy and ideals do not exist. When this happens, it’s a people issue.
People power
For those involved in selling, and that’s what we do in our garage businesses, this is a mammoth task. Selling has, it seems, been quantity-driven since time began; but, in the last 20 years, it has become quantity-obsessed. This obsession has, in my view, led to practices and standards in our garage sector that can barely be justified. There is no mitigation. We are all to blame. We have all seen the £99 service, MOT, three-course meal and the kitchen sink deal. Someone please explain to me how anyone can charge so little and offer a quality WOW Factor experience?
Given the choice – and they will be – no customer in their right mind would want to deal with a person driven by quantity objectives. Customers already know that, so often, quantity objectives work against quality objectives. Look at the classic high-commission businesses and the reputation they have: double-glazing or perhaps even office equipment. There are many more, including, sadly in our garage sector.
What next?
Find where you and your business are, and remember it well. If you do nothing to give your customers the WOW Factor, the future has some difficult and frightening times ahead, times of uncertainty and high risk.
Far be it for me to put the fear of God into you about the future, but that’s exactly what I think might need to happen. I, and many others before me, have pointed to change being the cause of this fear. Not just change itself, but its rate and frequency and scope. In such circumstances you must look to make yourself and your business stronger, more resilient. I have two suggestions for this.
The first lies in your business process, I witness so many garages lack of processes that do not consider the customer journey and the impact it has on them.
The second lies in the quality objectives you need to create that are understood and breathed by everyone in your business. For one aspect of the quantity/quality discussion we have not considered is this; quantity only builds immediate sales; quality builds friends. Friends, in the long term, build greater quantity, which yields the miracles that create the WOW factor.
Lastly, just before I end this article, Id like to point something out. It may seem obvious, but don’t look for a switch. There isn’t one. You can’t turn a miracle on. There is nothing anyone can flick to change your environment from quantity driven to customer driven. It is truly a pendulum. The only thing you need to know about this pendulum is that its relentless: It was for me running my last garage business it was actually unstoppable.
