Automotive News Canada - October 2019 - F23

FIXED OPS JOURNAL

This store's technicians like 4-day workweek

early every dealership in his market has extended its service hours,
says Joe Miller, service manager of
Webster Groves Subaru in suburban St. Louis. But service departments need
to make sure their technicians don't get
burned out working longer days, he warns, so
shops need to be creative in developing work
shifts and tech schedule rotations.
The workweek for the 10 service technicians
at his dealership's main shop consists of four
10-hour days (except for eight hours on Saturday). Miller divides his techs into three teams;
on any day, two of the teams are working and
one is off. Two "floater" techs focus on recall
work but also fill in as needed.

The tech teams' rotating schedule is for
three weeks at a time. During the first week,
one team works Wednesday through Saturday. The second team works Monday and
Tuesday, takes off Wednesday and Thursday
and returns to work Friday and Saturday. The
third team works Monday through Thursday,
then takes five days off until the rotation repeats.
"It's a minivacation," Miller says of this extra-long weekend, adding that the techs "love
the schedule."
Getting five days off in a row every three
weeks "recharges the battery" for his techs,
Miller says, enabling them to work more productively when they return. The four-day

Miller: Tech schedule
offers "minivacation."

workweek permits more efficient use of the
service department's eight service bays for
line techs, he adds.
- Stephanie Hernandez McGavin



HOURS

shifts change on Thursday, the first team gets
seven straight days off.
The 38 techs at Coggin Honda work in three
weekday shifts: 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., 8 a.m. to 5
p.m. and noon to 8 p.m. But Hutson says he
would like to switch to a four-day workweek
and add Sunday service hours if the dealership authorizes him to hire techs.

continued from previous page

hours several years ago, it discovered that 40
percent of its Sunday customers had not previously brought their vehicle to the store for
maintenance or repairs. A 2017 study by the
National Automobile Dealers Association estimated that 7 percent of franchised dealerships offer Sunday service hours.
Matt Hutson, service director at Coggin
Honda in Jacksonville, Fla., says the dealership added two hours to its weekday service
schedule in 2014 to attract more customers.
The shop now is open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays and 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays. The store
has 30 service bays, Hutson says, so the expanded schedule created 300 more potential
labor hours each week.
Hutson says the shop is getting more work
done, although he did not cite specific figures.
The extended hours also appeal to customers,
he says.
"The less work the customer has to do to do
business with us, the more likely we're going
to get their business," Hutson says. "We wanted to make sure we were minimizing the
amount of work for them with an increase in
our availability."

Tech retention
The biggest advantage of expanded service
hours and revised work schedules, Harkins
says, is dealerships' enhanced ability to hire
and retain techs. Many techs prefer a workweek
that consists of longer but fewer days than the
traditional five eight-hour days, he says.
"If you can run an ad where a tech works
three days a week, versus the five they're
working now, they're all over it," Harkins says.

Beating the backlog

Coggin Honda promotes evening service hours.

"They're very interested."
Since Miller switched his shop to a 10-hour,
four-day workweek, he says more tech candidates have approached him. Weszner went
even further, placing his techs on a workweek
of three 13-hour days when his dealership extended service hours in September 2017.
Weszner concedes that productivity initially
slipped slightly as the techs got used to the new
schedule, but says they now are working more
efficiently than before the switch. Repair order
counts were 40 percent higher last month than
during the first month of the change, and labor
hours increased 45 percent. He declined to provide exact numbers. The service department's
labor sales nearly doubled, he adds, although
he acknowledges that part of that growth resulted from price increases.
Kupper Subaru's 10 line technicians work in
two teams of five techs in five bays. The first
team works Thursday, Friday and Saturday
one week, and Monday, Tuesday and
Wednesday the following week. When tech

The line techs at Webster Groves Subaru
work in two teams of three techs and one
team of four techs on a rotating three-week
schedule. An express lube team of two techs
works each weekday. Two "floater" techs
handle recall work and fill holes in the shop
schedule.
Since the dealership expanded its service
hours, Miller says, the number of carryover repair orders has dwindled and the volume of
completed repair orders has increased, to
about 45 to 60 a day. In the first month of longer hours, he adds, labor sales jumped 70 percent and gross profit from service sales more
than doubled from the previous month. He
would not provide sales numbers.
Miller says the service department has sustained those gains. In 2019, its monthly average gross profit is at least 30 percent higher
than in the year-earlier period, he says.
At the same time, Miller adds, techs feel empowered by the new work shifts.
"It's pretty efficient and it keeps morale up,"
Miller says. "It freed me up to do more important things. It takes a load off of management"
because the techs' work schedule remains
consistent, he notes.
"I'm a firm believer in giving the technicians
some control over their environment," he
says. "This is one way to do that." 

OCTOBER 2019

PAGE 23

Automotive News Canada - October 2019

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