Pay Technicians at the Job Level Instead of at the End of ROs
Your technicians will likely appreciate getting paid faster, especially during the holidays, when they’re probably planning for purchases like gifts and decorations.
Instead of waiting until an entire RO is completed, you can pay your technicians as they finish individual jobs.
That way, technicians won’t have to wait for their colleagues to finish their tasks. They can get their paychecks once their part of the repair is done.
Tek-Tip: Paying technicians per job is easy to do with Tekmetric’s Tech Pay feature.
Once you set up Tech Pay, all you’ll have to do is go to an RO, select an individual job line, mark it as complete, and release payment.
Balance Technician Hours
Some technicians end up getting more or fewer hours than others—and not necessarily on purpose.
After all, it can be easy to lose track of who has done what recently. This holiday season can be the perfect time to start turning that around by giving more equal hours to technicians across your shop.
That way, you can avoid overworking or underworking technicians during the holiday season and beyond.
Tek-Tip: With Tekmetric, you can use real-time technician reports to get a snapshot of individual technicians’ hours, and assign future tasks accordingly.
Implement a Fair Time Off System
Whether or not your shop already has a vacation time policy in place, you’ll likely see a lot of time off requests during the holidays. Your team members might want to take extra time off outside of the designated days the entire shop will be closed for the holidays.
As much as you want to honor everyone’s time-off requests, it’s not realistic. If you have too many people out at the same time, you risk being understaffed, which can lead to slowdowns and frustrated customers.
Instead of risking being understaffed, you can implement a fair time off system and communicate it to your staff. For instance, you can stipulate that time-off requests during the holiday will be “first come, first serve.”
You could even stagger the schedule so that if multiple people want to be off on the same day, the first half could work during the morning and the second half could take over in the afternoon.
Tek-Tip: No matter which approach you take, you can use the technician hour reports to start forming your game plan.
Consider Holiday Pay
If you do want your shop to be partially staffed on, say, Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve in case of any emergency vehicle repairs, you can offer your staff holiday pay.
This way, team members who would like the extra money can opt to work those days, rather than you designating certain people to come to work.
Tek-Tip: To determine how much you give in holiday pay, you can analyze statistics like your GP dollars and close-ratio within Tekmetric.
Look Into Giving Holiday Bonuses
During the holidays, your shop might spend time giving back to the community, be it through organizing a holiday donation drive or giving discounts to essential workers. As a shop owner, you might also be thinking about how you can spread some holiday cheer to your team.
A great way to do so is by giving everyone a holiday bonus. However, you need to evaluate if you’re in a financial position to give out holiday bonuses, and if so, how much you can give each person.
