Vice President of Operations and the new owner of Elite Worldwide Darrin Barney joined the speaker list at Amplify 2023 to help attendees decode one of the biggest mysteries of owning a shop – How do you manage your employees and keep them motivated?
Elite Worldwide is a coaching company that helps shop owners grow their business, meet their goals, and live fulfilling lives.
Keeping good employees is a challenge these days. We hear time and time again, how can I keep my team happy? How do I drive motivation?
By drawing on his personal experiences of running a shop, getting coached, and then spearheading Elite, Darrin explains how to create a work environment where people want to work and continue to be employed by you.
Let’s dive right into the summary of “Employee Management & Motivation” by Darrin Barney.
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Key takeaways
The session shared some critical takeaways that we’ve condensed for you. Here’s how Darrin suggests you improve the employee experience:
- Change your mindset. Know that employees are people just like you, who should be cared for.
- Improve your workplace culture. Invest time in your people, talk to them about their lives, and look after them well. Always lead by example.
- Track shop metrics to implement accountability and connect people with your mission.
- Don’t compromise on discipline but complement in public and condemn in private.
1. Where do you start?
In 2022, four million Americans resigned from their jobs each month. Moreover, 40% want to leave their jobs in the next three to six months.
Why is that? Survey respondents stated they feel unsupported and unengaged at their current jobs. The Great Resignation is underway and it’s leading to high employee turnovers for shops, along with a losing struggle of finding trust-worthy replacements.
But where do you start? Darrin stated:
“The strength to growing any company, whether it be an automotive repair shop or growing your church group, whatever it is, you gotta take care of people.”
If you aren’t already doing that, you need to change your mindset. You need to take care of people by showing them respect and care.
2. Change the culture
Darrin believes that the first thing you need to do is improve your work culture. You can do that in two ways.
- Lead by example: If you respect and take care of those you work with, your employees will tend to do the same. Remember, you are always being watched so always conduct yourself the way you’d like your team to conduct themselves. And leave your bad days at home. Coming into work grouchy ruins everybody’s day.
- Know your people: Get to know your people and invest your time in them. Talk to them about their hobbies and interests and show care. If you don’t, somebody else will.
- Watch your flock: If you see someone going astray, reach out. Help your team with their worries, both professional and personal. And appreciate them when they do things right and not just when they make a mistake.
- Do stuff outside of work: If you build a team that enjoys going out with each other outside of work, you’ve won the employee engagement race. Take your team out for team building activities and fun periodically. Darrin and his team swear by four-wheeling, Christmas parades, and weekly barbecues. Do activities that connect you and build relationships.
- Weekly meetings: Have weekly meetings where everyone participates. Set an agenda, encourage everyone to share ideas, take notes, and email them to everyone. This way, your entire team comes together to solve problems. This is the key to building a collaborative and productive company where employees are invested in your growth.
3. Implement number tracking
Accountability is the foundation of a motivated team. To achieve that, you need to track your numbers.
Number tracking lets your team see what’s expected of them on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. It also lets you monitor things if you’re ever not at the shop.
Key metrics let you identify trends and threats in a timely fashion. For instance, you’re able to flag dips in productivity and then step in to help your team resolve them. It also lets you appreciate people who are putting in more work so they know it doesn’t get unnoticed.
Next, hold 10-minute huddles at the start of everyday so problems in numbers along with other ad hoc issues can be addressed.
4. Improve discipline with care
Just as shop owners should appreciate their employees when they excel, they should also get feedback when they make mistakes.
But don’t just storm towards them to criticize. You need to approach discipline with care.
- Address the behavior right away: Poor service shouldn’t carry forward to other interactions. Look for the right time to talk to your employee the same day. Good leaders praise in public and condemn in private.
- Listen well: When you’re talking about the problem with your employee, let them vent out before you criticize them. This lets them get the frustration of a bad interaction out of their system, shows you’re here to listen, and makes them more receptive to feedback. Once they’re done talking, count to 10 and make sure they don’t have more to add.
- Separate the person from the behavior: Don’t look at a mistake and think that it’s a representation of the person. Tread with care.
- Emotional bank account: Everyone has an emotional bank account that comes with its limits. You can only withdraw as much as you deposit into it, so don’t forget to praise when you get the chance.
- Pay attention to your intent: Discipline should never be for the sake of putting someone down. You need to make sure that your employees know that you only want to help them achieve their true potential.
- Remember that we are dealing with humans: At the end of the day, people make mistakes all the time. That’s all of us. So be kind, attentive, and empathetic.
Here’s a snippet from the on-demand session:
“Bob Cooper used to always say that the behavior you get is the behavior you reward.
So when you talk good to your people in front of your employees and even customers, it makes them feel good, and they want to do that too.
But when it comes to doing something bad, you pull ’em in the other room, you go for a drive, you put ’em somewhere, you don’t do it in front of your employees.”
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Final thoughts
The employee experience often gets ignored since shop owners are so focused on working on the customer experience. But when talent is so hard to find, this mistake can be the death of your business.
Remember to be kind, patient, and attentive to your employees. Understand what motivates them, take them out for fun activities, and always lend them an ear. Real people need to be treated like real people, not like a cog in the machine.
