Search the Community

Great to see motor dealers in the 'Sunday Times Top 100 employers' but what do you think makes a good employer? This is the article for those who might have missed it: Swansway group was the top rated dealer group in the just published Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For 2015. Over 1,050 organisations with over 2.5 million employees submitted applications for the 2015 Best Companies to Work For assessment. The 100 Best Companies to Work For in the 250-3,500 employee range included motor finance company MotoNovo as a new entrant in 14th position. MotoNovo employs 297 staff and has annual turnover of £804m. Motor dealer Swansway was in 34th position. Swansway is rated 32 in the Motor Trader Top 200 with turnover of £290m, employing 670 staff. The Car Finance Company was in 74th slot and used car retailer Motorpoint was in 92nd position. Motorpoint is rated 2 in the Motor Trader Top 50 Independent Dealers with annual turnover of £361.7m. The final two automotive firms in The Sunday Times listing were car distributors Toyota (GB) and BMW GB. Employees assess their company on leadership and how they feel about the head of the company and its senior managers Your thoughts?

Are your staff stealing from you? Controversial and I hear shouts from both the employer and employee side , If my staff stole I'd sack them and the employee's shouting " of course we don't steal" . Hear me out , Over the years I heard and seen so many examples and recently taken on 5 employee's overnight , Talking today to a parts delivery driver the conversation got onto staff and how different some people work, some just turn up and go, others actually understand what else is entailed rather than just turning up. Going back to when I was an apprentice in the late 80's I was told in my 1st few days how it works ,The service manager explained to me, " you start at 8.30 and finish at 5.15 , by start that means ready to start , not a case of clocking on putting your overalls on and then starting work, when I say finish 5.15 that means finishing the work , then washing your hands at 5.15, not driving off the premises at 5.15 " I remember those words well , and to make sure I was always at work around 8.15 latest , some of the experienced , long term mechanics pretty much stuck to the rules too, so it wasn't just 'us apprentices' and if someone was 5 minutes late they would lose quarter of an hour's pay. I was explaining to my staff how this was when I was a lad and I'm reasonably flexible , however the give and take has to be on both sides up to a point. So am I wrong when I tell them that they are stealing from me .... Last week 3 of them come into the kitchen to make a drink at 8.30, ... then them wonder into the workshop chatting away ..eventually at about 8.50 they decide to open the workshop doors and move a couple of cars , by the time they start to bring cars in for work its 9.00am. At the end of the day come 5.00pm they start to clear up and are ready to go at about 5.05 and on the dot 5.15 they are off. To me I've lost at least 20 mins each in the morning and 10 each in the evening , that's 30 minutes per day per person , that in a week is nearly a day's worth of work - wasted . My time I asked how would they feel if I deducted the wages at the end of each month for the hours not worked ? They didn't seem to understand that they were actually stealing from me! Thoughts ?

Just thought I’d see what thoughts everyone has on this topic. I don’t have a workshop, there is a separate business attached to my premises with workshop, they do pretty much all my work, servicing, repairs, mot, tyres etc. Like most of us, these modern cars are sometimes just too complex – the diagnostic machine doesn't always tell us what’s wrong, so the odd one or two are trial and error, not ideal [After saying that, I’ve had some cars sent to the main dealers and they have also been trial and error] just a general few questions about repairs / workshops to see what happens out there. • What do most of you do with repairs/ diagnostics? • Do you encourage customers to come back for serving repairs back to you even if you don’t have your own workshop? • What marketing do you do get them back? • Do you provide courtesy cars? Free? Collect & deliver etc? • If you have a workshop what qualifications do your staff have and do you send them to any training courses [main dealers obviously do] which ones? • How do you keep your staff motivated in the service dept and do you pay them on performance or simply hourly rate? • Is there any diagnostic equipment you would recommend or not recommend? • Do you find main dealers helpful if you have problems with cars that you/ your workshop can’t find faults with?

Talking to a fellow motor dealer earlier and we got talking about motivation! Well lack of to be honest, He is struggling to get the sales staff buzzing! I bounced a few ideas with him some he’s’ tried and lots that don’t do anything! What do you use to keep your staff motivated, performing at their best, offer world class service to customers and make some money at the same time for themselves and the dealer.