Shop culture has changed over the past few decades: the hard-charging style that once propelled shops, techs and managers has given way to more of a human centered approach. At least that’s how one industry veteran sees it.
Scott Hewitt has more than three decades of experience in the collision repair industry in markets serving major cities, including owning and managing shops, and a stint as a market manager over multiple Gerber Collision & Glass locations in the Phoenix, AZ, area. He currently works in a consulting capacity for Driven Brands. He’s watched culture change over the years to prioritize empathy, feedback and harmony in the shop.
An initial industry shift — one that took it in the direction of business and hustle —began with the rise of direct repair programs (DRPs), he posited in an interview with Autobody News.
“I think that was the beginning of some culture change because prior to that, it was really independents and mom-and-pops, so the culture then was really more of a family style,” Hewitt explained. “You dealt with an owner and his wife, typically.”
Owners on site daily, readily available and hireable techs, and easier modes of repair for cars made for simpler, more relaxed times.
“It was the end of the Baby Boomers culture back in the ‘90s — that type of culture,” Hewitt said.
With the onset of DRPs, shops became busier as they took on insurance contracts, he said, and those dynamics began to change. A sense of urgency emerged as shops had to “shift on the fly” to address the influx of business. Consolidation in the mid-2000s also contributed.
Greater demands meant greater pressure on employees, so the path to retention was to pay employees more than they could get elsewhere, Hewitt said.
In recent years, things have taken another turn. Now, most shops offer similar pay and benefits, so distinguishing between what they can offer is slim. The tech population is skewing younger as older generations phase out through retirement, and processes are getting more technical.
As a result, this generation of employees expects true teamwork, not lip service, Hewitt said. Empathy and recognition of employees as individuals is also essential.
“The difference today is they're all starting to figure it out,” he said. “These people are individuals, and they want to be treated with kindness and empathy because they're human beings.”
A Swing Toward Custom Culture
All of this means culture grows ever more important in the context of the modern shop, Hewitt said. It plays into retention, an all-important concept in today’s environment when shops can lose talent to other businesses offering similar benefit packages and pay.
Although MSOs take up a significant portion of the market share today, a focus on culture means a shift back toward independently owned shops, Hewitt said, as they can often offer more customization in an agile way that a 250- or 1,000-store MSO cannot.
Factors that build culture include active listening when employees approach management with complaints. Empathy, in general, is essential in building a culture people invest in the long term, and it has to come from the top down, he said.
This means harmony is also an essential element in the modern shop.
“Teamwork is first and foremost, but the harmony I'm talking about comes with the trust mechanism that's built between leadership all the way down to the ground,” Hewitt said.
Today’s employees, from front of shop to back, are also focused much more on quality of life than they were a couple of decades ago. Hewitt pointed out that grueling schedules involving 10-hour days and work on Saturdays used to be the norm, whereas today’s younger employees aren’t willing to sacrifice quality of life for financial gain. Shop owners are taking note.
“If you can't treat your people as good as your customers, you're in trouble, and that's the culture change that I'm really starting to see where they're starting to recognize that,” he said.
Measuring Employee Satisfaction
Shops should begin considering the concept of employee satisfaction index alongside customer satisfaction index, Hewitt said. Satisfaction is a natural feeling — not a forced one — that spreads to encompass an entire facility and translates in the quality of work the shop produces and the way employees relate to customers.
He encouraged shops to measure an employee satisfaction index just as they would their customer satisfaction index. A monthly email outreach could allow management to collect input and questions. A score for the responses could be developed, to observe the cumulative result and get a feel for how the shop is doing.
In the end, building sustainable culture goes back to harmony, Hewitt said.
“When you have that harmony, that state of agreement is everybody in the shop … everybody's got it figured out that they have someone they can go to. They trust their leadership; they're listening,” he said. “They get it. What else can you ask for?”
Elizabeth Green