I did a session during SEMA this past November on “Winning Leadership,” and one of the aspects of it that seemed to really resonate with attendees dealt with effectively creating a culture of accountability within your shop. A culture that isn’t just top-down, but one in which peers — not just managers — feel comfortable holding each other accountable.
Accountability starts with listening
That conversation led to some follow-up calls from shops seeking my help with this as part of my work as a consultant and trainer for Collision Advice. At the start of this year, I began working with one of these shop owners who was looking for guidance on getting the shop’s employees on board with new production processes the shop was trying to implement.
The owner’s top goal was to ensure that all required repair procedures were consistently followed. He was running into some resistance, however, from a few employees who historically had been more focused on production numbers than process. That’s not an uncommon challenge in our industry.
I initially suggested a two-pronged approach to the shop owner. First, I connected the owner with some technical training resources that could help employees better understand the “why” behind the procedures. For example, I knew that 3M could help reinforce the importance of complete corrosion protection, which was one of the areas where the owner said he was getting the most push-back.
But I also recommended starting employee engagement surveys as well. One of the most important lessons I learned while operating my three shops is this: Before we can expect employees to truly listen to us, we must be willing to listen to them. We have to create space where they feel safe and comfortable giving honest feedback.
The mechanics of the survey matter less than the content, but tools like SurveyMonkey can be effective. That said, I’ve also worked with shops where not everyone is comfortable with technology, so even a simple pen-and-paper survey can work just fine.
I was learning from Mike Anderson long before I started working with him at Collision Advice, and I modeled my first employee surveys as a shop owner after what Mike did when he owned his shops. We asked employees in the survey to evaluate themselves, and to evaluate their leaders within the company. We asked questions related to how they felt their leader could improve, and how the culture within the company could be better. We asked them to prioritize current or potential employee benefits, putting them in the order of importance to them. We asked if they see themselves as part of our team long-term, and why or why not.
What employee surveys can reveal that conversations don’t
What I’ve seen consistently, and what others who use these surveys have seen as well, is that they provide an essential additional channel for feedback. Some people are comfortable sharing their thoughts one-on-one, in an office or out in the shop. Others will communicate things through a survey that they would never say face-to-face.
I still remember reviewing the results from our first survey. Like you, we had employees who we pretty much considered friends, and I remember looking through the survey responses and thinking: Why in the world had they not told us some of this?
One example: At the time we did our first survey, we didn’t have a 401(k) retirement plan in place. We had set-up an IRA plan when we first opened, but not a lot of people were participating in it. We had a really young staff at that time, and they just weren’t focused on retirement, and the plan had really become more of a headache than it was worth.
But fast forward a few years to when we did our first employee survey, and multiple people communicated through that survey something about their desire for a 401(k) plan. One of those people who I considered a friend said it very directly through the survey: If you want us to commit to your business, you need to commit to us. They saw a 401(k) as a sign of that commitment.
Turning feedback into action builds trust
The first thing we did after getting that survey feedback was reach out to our agent to get a 401(k) plan in place. But we wouldn’t have known the importance and value for us doing that without the survey.
It provided our team with a way to think through what they wanted, and what they wanted to tell us (and how). It gave them a safe place and way to do that. Without that survey, we probably would have had some people leave our company because we didn’t have what they were currently looking for.
When I spoke with the shop owner I began working with this year, I told him it all comes back to something Stephen Covey, author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” said: You have to listen to understand before being understood.
Surveys aren’t the only way to engage your team and make them feel heard and understood. There should be multiple ways in place. But surveys can be a good place to start, and they can lead to more one-on-one conversations.
For the shop owner I’m working with, those conversations are a critical step in getting the entire team aligned around the production changes the business needs to move forward.
