- This topic has 11 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 9 months ago by
.
-
Topic
-
-
Replies
-
[quote=”rideidaho” post=133808]I ran across this on Ted Talks and think that there is some validity to his point as it relates to compensation. I like flat rate for straight parts replacement operations but hate it for diagnostics that require creative thinking. Watch it and tell me what you think.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation#t-74339%5B/quote%5D
I feel as if this Ted Talk was mostly aimed at business owners. For business owners the flat rate pay method makes perfect sense. If the employee is not productive, you don’t pay them much — if nobody in the shop can diagnose the problem, you bring in a field tech (though this is far more money). From a consumer standpoint it is not a very good thing. It also encourages potentially hazardous shortcuts for both employee and customer. Though, I’m slowly starting to see things change.Flate Rate has ran many good techs out of the field, or perhaps they decided to become field techs, A and P techs, etc. The dealerships are having a hard time keeping employees, and getting quality employees to replace those that are leaving. More people are deciding against a career as a technician, and I sense that soon there is going to be a severe labor shortage.
The dealerships are doing it to themselves by cutting already slim flat rate times bit by bit. Warranty times are pretty tight as it is so when they start trimming everything else there’s no meat left on the bone. Drive up the door rate, cut the techs pay, increase profits.
Case and point: 2 weeks ago we had a staff meeting. Blah, blah, running a “pothole” promo which is an inspection that under book time is an hour, admittedly it might take 45mins if you’re draggin ass. And an alignment which should be 1.2 on non-warranty work. So to make it happen for $99, Yes $99 when shop rate is about $120/hour, they plan on only paying 1.5. Man, you could have cut the silence in that room. But wait. It gets better. If you sell over an hour of work, they drop the labour on the special down to 1.2 hours. Not to sure how that works, tell the service writers not to sell anything less than 2 hours of work? Then our manager basically says that he’s going to leave the quality of the inspection up to us, so he doesn’t really care about the inspections just getting asses through the door. Even though specials generally just bring in the people who don’t want to spend any money.
Sometimes management just seems to feel the need to come up with more outrageous ideas every meeting. I guess I got something different from the ted talk video. What I took away was that studies show that productivity goes down if the monetary carrot is the main motivator. It goes against what everyone thinks motivates people. The thing that finally drove me away from the dealership was the introduction of selling flushes. It got to the point that techs were not interested in fixing cars, just performing flushes to collect their spiffs. Management put the techs in the position of putting a price on their integrity, giving bonuses for selling unneeded services. The worst techs were making the most money. I am in a small independent shop now, but it’s still flat rate. Like I said, it’s usually ok for parts replacement, but discourages thorough diagnostics. I do more guessing than I would like because I don’t get paid for it. Thanks for your comments.
I have never and will never accept flat rate. It rewards the shady and mediocre and punishes the best techs and those who take pride in getting the details right.
There is a chain shop in my town that is flat rape (no, that isn’t a typo) and along with that still doesn’t pay very well. The biggest part of their pay plan is commission based for upsells. I have seen more estimates from that place than anywhere else for a second opinion. Upon looking at the vehicles I have NEVER found all the things listed as needing to be replaced to hold any water. One Intrepid I remember well was quoted to need $1900 worth of work when the only thing the car needed was a service and the outer tie rods. They seem to target ignorant people and the SM is really pushy trying to sell the work. All of these people told me they were heavily pressured that their car was not safe to be on the road and it was a matter of life or death that they authorize all of the work at once. None of these vehicles actually were. This is work over and above the wallet flushes they try to cram into everyone. I once sent a truck over to them for an alignment after I did tie rods and ball joints. The month prior I had replaced all the brake lines (read:new fluid) along with servicing the trans (yep, new fluid). He told me they told him his trans and brake fluid were badly contaminated and should be flushed right away. Never sent another thing to them again after that.
Have spoken to a former employee there and he says management pushes them to sell all this crap hard. Techs who don’t upsell enough get the axe. They also don’t make shit themselves without the commissions, and a lot of them target parts that are good simply because they know they can beat book time on them and get the commission too for easy money.
Along with that, flat rape encourages managerial laziness. If they aren’t selling the jobs or scheduling them right and the techs are standing around waiting for a car, doesn’t cost them anything. If the parts department wants to make the books look good by not stocking anything, who cares if the tech is waiting and not making money? Plus whenever they run some sort of “special” for customers for free or discounted services, they end up taking that out of the tech who did not agree to this. That is the same as stealing in my book.
If your techs are hourly, you as a manager are forced to step it up and actually have managerial skills. You have to keep all your techs motivated to hit goals, you have to keep the bays loaded and parts stocked so tech downtime is as low as possible. You have to invest in good tooling and keep it updated so your techs can be the most productive. Flat rape allows incompetent people to enter a manager position they are incompetent to hold. It encourages techs to cut corners to be able to make a check. It creates a dog-eat-dog atmosphere pitting tech against tech to try to get the gravy work and not be willing to stop and lend an extra hand to his fellow man.
Until techs in mass band together and loudly claim in a united voice that they will not tolerate the flat rape pay system, it will continue to be used as a weapon against our industry and cause many good techs to leave the field like it already has. I’m a union man myself, and while some people have an issue with unions I can tell you that something similar to it would allow techs to get on a level field with shops instead of be beholden to whatever they choose to pay.
Everyone has their own opinion, but I believe that flat rape has not been a viable pay model in this field for the last 20 years and should have gone the way of the carb and points into obsolescence.
I must admit I find flat rate a bit strange to get my head round I’m paid on a salary My upsells earn me nothing so I only report what is needed I still have to watch my efficiency as that’s what my bonus is calculated on but I actually get a better bonus for a good CS score so keeping the customers happy I’d have to hit 115% efficiency to make more so I tend to just keep the customer happy spend more time than needed fixing the little niggles mostly FOC
[quote=”DaFirnz” post=133914]The dealerships are doing it to themselves by cutting already slim flat rate times bit by bit. Warranty times are pretty tight as it is so when they start trimming everything else there’s no meat left on the bone. Drive up the door rate, cut the techs pay, increase profits.
Case and point: 2 weeks ago we had a staff meeting. Blah, blah, running a “pothole” promo which is an inspection that under book time is an hour, admittedly it might take 45mins if you’re draggin ass. And an alignment which should be 1.2 on non-warranty work. So to make it happen for $99, Yes $99 when shop rate is about $120/hour, they plan on only paying 1.5. Man, you could have cut the silence in that room. But wait. It gets better. If you sell over an hour of work, they drop the labour on the special down to 1.2 hours. Not to sure how that works, tell the service writers not to sell anything less than 2 hours of work? Then our manager basically says that he’s going to leave the quality of the inspection up to us, so he doesn’t really care about the inspections just getting asses through the door. Even though specials generally just bring in the people who don’t want to spend any money.[/quote]
Any chance you work at a dealership in Ohio? Sounds verbatim of something I heard done recently.
I’ve personally seen amazing techs either go field service tech, some form of engineering, or leave the field because of flat rape. Dealerships across the country are constantly trying to figure out ways to make more money, and do it with customers.paying less for repairs. I’ve seen techs do absolute hack work because of book times, dealerships refuse to pay techs for diagnostic work so hourly lube techs get thrown diag work.
Its amazed me some of the hack work I’ve seen techs get away with. But people refuse to enter this field because of labor, tool expenses, and….. Flat rate pay.
I’ll be 100% honest my end game is to be a field service tech. Flat rate times, the economy, and the way techs are treated will not keep me as a tech forever. Seems people.either stay spiff rate lube tech, or B-C tech because anything over that they actually lose money.
I know at Firestone if you do an R&B you have 20 mins to clean the rotor, back of the wheel with angle grinder and do the R&B.
Tire discounters the mechanics get paid $11, then a percentage of the stores profits. So they make 50 hours at $11 minimum. Plus 3% of a stores profits up to 5k a mo the for.master techs. And you’re talking brakes, alignments, suspensions.
Market demand will change things
I talked to one of my instructors today. Ford Master tech, left the field to teach. We talked in depth about flat rate and it really came.down to management at dealerships, integrity of the service manager, and being paid straight time for any diagnostic work with a reasonable time limit.
He feels flats rate is great if you have a good head on your shoulders, juggle cars (don’t let a car sit in your bay for 5 hours waiting for approval), check to see if parts are available before you start taking something apart.
He also did say he made about $10k more per year as a B tech, than when he made Master Tech. But as a Master tech he enjoyed the job more because it was more challenging.
He feels (and I agree) the field is being destroyed by money hungry dealerships that are screwing over techs and customers to keep.profits up. And in a few years organically dealerships will die off and the good ones will remain.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.