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Balancing Skills in the Workplace

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Balancing Skills in the Workplace

Imagine if you will, it is the middle 1980’s and I am working with a John Deere dealer and we are looking at their Service Department. We were reviewing processes and systems and methods and work flows. We also determined that there was a need to review the skills of the technicians and all support functions in the department.

In those days we didn’t have much in the way of personnel management practices in the Industry. We didn’t have a way of balancing skills in the workplace. We had to build the complete structure and reporting criteria. We created three data files; current employee personnel and payroll information, the skills required to each of the job functions, and the determination of the actual skills of each of the employees. To determine the skills of each employee we created what I called a “Skill Set Inventory.” This inventory consisted of questions with multiple choice answers that the employees they completed and submitted the forms to me.

Then we catalogued the answers and grade ranked all of the employees – we matched these results with the payroll records. The final step was to sit with the management of the department to discuss the skills of each of the employees, without the benefit of the employee’s personal thinking, and grade rank them – again we matched these results with the payroll records.

How do you think the management compared with the employee scores and the payroll records? It was very revealing. The management was embarrassed. There was some matching of the results but very little. It turns out that the management had favorites and seniority had an outsized influence on the results. They had not learned the art of balancing skills in the workplace.

This was an extremely important exercise for me. I conducted these types of reviews with several dozen dealers across many different manufacturer dealers. The results were the same. That took us to the place where we needed to develop an objective assessment tool for dealers.

There are many companies within our Industry who have created assessments, we are not alone in this arena. There are manufacturers, personnel companies, associations and others involved, which cover many aspects of the individual jobs; however, you need to be the judge of the value of the results from any job assessment. You need to do your own due diligence.

Our assessments relate to the specific jobs, for instance, the counter and telephone sales employees, or the service office employees, or the product support sales person. There are six job functions within the parts department, eight in the service department and four in the product support selling and parts and service marketing groups. Let’s review how our assessments were created for a moment. For each class we have conducted for the past thirty years, and the more than ten thousand employees we have had in our classes or webinars, we have had questions and work groups, and evaluations throughout. From our classrooms and webinars, we created our subject specific classes, and in each of these subject specific classes which we called “Learning On Demand (LOD)” products we had assessments and tests. This is the foundation of our Skills Assessments programs. We selected for each job function assessment, from the pool of over one thousand questions, the job function assessment questions. Then we have had more than thirty-five hundred people take these assessments so that we could put the job function assessments into the marketplace with confidence.

I am excited by the assessment programs. We have received more than thirty registrations today and I am expecting more than two hundred this week. The same again next week. The market seems to be rewarding us with their orders. We thank them and will continue to provide leading edge tools for dealers to improve their processes, procedures, systems and methods. We aim to assist each employee working in this Industry with products that will help them realize their potential.

We believe that is our mission and our life’s work.

The time is now.

Confessions of a Service Manager ~ Bill Pyles

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We are introducing a new area for our blog. We are asking experienced Industry professionals to write on a subject that they think would be of interest to our followers.

Today, I am introducing Bill Pyles. Bill has 40 plus years in the OEM product support arena.

He worked for Caterpillar, Komatsu and John Deere dealers in various locations across the USA.

He has worked most, if not all, positions in Product Support from technician to Executive.

He still is actively engaged in the business and still thoroughly enjoys being a part of the equipment industry and looks forward to every new day.

Bill has been married for 42 years to his wife, Diana, and has two sons that are currently working in the OEM dealer world, one with a Cat dealer and one with a Deere dealer.  He is also fortunate enough to have five grandchildren.

Bill is also a U.S. Marine Corps veteran. Semper Fi.

I hope you enjoy, as I do, reading Bill’s thinking on a wide range of subjects over the weeks and months ahead. Welcome, Bill.

The Time is Now…

Confessions of a Service Manager

I’ve been working in Product Support most of my life.  Most of those 30 years have been primarily focused on service department product support.  I spent time as a shop mechanic, field mechanic, shop foreman and service manager.  I learned a lot during those years.  I learned:

  • How to move labor and material around on a work order to make the times look good.
  • How to avoid any lost time by charging time to sales, rentals, and used equipment.
  • How to handle warranties by sending a less-than-qualified mechanic because “it’s warranty” and it would be “good” training: and what the hell, the manufacturer is paying for it.
  • That if the boss’s hot button was “reduce training” or “reduce expenses,” you simply moved that time to building maintenance or repair of shop tools.  If expenses were high, you shifted them to cost of sales.
  • The importance of taking care of my customers first by letting the sales department wait and wait and wait.
  • That a two-week backlog was good: hey, three weeks was better.  Keeping this backlog ensured I would make my numbers for the month.  The customer would wait.
  • That you never sent work to another branch or even asked if another shop was slow.
  • That if I had a big job, I never called another store for help to take care of other jobs.  Remember the “backlog.”
  • There was never enough time in the day, so when vendors delivered oxygen and acetylene bottles, bolts, nuts, shop supplies there was no need to check the delivery before signing the delivery ticket.  Nothing ever “falls off the back of the truck.”
  • That sales, rental or used equipment never received any warranty on shop or field repairs.  Remember the “budget.”
  • How to sandbag monthly sales.  If we meet budget this month, hold off any more billing until next month.  I have a budget to make then, too.
  • Never to call a customer for additional work a machine needed, while the machine was down.  He’d yell at me if I suggested additional work needed to be done.  It was always easier to say nothing and if the machine failed after it left the shop, he’d call me.
  • If a machine was coming in for a final drive repair, I’d order ever nut, bolt and gear and air freight them in.  I might need them and if I don’t, the parts department will just put them back on the shelf.  No big deal.

During those times, life was good.  My numbers looked good.  I had a backlog, and the boss was off my back.

Then I became a Manager.

Then I became a General Service Manager and was included in management meetings I never knew existed.  I discovered there were other departments challenged to be efficient and profitable – just like me – and unless all departments worked together, it would not happen.

  • It took a little while, but I began to realize why the sales manager was not always so willing to let me have a loaner for a service job I screwed up.  Those labor hours I was writing off to sales, rental and used were actually showing up on his P&L!
  • Those new, used and rental machines were expensive assets that I kept putting to the back of the schedule so I could take care of my customers.  I didn’t know the company was missing opportunities and thousands of dollars because we had no machines to rent or sell.
  • I learned warranty training was expensive.  Those dollars actually came back in the form of warranty expense.  You mean the manufacturer didn’t pay for 10 hours of labor to replace a fuel filter?
  • I discovered the time I invested swapping labor and material around did nothing for the actual bottom line.  What?  I spent hours doing that!
  • I learned a backlog was good but a satisfied customer was better.  I’d visit customers and ask why he sent a machine to another company.  Usually the answer was “Bill, you guys do good work and I don’t mind even paying a little more for good work, but I can’t wait three or four weeks every time my machine goes into the shop.”
  • So I learned to work the overtime when required.  I learned to ask other shops for help and sometimes I even suggested the customer send the machine to another branch that could get him in and out the quickest.  SOmetimes I even offered to pay the additional hauling to get him there!
  • I learned things do “fall off the back of a truck.”  Have you ever been offered a deal too good to be true?  Hey, it fell off the back of a truck.  I went through an audit after the company decided to change oxygen and acetylene vendors.  The vendor came in and did an audit on all the bottles we rented over the years.  We could not come up with $6,500 worth of rented bottles.  They must be lying all over America’s highways.
  • I learned if I didn’t contact a customer for needed additional work, the machine would leave the shop (“Hey, I did what he asked!”) and would fail soon after – on the job.  The first thing I’d hear would be, “It just left your %#@*&% SHOP!” – and I should have called him and fixed it then.
  • I learned that the boatload of parts I ordered for the final drive repair and returned to parts created a lot of expense.  No one told me there were shipping and emergency charges, and we didn’t stock the part because there was no demand.  I learned those expenses were showing up on the parts manager’s P&L.
  • I found out someone had to take the time to do the parts entry, place the order, receive it into inventory, carry it to the shop, pick it up after I returned it and create another return ticket.  They they’d create a location in the warehouse (remember, we did not stock it), and let it sit until the next authorized parts return when the company might get 50 cents on the dollar!  Wow, no wonder when I asked for help on a disputed service invoice, I’d get a cold stare from the parts manager.

The Old and the New

My point (yes, there is a point to all of this) is there are two types of service management – the old and the new.  The old type will not survive at today’s distributorship.  Managers who think like that are being replaced with managers who are concerned with the entire company’s health, not just the service department.

The new service managers are discovering that working together – sales, parts and service – makes a much more enjoyable job.  Time spent hiding expenses rather than addressing the issue is a complete waste of time.  The real cause of the expense is never removed or identified and swapping time becomes routine and a drain on your time.

Direct and constructive communication with other department managers is key to making our company successful, profitable and raising customer satisfaction.  Believe it or not, it starts with the service department!

You can connect with Bill on LinkedIn at  www.linkedin.com/pub/bill-pyles/12/a24/7ab