LABOR - The Car Industries Secret Killer

If you made it to this year’s 2023 National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) show in Dallas, TX, it was evident, based upon the workshops and continuing education courses available, a big priority was placed on AUTOMOTIVE LABOR COSTS AND LABOR CONCERNS!  

More specifically, topics on employee retention (keeping your staff) and employee experience (your team’s happiness) were at the forefront.  The shift in keeping good labor and placing emphasis on their work environment experience encompasses quite a bit when truly broken down, something Onsite Dealer Solutions (ODS) will try and speak to.  

But before a dealership can focus on either subject, they must first find the right people, a sour topic to most car dealership management teams. 

Whether it’s car technicians, service writers, sales, management, finance, accounting, or HR employees, finding, hiring, and retaining these individuals absolutely increases your costs and is not easy to do in today’s environment because of a host of factors.  

From a fixed operations standpoint, we know, finding and keeping good staff that aren’t leaving the industry or jockeying with other dealership offers all the time is a battle.  Losing your certified ace mechanics to your local competitors is no fun.   

The automotive industry labor scene is a little surreal when you step back and look, often with the feeling of astonishment, at the labor statistics alone for service or mechanic jobs.  Today there are over 733,000 open mechanic or fixed operation positions available across America.  Why so many?  

Once you do hire the right hands, how can you keep your team happy long term?  Showing your team that they are appreciated makes all the difference in the world and is an important factor for employees choosing to stay within your team or wanting to leave you.  

Good pay, excellent benefits, manageable hours, and autonomy are obviously some of the leading factors for producing higher employee morale, retention, and experience. What are some other things a dealership can do to improve long-term loyalty?  

Sometimes it’s the small things that keep an employee happy like: 

Dealerships are facing a huge variety of problems today.  Employee retention and employee satisfaction are just two of them related to labor.  

When it comes to actual labor costs, a dealership that knows the answers to these questions will be a leg up:  

Although Onsite Dealer Solutions (ODS) doesn’t provide certified ASE mechanics and technicians, nor do we fully fill the void when it comes to employee retention and your team’s on-the-job happiness, we do know how to offset specific labor costs and expenses tied directly to your make ready department.  

ODS is a make ready labor outsourcing partner in the automotive space with over 165 dealership clients spread across 11 states nationwide.  We employ over 450 trained, insured, and salaried employees who specialize in car detailing, car reconditioning services and improving dealerships’ speed to market. 

Instead of worrying about staffing car wash attendants, detailers, porters, valet drivers, windshield repairmen, dent removal specialists and inventory photographers, our team comes to your dealership and works with your staff directly, onsite.    

This saves your business a considerable amount when it comes to overhead, wages, insurance premiums, health benefits, and worker comp claims, not to mention time, energy, and resources needed to accommodate the hiring process once onboarded.  See the true value and savings ODS provides here. 

When ODS starts with a potential new customer, we provide a Free Labor Analysis and ask questions like, “Would you like your service manager to spend more time in the service drive or in their office managing the headaches of staff schedules, inventory work orders, turn times and 3rd party vendors?”  Most dealerships will answer they want their fixed ops team on the floor servicing customers’ cars. 

ODS wants our clients to be profitable in all sectors of their operation!  We want your fixed operations to spend time with your customers filling RO’s, working on things that make the dealership money, not shuffling problems like employee staffing, scheduling, and headaches.  

Often, dealerships make ready departments don’t generally yield a super profitable return, unless it’s done right with strategy. We encourage you to get to know the ODS team, read more about us and browse our custom dealer solutions to see how we can help your service department realize a profit by decreasing labor costs, improving CSI scores, and increasing speed to market. 

If you’d like to talk to us about your labor situation, call us at 913-912-7384 or message us here.  We look forward to the opportunity to meet you!   

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