I was talking with a shop owner the other day and he said to me, "I am having a hard time getting my crew, especially my service writer to understand what I want. I go blue in the face explaining over and over how I want things done and yet he always seems to be on a different page. He's a good guy and sells well but honestly he's driving me crazy. How do I get employees to be on the same page as me?"

Wow! That is what I call a quick question that does not have a quick answer. I told him I do not like to do off-the-cuff consultations especially on the subject of employees, but let me see if I can help you here. Before you pop a cork sit back take a deep breath and relax for a moment. Employee management is the trickiest part of a business. The reason most employees go off on a different direction from the owner is a lack of understanding what you the owner is trying to accomplish. There is no agreement. Telling people what you want done and how to do things only works when the understanding is already established. In other words when the employee twigs on how their job related to the overall plan.

What is the goal of the shop? What are you trying to get done? Have you put this in writing for yourself and your employees? You need to do this as a first step. If you are clear on where you want to go and what you want to accomplish and how you want to get there then it is easy to communicate those concepts to others.

You do this in the form of policy and staff meetings. You should have a meeting at least once a week to reiterate the purpose of the shop and what it is you want to get done. The next step is getting an employee to understand his/her job, the purpose of his job and how it all fits in with the overall big picture of the business. With a service writer you have to break it all down, how many jobs or hats is he/she really wearing? In most independent shops the service writer wears a multitude of hats: Reception, sales, parts, dispatching, quality control (checking the vehicle before the customer picks it up) etc. Each one of these has to be broken down into their actual components or functions and then taught on how the job is to be done according to company policy...

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