Give Back to Your Employees During this Holiday Season

Pay Technicians at the Job Level Instead of at the End of ROs

Your technicians will likely appreciate getting paid faster, especially during the holidays, when they’re probably planning for purchases like gifts and decorations.

Instead of waiting until an entire RO is completed, you can pay your technicians as they finish individual jobs.

That way, technicians won’t have to wait for their colleagues to finish their tasks. They can get their paychecks once their part of the repair is done.

Balance Technician Hours

Some technicians end up getting more or fewer hours than others—and not necessarily on purpose.

After all, it can be easy to lose track of who has done what recently. This holiday season can be the perfect time to start turning that around by giving more equal hours to technicians across your shop.

That way, you can avoid overworking or underworking technicians during the holiday season and beyond.

Implement a Fair Time Off System

Whether or not your shop already has a vacation time policy in place, you’ll likely see a lot of time off requests during the holidays. Your team members might want to take extra time off outside of the designated days the entire shop will be closed for the holidays.

As much as you want to honor everyone’s time-off requests, it’s not realistic. If you have too many people out at the same time, you risk being understaffed, which can lead to slowdowns and frustrated customers.

Instead of risking being understaffed, you can implement a fair time off system and communicate it to your staff. For instance, you can stipulate that time-off requests during the holiday will be “first come, first serve.”

You could even stagger the schedule so that if multiple people want to be off on the same day, the first half could work during the morning and the second half could take over in the afternoon.

Consider Holiday Pay

If you do want your shop to be partially staffed on, say, Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve in case of any emergency vehicle repairs, you can offer your staff holiday pay.

This way, team members who would like the extra money can opt to work those days, rather than you designating certain people to come to work.

Look Into Giving Holiday Bonuses

During the holidays, your shop might spend time giving back to the community, be it through organizing a holiday donation drive or giving discounts to essential workers. As a shop owner, you might also be thinking about how you can spread some holiday cheer to your team.

A great way to do so is by giving everyone a holiday bonus. However, you need to evaluate if you’re in a financial position to give out holiday bonuses, and if so, how much you can give each person.