Being an auto shop manager is hard work—you’ve got parts to order, employees to manage, and angry customers to defuse. When you’ve got dozens of small tasks that have to oversee, it’s easy to become overwhelmed or sidetracked and lose productivity.
Maintaining high productivity is the key to running a successful auto shop. Here’s how you can improve your productivity as an auto shop manager.
Hire Great Employees
The most important thing you can do as an auto shop manager is hire great employees. As they say, employees are the backbone of every company, and if you don’t have great employees than you’ll have to shoulder the weight of the business by yourself.
Good employees will take the initiative to begin tasks without you having to ask them, and they’ll complete their tasks quickly and efficiently. When you have reliable employees that you don’t have to micromanage, you’ll have more time do get managerial things done.
Try and hire employees that already have auto shop experience so the onboarding process won’t be as long or difficult. You can attract the best job applicants by offering good employee benefits or higher wages.
Promote your open positions to a wide pool of applicants by using an online job board—these job boards will also sort through all the submitted resumes and find the most qualified applicants. This saves you a ton of time and keeps you from having to sort through a gigantic list of applications.
Streamline Your Operations With Software
Every auto body shop manager has tasks they’ve got to do on the computer. Good software can help you complete your computer-related tasks a whole lot faster.
One of the best ways to boost your productivity is to streamline your overall workflow—especially when it comes to using your computer systems to manage repair work. Your auto body shop management systems should help you manage your databases, come up with estimates for repair work, and engage in customer outreach via texts and emails.
Are you managing a newly-launched auto body shop? Then you might be tasked with creating a new website for the business. Even if your shop has been open for a while and you already have a website, it’s never a bad idea to give your website a total revamp so you can make it more attractive and user- friendly. If you’re new to website building, be sure to use web build software that’s beginner-friendly. This type of software often includes custom templates that you can drag and drop as you see fit.
As a manager, you may be tasked with tracking all the repair work that your auto shop does. Learn how to use automated accounting software so your records are accurate and easy to track.
Schedule Out Your Day
If you want to be as productive as possible during your shift, you should get in the habit of scheduling out your day. You can either use a day planner or a scheduling app to set aside certain times of day to complete tasks.
You don’t have to schedule out every single minute of your shift—inevitably, your assistance may be needed on a vehicle, and you need to be flexible. But try and schedule certain hours of the day to do managerial work, like employee scheduling, accounting, and ordering parts.
The main goal behind scheduling your day is to avoid multitasking too much. Lots of people think that multitasking will help you be more productive, but in actuality, too much multitasking will keep you distracted and hurt your productivity. Use a set schedule to assign parts of the day for working on one specific kind of task.
Bring Your Own Lunch
This is a silly one but it can make a big difference: bring your own lunch to work. While it’s occasionally nice to get out of the office and get your meal from a food joint, taking a long lunch break can hurt your productivity quite a bit. Wake up a little earlier and prepare your own lunch, or prepare lunch the night before. You can also use a food delivery app to have lunch delivered right to the shop.
Conclusion
If you feel like your productivity is slipping at your auto body shop, try implementing one or all of these productivity-boosting practices and be amazed at how much more you’re able to get done! You'll be more efficient, save more money, and earn additional income as well.
