Auto Repair Shop Teamwork: Individual vs. Team Performance
Building strong auto repair shop teamwork starts with how you recognize and reward your employees. Should you focus on individual accomplishments or the success of the entire team?
The answer can have a bigger impact on your shop’s culture than you might think.
You don’t have to be a sports fan to appreciate the concept of a team. Take football, for example. Only a few players actually score touchdowns. A team can win a game or even a championship with just one player scoring. But when the team wins, everyone celebrates. Everyone wins, not just the player who scored the touchdown.
Sports recognize individual accomplishments and sometimes reward players for them, but individual achievement isn’t the ultimate goal. The goal is to win as a team through combined effort. Everyone has a job to do, and every position influences the outcome. Even backup players who may never take the field can feel like winners. Their role is to stay in top shape and be ready when called. Every player’s effort helps create opportunities for the team to score and win.
Now let’s look at the automotive repair shop.
Too often, the highest-producing technician or best salesperson gets most, or sometimes all, of the credit when the shop reaches its goal. In our world, hitting daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals is a win. These individuals often receive the highest compensation, too.
If the system isn’t managed well, it can create a shop filled with winners and losers and undermine the team concept.
When Individual Performance Hurts the Team
We’ve all heard of the high-production technician or the lone service advisor who wants to do their job and be left alone. They tend to work in isolation, and to their credit, they perform at a high level. But at what cost to the team over the long term?
I remember playing on a youth basketball team as a teenager. One of our top players constantly asked the rest of us to pass him the ball. He took more shots than anyone else. There was no doubt he was good, very good. And at first, we won a lot. But he became known as the “Ball Hog,” and that hurt the team.
Here’s where it gets interesting: because he wasn’t a team player and seemed to care only about his individual performance, the rest of the team eventually shut down. Some players even rooted against him. Soon, the coach noticed and talked to him.
The same thing can happen in an auto repair shop.
When a highly productive technician cares only about labor hours and pay, it takes a toll on the rest of the team. Think about it: that technician probably had good mentors and the right environment to hone his skills. He didn’t get where he is in isolation.
Yes, he may be self-motivated, but if his focus is only on his own performance, the team suffers, and the shop suffers.
The same is true of a service advisor who cares only about her sales and performance. That mindset can lead to a few questionable tactics. She may try to choose which customers to write up, which technicians to work with, and which jobs to sell to maximize her own numbers.
On the surface, that may not seem wrong. But she’s working in isolation, and the other service advisors may resent her actions. She becomes the proverbial “Ball Hog.”
This is especially important for service advisors, where the wrong incentives can create unnecessary competition. Finding service advisor pay programs that encourage teamwork can help keep everyone focused on the shop’s overall success.
I want to make one thing clear: I support and recognize individual performance.
When I was in business, I helped employees reach their potential through mentoring and training. But I would not tolerate an employee who cared only about their individual score.
Nothing hurts a team more than an employee who won’t help a fellow employee.
How Technician Pay Plans Impact Shop Culture
Back in the late 1970s, I worked for a Ford dealer. One of my first jobs was diagnosing a no-start on a Ford Pinto.
After confirming the problem in the parking lot, I asked a few fellow technicians to help me push the car into my bay. No one would help. They all said they were too busy trying to make their hours.
I eventually got help from the new-car prep workers.
I knew then that we had a cultural problem.
Management placed a high value on production, and the pay plan required technicians to produce enough billable hours to earn decent pay.
I know what some of you may be thinking: “What’s wrong with that?”
Here’s what was wrong: the environment created animosity among the workers. There was no team concept.
Technicians began taking shortcuts and sometimes hiding their mistakes. Many recommended only the work they knew would generate more billable hours.
From my perspective, the resistance to helping one another left technicians feeling like they were on an island. And that culture didn’t put the customer’s best interests first.
Turnover at the dealership was high, and I stayed for just over two years.
That experience helped push me to start my own business. After leaving the dealership, I opened my own shop.
You can be sure I learned a valuable lesson: never underestimate the power of the team concept.
Why Shop Culture Matters More Than the Pay Plan
Whether your auto repair shop uses flat-rate technician pay, individual performance incentives, or team-based bonuses, how you structure your pay plans is ultimately up to you. You’ll also need to consider what’s legal in your state.
No pay plan is perfect.
As an Elite Worldwide business coach, I’ve seen every kind of pay plan work, and every kind fail.
The plan alone doesn’t determine long-term success. The shop’s culture does.
Let me emphasize long-term.
Switching to a particular pay plan may boost sales in the short term, but that gain can turn into a loss if the plan damages the team.
A compensation plan should encourage employees to perform at their best without making them feel like helping a coworker comes at their own expense.
After all, what good is having your highest-producing technician hit a record number of hours if the rest of your team is struggling?
Want to hear more about how pay plans impact teamwork in an auto repair shop? We tackled this topic on Monday Under the Hood, discussing how shop owners can reward performance without creating unnecessary competition among employees.
Finding the Balance Between Individual and Team Recognition
As I said earlier, I believe auto repair shop owners should recognize individual performance. But it’s also important to reward the whole team when it achieves its goals.
Think back to the football analogy.
When employees feel they played a role in the win, it builds confidence and sets the stage for future wins.
Long-term success requires a culture of interdependence, where the whole team is aligned, and individual performance helps everyone meet and exceed expectations for the greater good.
Recognizing your top performers and celebrating team success don’t have to be competing priorities. In fact, the strongest shop cultures make room for both.
How to Encourage Team Performance in Your Auto Repair Shop
If you want to build a stronger team culture, start by looking at what your shop currently recognizes and rewards.
Here are a few things to consider:
- Recognize teamwork, not just production. Celebrate employees who mentor newer technicians, help coworkers solve problems, or step up when the shop needs them.
- Celebrate shop-wide wins. When your shop reaches a goal, make sure everyone understands how their contributions helped make it happen.
- Evaluate your employee incentive programs. Look at whether your pay plans and performance incentives encourage teamwork or unintentionally create competition between employees.
- Set clear expectations. Individual accountability matters, but so does collaboration. Make sure employees understand that helping the team succeed is part of their job.
- Lead by example. Shop owners and managers set the tone. If you want employees to support one another, make teamwork a visible priority.
The goal isn’t to stop rewarding your best performers. It’s to create an environment where individual success contributes to the success of the entire shop.
Building that environment takes consistent effort. For more practical ideas, check out these six ways to create stronger team spirit in your auto repair shop.
Building a Winning Team Starts With a Shared Goal
A popular story about the power of teamwork involves President John F. Kennedy visiting a NASA facility during the race to put a man on the Moon.
As the story goes, Kennedy noticed a janitor working in the hallway and asked, “What do you do here?”
The janitor replied, “Mr. President, I’m helping to put a man on the Moon.”
Whether or not the exchange happened exactly that way, the message is worth remembering.
That janitor understood that every role mattered.
In an auto repair shop, when people see how their work contributes to the team’s success, they’re more likely to work together toward the same goal.
Recognize individual achievements. Reward your team’s wins. And above all, build a shop culture where everyone understands that success is something you create together.
Build a Stronger Team at Your Auto Repair Shop
A successful shop takes more than great individual performers. It takes strong leadership, clear expectations, and a team working toward the same goals.
Elite Worldwide’s Top Shop 360 coaching program helps independent auto repair shop owners build stronger teams, improve operations, and create long-term success.
Learn how Top Shop 360 can help your shop.
About the author – Joe Marconi: With over four decades of industry expertise, Joe is a seasoned professional whose accomplishments include owning and operating one of America’s most successful auto repair companies. A graduate of the Automotive Management Institute, Joe is a recipient of the CARQUEST Excellence Award, served on industry panels, and played a role in developing the ASE Engine Performance Certification test. As a former columnist for Ratchet & Wrench Magazine and co-founder of AutoShopOwner.com, Joe has been a keynote speaker at the Ratchet and Wrench Conference. After selling his automotive company in 2021, Joe now dedicates his time to giving back to the industry as a Top Shop 360 Business Development Coach with Elite Worldwide and serves on the board of directors for the Service Stations Dealers of Great New York. Joe, a Bronx native now residing in Patterson, New York, enjoys family time, community involvement, and pursuits such as tennis, golf, and woodworking.
