The Ladder With No Rungs · Technician Find Community

Chris Lawson

25d • 📜Shop Culture📜

The Ladder With No Rungs

Your best tech is going to leave you.

Maybe in ten years. Maybe on a Friday.

That's not the problem.

The problem is you'll be surprised.

Here's the pattern.

A tech comes in green. You put time into him. Your A-tech stops what he's doing to answer his questions. You pay for the classes. He earns his certs.

Then he lands at B-tech.

And he sits there. Good work. Steady hours. Nothing new to aim at.

Meanwhile, the phone rings. Not yours. His.

I know an A-tech who got calls from six shops. Six. Your B-tech is on those same lists. He's just lower down.

He doesn't mention it. He doesn't complain. He just gets a little quieter.

They won't tell you, because they like you.

Then one Friday he asks if you've got a minute. And you're back to being a man down.

The best retention idea I've seen this year didn't come from our industry.

It came from a hair salon.

I watched a video about a $1.2 million extension salon in Los Angeles. The salon trains its stylists. The stylists build a following. Then they leave and take the clients with them.

The advice: stop treating that like a roadside breakdown. It's scheduled maintenance. You know it's coming. So plan for it.

In our world the customers mostly stay. What walks out is the skill you paid to build.

Same video, a five-location nail salon. They built a long ladder with lots of small steps. Their people stay about four years on average, and staff without a degree work their way up to $70K.

Different trade. Same math.

So why do most shops lose the techs they spent years building? Three reasons.

1. The silence.

Most shops run three rungs. C, B, A. The gap between them can run a year or more.

Techs don't quit over the size of the raise. They quit in the silence between raises.

And Indeed fills silence for a living.

2. The raise by threat.

How does a tech get a real raise in most shops? He gets an offer somewhere else, and you match it.

If the only way to get a raise in your shop is an offer from the shop down the street, you already have a career path. It just runs through your competitor.

3. The forgotten deal.

I tell owners this all the time. You hire a guy and say, "Let's revisit pay at 90 days." Day 90 comes. He forgot what he was supposed to do to get the raise.

He never forgot the raise.

Now you're arguing about a promise nobody wrote down.

Here's how I'd rebuild it. Four moves.

1. Keep your levels. Add rungs.

Don't throw out C, B, A. Split each one into two or three rungs.

Early rungs come fast. 30 days. 90 days. Six months. Later rungs spread out, because the certs take longer to earn.

One owner told me he can't start a new tech high, because if the guy turns out terrible, he can't cut the pay back. Fair. He doesn't know him yet.

That's exactly what early rungs are for. Start where you can live with it. Let him earn his way up in steps he can see.

One version of year one:

Day 30: shows up on time, follows the written procedures, small bump.

Day 90: title upgrade, off the Saturday rotation (if you have one. Substitute something else if you don't).

Passes the G1 test: raise (or another training if you're not big on ASE).

Your gates. Your numbers.

2. Pay in two currencies.

Money and Monday.

Cash is one currency. The other is what his week looks like.

You can't always beat the dealer on cash. You can beat him on Monday.

Monday rungs cost little or nothing:

A title upgrade.
@Carm Capriotto
has been pushing specialist titles, and he's right. "Service Specialist" lands differently than "Lube Tech."
Off the Saturday rotation, if you run one.
His own bay instead of floating.
First crack at the next job type he's training for.
He chooses his next training.
If you loaned him a starter toolset, it becomes his.

Alternate them. Cash rung. Monday rung. Cash rung. He gets frequent wins, and your payroll doesn't jump every time.

3. Write the gate for every rung.

Every rung gets three things in writing:

What you'll do. What you'll get. When we'll check.

One shop I work with scores its techs 1 to 5 on diagnostics, quality, and inspections. The total maps to a pay rank. The raise conversation starts with a number both of you can already see.

Put a range on every cash rung. Never "up to." "Up to" trips the BS meter on technicians.

Fair warning: the first time you write this down, you'll probably find a guy who's underpaid for where he sits.

Fix that first. It's cheaper than replacing him.

4. Fund it from the front counter.

Every rung gets paid for somewhere.

Your labor rate is your retention budget. Not the rate on the sign. The one you actually collect.

The shop that won't raise its rate isn't saving money. It's choosing turnover. It just never sees the invoice.

Now the part nobody likes.

You'll still lose some. Even with a great ladder.

One shop I know lost the best tech they ever had. He moved out of state. Left on great terms. They've tried to get him back more than once.

That's not a breakdown. That's the maintenance you knew was coming.

Retention doesn't mean nobody leaves. It means nobody leaving is an emergency.

The shops that get this right do two things at once. They build a ladder so fewer people leave. And they keep a bench warm, so the ones who do leave don't take the whole schedule with them.

Fix the roof when the sun is shining.

Here's your Monday.

Pull your newest tech aside. Ask him one question:

"What's your next raise for, and roughly when?"

If he can answer without guessing, you have a career path.

If he can't, you have a rumor.

Your techs should be able to see their next rung from the bay.

10:43

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The Ladder With No Rungs