This should prove to be a decent year for the tire and automotive industry. Most economic signs outside of our control are pointing to steady growth or better. No one has a crystal ball, but the signs are encouraging.
Start off the new year right by abiding by the following five rules:
Rule 1: Reduce the number of rules everyone has to know in order to work in your business, yet raise your standards. By this, I want you to standardize good employee behavior and good employer behavior. Encourage your employees to be on time for work, be productive and safe in their roles, be kind to co-workers and customers and do what you ask them to do.
Rule 2: As an owner, you will work to listen to your employees first. Not only should you listen to employees’ problems, but you also should listen to their potential solutions and allow for the best decision to improve work. The best decision includes what’s best for your customers and employees.
Rule 3: Ensure that no employee breaks local or federal laws at any time. Ethical decision-making is a requirement of employment. If ever in doubt, encourage your employees to ask or research. Let them know that mistakes will be tolerated, but willful disobedience will not.
Rule 4: Over-communicate actions, both in telling and responding. Questions about rules should be read and understood. If not clear, the question should be about the rule’s meaning.
Rule 5: This business only works if the employer takes care of his or her employees. In turn, employees take care of the customers and customers take care of the company.
Everything else in your store should be in writing somewhere. I’m talking about OSHA guidelines, employment law, first aid and emergency actions, hours posted, etc. And any skills on the job should be learned and demonstrated prior to working alone. You should require rigid adherence to the above rules. Allow for earnest mistakes and what it takes to recover from those mistakes. This isn’t a high bar. Bakeries don’t allow rat droppings in their cake batter. Electricians don’t work with faulty equipment. Bank tellers don’t scream obscenities at the top of their lungs.
Mistakes happen all the time. It’s your responsibility to discern right from wrong and proper from improper. It’s also your duty to then inform the employee of the correct action that’s needed. Deliver immediate feedback or provide it as soon as possible.
Disciplinary action is the same and can only be done with first-person information. All else falls to “everyone is put on notice that this activity will be monitored, moving forward.” Everything else comes after this. This includes how many rings of the phone are allowed before your salespeople respond, how they should qualify the customer and identify a vehicle’s problem before pulling it into your service bay, the courtesy of giving customers at least three tire choices and more. These things aren’t rules as much as they are job training.
We are experiencing the most dramatic contraction of available skilled workers I think we’ve ever faced since the 1980s. And cars have never been more expensive to buy or fix. A $75 oil change can go up in $10,000 smoke if everyone isn’t paying attention.
As an owner, all you can ask for is an honest effort. Yeah, we all pray for a hero to rise from the ashes of a chaotic day, but the reality is we can fix anything before it gets broken and we can fix most things after they get broken. But we can’t fix broken humans, whether employees or customers.
And a final note: your dealership has to be physically safe and it has to be safe in regards to feelings and emotions. Not touchyfeely safe, but a level of safety that encourages employees to work hard for you and encourages consumers to do business with you.
In 2025, I’m asking you to only follow five rules. Give them a shot.
