technicians 4 day work week

[mopar]

Looking at implementing a 4 day work week for technicians. Currently have 16 apprentinces and technicians. Hoping this may help retain or attract more techs. Any pros and cons would be appreciate. Advisors and Part staff in place. Has anyone offerred this to just lic.tech and exclude apprentices or offer to some not all? Any suggestion would to greatly appreciated

[btk]

Hoping this may help retain or attract more techs. Any pros and cons would be appreciate. ???

Is that the only reason you want to go to 4 day work week? If I was at service capacity then I would think it would be a great way to go-if you are not at capacity-you might want to wait. It also is helpful to know if you are flat rate, hourly shop.

I manage 2 separate facilities(same brand) -one is on 4 day work week and one is on a 5 day work week and I see pros and cons to both systems- i personally like the 5 day week better. The biggest issue I have with 4 day work week is the accountability of the techs. Parts are ordered for a car and then someone else has to fix the car when the parts arrive 2 days later or then the advisors would try to schedule work around that techs schedule and that just doesnt work for the customer. Maybe someone out there has a better 4-10 schedule that they can share. In California., you can offer different schedules for different class of techs. So you can have line techs on 4 day and oil changer on 5 but they must have distinct and different job duties, also a 4 day work week has to be voted on by the employees and submit the results to the labor board and has to be a majority vote I believe.

[mopar]

Thanks for feedback. We are a flat rate shop
currently not at shop capacity. However more work than we can handle and customers are very bitter that we can not get their vehicle in for weeks due to lack of staff. We already pay on high end of scale so we can not go down that road. Just looking at all possible scenarios to attract help.

[topshop]

One unique option is to run a 6 day operation with 4 day schedules that rotate. This way, every 3rd week a 5 day weekend occurs. A lot of techs would love that.

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Tom Ham
AutomotiveManagementNetwork.com

[arnien]

We had a Toyota shop in Kansas that was on the team system. There were 3 teams, one team worked a 5 day week, regular shop hours. The other 2 teams worked a 3 day week. In the case of ordered parts that came in after that team went off shift, the team that worked 5 days completed the job, also took care of any rare comebacks. All techs in the shop had been there a long time, as long as 18 years, were highly trained Toyota techs. They all loved the system.

[mopar]

Thanks for the ideas. Some good food for thought.