Staff. Who would have them – and how would you run a garage without them?
That tension sits at the heart of every independent workshop. Your people are your biggest asset and your biggest vulnerability. You need them to open the doors, keep customers safe and earn every pound that comes through the tills. In a tight labour market, they know it, and that changes everything.
Pay is where it stings first
For years, the trade tried to hold labour rates and wages down…now the bill has arrived. There are technicians and service staff who, if you had a full queue of candidates, you simply would not pick. Yet because there is nobody else, they are on money that used to belong to the top performers.
Reality breeds resentment. Owners know they are over a barrel. Good people see average colleagues on premium wages, and the message the whole team receives is simple - being in the right place at the right time is worth more than actually being good at the job.
Here is the uncomfortable and slightly controversial bit. Sometimes the owner helps create the problem. Every time you agree to an inflated rise just to stop someone walking, you quietly teach the room that holding the business to ransom works. It feels safer in the moment than being short staffed, but it slowly rots the culture.
There is another side though. You cannot attract serious talent by thinking only about the wage packet. The best technicians and service advisors know their worth. They want a proper salary, yes; but they also want a workshop that is organised, with equipment that works and a boss who will back them when things go wrong.
That means spending real money and real effort on the conditions around the job. Training that is ring fenced, not squeezed in the gaps. Time for proper fault finding, not just rushing from one booked hour to the next. Space to mentor younger staff instead of treating them as an extra pair of hands.
Generational differences
This is where the generational clash really bites. Many older technicians look at younger staff and decide they have no clue. They forget how much they themselves did not know in their early years, and instead of taking them under their wing, they freeze them out. They offer no explanation, just criticism when something is not done their preferred way.
From the other side, younger staff see a workplace that often does not understand their outlook or their struggles after Covid. Education was disrupted, apprenticeships were delayed or abandoned and a lot of young people missed out on the simple social learning that comes from being around working adults. They are then judged against the standards of a very different era.
Add the noise around so-called ‘woke’ culture and it gets even harder. The wider political arguments spill into the workshop through little comments and jokes, and it becomes difficult to talk calmly about individual needs without someone rolling their eyes or feeling attacked. In a small team that sort of tension is poison.
A young member of staff who learns slowly or struggles with anxiety will either be supported to find their place or quietly ground down. Owners sit in the middle, trying to keep the peace, keep productivity up and avoid getting dragged into culture war arguments when all they really want is good work done well and customers looked after.
Where does that leave the independent owner and their team?
First, be honest. If you want high calibre people, you have to pay properly and build an environment worth staying in. If you want your youngsters to become the backbone of the business, your older staff need time and clear expectations to coach them, not mock them.
Second, look at the people you are paying top money to right now - if you would not hire them again tomorrow, you have a decision to make. Sometimes a garage is genuinely better being one person short for a while, tightening processes and recruitment, than keeping a disruptive or lazy person on superstar money.
Staff. Who would have them? Every successful garage in the country, that’s who.
The real trick is making sure you have the right ones, on the right terms, for the right reasons, and that you are brave enough to reshape the team when the balance starts to tip the wrong way.