How Can Workshops Calculate And Improve Their Labour Efficiency?

Dealerships and garages can increase the productivity of their technicians by learning about labour efficiency and using the gathered data to try and accommodate more vehicles in the workshop, leading to more money coming into the business.

If your garage can find just one additional hour of productivity a day from a technician, whilst charging £80 an hour retail, then you could be looking at earning more than £20,000 a year in extra labour sales. Applying this to 5 technicians equates to over £100,000 in total, so it’s worth investigating whether your workshop can find the extra hour to take advantage of.

What Is Labour Efficiency?

Labour efficiency, sometimes referred to as labour utilisation or selling efficiency, is the productivity of your technicians over a period of time. This quick calculation provides you with a percentage to show exactly how efficient your staff are during their working hours:

Despite the calculated rate however, the labour efficiency of your technicians can still be affected by a number of different factors, including:

Skill Set

With apprentices and vastly experienced mechanics working in the same garage, different types of jobs can take different amounts of time depending on who is performing the work. Taking each skill set from your technicians into account before allocating jobs will ensure a maximum success rate in the fastest time possible.

Benefits

Rewarding your technicians with a competitive salary and bonus structure will incentivise them to improve their efficiencies and work even harder for your company, however some members of your team will prefer recognition in the form of promotional opportunities. Showing regular appreciation for your staff in any form will help contribute to a positive labour efficiency.

Hours

Although longer working hours could seem like an easy way to increase productivity, this needs careful consideration, as without detailed planning this could have the reverse effect, with tiredness increasing amongst staff and motivation dropping, even with incentives in place. If switching to longer hours, you must ensure regular breaks are enforced to keep your technicians well rested.

Environment

A healthy working environment is key for producing positive and motivated technicians. While it’s essential to have a clean and comfortable break room on-site for your technicians to benefit more from their breaks, it’s also important to pay attention to details around the workshop itself, with aspects such as the lighting, ventilation, and heating all contributing to a technician’s performance.

How Can You Improve Your Labour Efficiency?

Providing your service advisors with instant live access to technician schedules will allow them to track and manage the workshop throughout the day, making changes to tasks in real time when necessary to ensure minimum disruption and maximum efficiency. This can be essential when unforeseen circumstances occur, such as jobs overrunning and creating knock-on effects that risk disrupting the entire day.

With a live look at technician schedules, service advisors are also able to monitor the status and attendance of each team member, giving you an immediate view of who is clocked onto jobs and who is awaiting new work.

Dragon2000’s Workshop App revolutionises the daily processes used by garages, with instant live access to your technicians’ schedules from a mobile device ensuring you’re always in control of the company’s workload and your team, no matter where you are. Automatic notifications within the app can even alert you to act promptly when a technician is behind schedule, helping you to avoid and resolve any issues before they can escalate.

The Workshop App is fully integrated with the DragonDMS dealer management system, which features a Technician Scheduler tool to let you view the workshop’s capacity and allocate jobs to your technicians based on their skill set.

If you would like to find out more information about how the DragonDMS and the Workshop App can help to improve your garage’s efficiencies and profits, please contact our sales team on 01327 222 333 or email sales@dragon2000.co.uk.

We have been helping dealers and garages drive their businesses forward since 1995. Contact Dragon2000 today to find out how our dealer management system, car dealer websites and mobile apps can help your business increase profits and reduce costs.