Technician pay reality check. Are they really underpaid or missing the bigger picture? Join passionate automotive trainer and coach Andrew Uglow as he tackles the most common technician complaint. I don't get paid enough. In this episode, you'll learn why. Comparing technician wages to other trades, Mrs. Crucial context, how lifestyle choices impact financial perception and discover practical strategies for addressing compensation concerns beyond just raising pay. Along the way, Andrew shares some great stories, including our simple overtime test reveals, whether it's really about the money and why teaching financial management might be more valuable than salary increases. I'm your co-host Anthony Perl, and this is the Frictionless Workshop podcast. Let's get cranking. Andrew, welcome to another series of the podcast, and we've got a really interesting topic we're gonna go through in this series in particular. But

firstly, welcome. Thanks Anthony. It's good to be recording another podcast again. It's a funny dynamic, isn't it? You, you think you've said everything or, or maybe people think they've heard everything that you have to say, whichever way you look at it, and things emerge. Things change you. You come across new information and it's like, well, actually, this would be really useful for people. It's always interesting because there's

always more, and I think exactly what you just said. Suddenly there is this different perspective or there's something that you've covered and we get the feedback as we've had to explore things in a different way, in a different light. So I think in this series we're going to really take the technician's perspective, aren't we? We're going to really have a look in a lot more detail and things that might be impacting them.

Sure. So when. Customers come into a business. So if I'm a, a service manager, a workshop owner, customers come into my business, they come into, essentially what they do is they come into, within my business, invest in the reliability of their car. That's why they're there. And they do that by purchasing parts from me as the workshop or the workshop manager and purchasing skill from the people that I. So when something isn't right with a customer's car, we end up with a customer complaint. And so it usually forms into one of two types of complaints. My car is doing something that it shouldn't, or conversely, it isn't doing something that I was expecting it to. And so we collect the data from the customer and we go through a diagnostic process, and perhaps one of the more. Common diagnostic processes is the six step troubleshooting process. If you're not familiar with that, Google that stuff. It's a, it's a pretty good process. And we then go through and unpack and discover what's actually going on with the vehicle. Because very often what the customer's complaint is, is a symptom as opposed to the cause of a problem. And so what I wanted to do for this series is I wanted to go and take that same frame. And go, well, have we ever actually sat down and done some diagnosis, some six step troubleshooting, if you like, on the technician's claims. Complaints that they give us by way of feedback. And if you're a workshop service manager or workshop owner, you'd be familiar with the the complaints that technicians do. And so I've collected a bunch of the most common complaints that pop up in training, so working with technicians quite regularly, which I thoroughly enjoy. And this is the sort of stuff that just comes up in either, you know, the casual conversations or like we'll be talking about, you know, technology on car. And this will emerge out of the discussion.

I think it's a fascinating point as well to kick this off, is that you as someone independent coming in, get to hear things that maybe the owners and the managers get to hear, but only in a different way. Whereas the willingness to share in this way is quite informal in many respects, and allows it to be free flowing. And I think it allows you to then take a perspective and really address it. And I think that's what we're gonna do in this series. So I think it's done with. A lot of

great insight. Yeah. And the technicians, because I don't employ them, they don't work for me. I don't have a stake in their financial performance. Like I definitely, as a trainer, as a coach, I definitely have a stake in seeing them be successful without question. And at the same time, they can tell me anything and there's no repercussions. You know, there's no, well, you know, you're fired or you can't say that, or you, you know, we have to work within the bounds of good HR policy for sure. But the genuineness with which this is expressed is, um, really, really quite powerful.

So without a further due, we are getting to the first of the complaints, which is probably the one that I guess is the most obvious in many respects, whether how true it is, well, let's explore some of this. They don't get paid enough,

and I'm sure as a service manager or a workshop owner, you'd had this technician comes to you and go, I want you to pay me more. I certainly know my experience as a technician. You know, I look at the metrics that I'm measured by. I look at my productivity, my efficiency, my profitability. If that's how I'm being tracked and I go, actually, I'm doing really well. I'm worth more money. And so I approach the business and I go, well, I'm not getting paid enough. And that's a, that's a, that's fairly heavy conversation, isn't it? And so I, I wanna just put on my diagnostic hat. As a trainer, as a technician, coach, and go, well, okay, let's put on a a thinking cap and go, well, are you not getting paid enough? Is that actually a thing or is this, is there something more to this? Just like I would with a customer's concern. Customer says, my car's air conditioning isn't cold. Well, I go, well, okay, well, let's go and test to see whether the air conditioning's cold or not. It might be, and it might be something. With the customer. The customer's not using it correctly, or they've got it set to, I don't know, something and it's how it's applied versus what's actually happening. And so let's go and test this. I don't get paid enough and you know, they don't pay me enough. I should be paid more money. These types of complaints. And the first question I wanna ask is, well, what are you comparing that to? Because. If you are comparing yourself to the, you know, the CEO of Telstra or you know Anthony Albanese as the Prime Minister, well sure they get paid a whole lot more money. And how do you justify that comparison? Well, that's an interesting discussion, but like, what are you actually comparing it to? And, and so when we go and test this, and the first question that we look for when we are doing any diagnosis is, is this valid? Is it actually what the customer's complaining about? And is that a fault? You know, so we go back to the idea, well, I'm not getting paid enough. Well, is that actually. Correct. Is that actually how you say it is? And is that a problem? And I'm gonna go, well, it may or may not be how we say it is, but it's certainly a problem because now I'm getting feedback. Right now I'm getting response from my technicians. And if I don't address the concern. It's the same as me not addressing a customer's concern. I'm gonna lose the customer, right? So here I'm gonna lose my tech. And the technicians are the heart and soul of a workshop. If you don't have good productive technicians, how can you possibly be profitable? How can you satisfy customers? How can you do any of these outcomes that the business is built to do? So compared to what? And often, I don't know, we, we get, the first comparison is with other trades. Well compared to electricians, compared to plumbers, compared to, that's, that's the first one I'm gonna argue. That's a reasonably fair comparison. Like, I'm a trade, they're a trade, you know, they're making more money than me. It's not fair. You should pay any more money at a surface level. Sorry. That's fair. The next one is by way of a comparison, is well look at all the stuff I have to know. You know, what's changed for plumbers in the last 50 years, we've gone from play pipes to bully volley uh, PVC pipes. Which is like way easier and much less hard and quicker. And so they're even more efficient than they were. The adage goes, well, excrements still runs downhill. That hasn't changed. So, so like, why are plumbers making all this money? There's been a change in technology and how they do stuff. Sure. You know, laser levels and all this sort of stuff, so I've gotta know physics and chemistry and like, you pick a topic, I, I have to know it. Fluid dynamics, the list goes on and, oh, why shouldn't I get paid more for knowing that? Of course. The other thing that usually doesn't come up for technicians is supply and demand.

Yeah. I mean, that's an interesting one, isn't it? I mean, is there a lot of them? Is there enough to actually justify, well, there's so few. We have to pay some of them more. Is it geographic as well? You know, there's lots of things that come into that equation. Yeah.

One of the, like the automotive industry, like I started in the automotive industry a fair time ago. I'm an automotive industry lifer. You could argue that I'm an automotive industry. Tragic. I've been in the industry longer than I care to admit in excess of 30 years. And when I started, there was a school shortage, then there was a lack of technicians, then there was a lack of apprentices. Then we couldn't find good people then. And that's been the same. Problem. And if anything, it's intensified since, and so you go back to supply and demand. Well, okay, that's an issue. There's not enough supply, so the price should go up, otherwise they move elsewhere. But I still think we're dealing at a surface level and we haven't really got to the core of what's going on. Certainly, it's been my perspective that technicians are human, like the rest of this. And, and the grass is always greener, isn't it, Anthony? We look on the other side of the fence and we go, poor. Look at those people. You know, I, I eighties, tragic. I point to Mark Effler and money for nothing. And the song, you know, look at all these people, look all the stuff that these rock stars get, you know, like that'd be the life, wouldn't it? And I think what we forget to consider certainly is the technicians maybe don't give this sufficient thought. Is that often the reason why the grass is greener is because there's more BS on that side of the fence. There's BS makes the grass green. There's, there's more stuff to deal with and cope with. Not that technicians don't have a lot to deal with. Not that we don't as service management or workshop ownership have a lot to weigh through, but I'm concerned about. The validity of the test. Now, there are some techs that are definitely underpaid, and I like the idea of paying people more, like taking money off the table, taking it outta the equation, so that now we don't want the technicians just to work for our money. That would be a really enormous mistake and a really huge opportunity missed because if they just work for my money, I pay them more and they work for my money, and sooner or later there'll be another reason for a pay rise. There'll be another reason for a pay rise, and now we're into a challenge where it's not profitable. But I'm now relying on this technician because maybe they are good. Maybe they're outstandingly efficient or profitable or whatever. And so it's never enough. And so I like the idea of having technicians not work for money. Like pay them well without question, but don't have them work for your money. That's going down a level They need to work for something. Other than money, like by all means incentivize, by all means pay. Well, that shouldn't be the reason that they're turning up for work, because that is playing at a really shallow level, and it's playing a really dangerous game because someone will tap them on the shoulder and they go, Hey Anthony, how about you come to work for me for another, you know, five bucks an hour or another, you know, a hundred bucks a week, or whatever it is, and techs will move for that. The Frictionless Workshop Podcast is

brought to you by Solutions Culture. For details on how to get in touch with Andrew, consult the show notes. Below, and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Now, back to the podcast. Yeah, particularly when you've got, you know, a cost of living crisis and regular differentiations in interest rates and all of those things that are happening all the time. If, as you say, the focus is on the money, then. You take away the focus from

the job. Yeah, absolutely. And I go back to, and I think this is something that the automotive industry as a whole is starting to get back to, but has dropped the ball like quite badly, is that it should be about professionalism. Like they should come to work because they're proud of their trade, they're proud of their reputation, they enjoy the challenge, they're looking forward to contributing. Asked a class full of technicians. I said, how many people's lives have you saved? You know, we had a variety of different people. Some had been, some are still in their apprenticeships. They were late third year, early fourth year, and other people have been in the trade for 10, 15 years. And I said, well, you know, how many people's lives have saved since you've been in there? And it was, was the Microsoft Blue Circle. You know, it was like, I've, I've never even thought about this. This was something that I'd never even considered. And I said, well, you've just come up with subjective number. How many cars have you worked on? How many cars have had problems? How many times have you, you know, found funky? Tires, brakes, suspension, you know, whatever it is, engine issues, whatever. You know, cars coming on tow trucks that otherwise weren't functional, that because you did the job properly. This person now drives a safe VE vehicle versus a dangerous vehicle. How many lives have you saved? And I go, this is why you wanna be coming to work for me. Because we save people's lives. We delight customers. Like, don't get me wrong, we. Pay you well to do that. And at the same time, the business needs to be profitable. There's a, a balance here. There's a sweet spot for both the tech and for the business. And so, uh, the idea of working for money, I think is really bad. Interestingly enough that the guys that have been in the trade for. For longer, like 12, 15 years, they were in tens of thousands of people that just subjectively they go, I would have to be tens of thousands. I calculate how many cars I've worked on, calculate how many have had serious issues, and even semi-serious issues. It'd be tens of thousands of people. So if you think about, even if you didn't kill someone that resulted in a collision or that resulted in a, you know, you think of all the stress, all the money, all the like, that's a very impressive number. And that was just one room full of people. So why aren't we working for that? Why isn't that on the list of things, you know? Why isn't that part of my motivation as a technical professional opportunity to improve?

Yeah. It's a really interesting situation, isn't it? If you can then take the money off the table. The question then becomes is that motivation actually there? You know, what is the underlying cause for them asking for more money? Because is it really about the money or is it about other

things? Right. And so the way you would find this out is you would test, right? Just like you would test, is the air conditioning really cold? But I would run a, a test, I'd use aol. I'd use a test to see if the air conditioning was got, okay, so the customer in this case, our technician says, you don't pay me enough money. Well, let's test that and so let's go. If I gave you more hours and paid you at a overtime rate, would that be okay? That's gonna give you more money, right? Sure. The government do. The government are awful. I I, I won't, I won't use the word just 'cause I'm trying to use polite language. They, they're not getting a Christmas card from me anytime soon. They're just, they're just not. Yes. I think they have opportunity. It's the

dangerous part. Oh, Don, if we start talking politics, but I think everyone is you. It's, it doesn't,

they don't make it right. And so they definitely don't make it right. And so for the tech, the government sits into their pocket for quite a significant sum. You start going, well, actually is this worth it? And the flip side is if you wanna go and do that equation, like that's a whole nother frame to look through. So as a business, I look at the cost of labor. So I pay the tech and then I pay the super, and then I pay my payroll tax. And so the cost to me for this technician's labor is really quite high versus what the technician's getting in their pocket. And so I have to charge out. A cost rate to the customer. So the customer's paying for all of this. 'cause at the end of the day, if the customer can't afford it, well what do you do? You walk, you know, take public transport. I don't know what's the alternative. And so I have to charge out at my cost rate, but I'm paying my technician at the other rate, but I'm not making all of that money in the difference. The government's sticking their hand into the text pocket, into the customer's pocket and into my pocket. And I'm very confident that there's a word that begins with B that would describe what that is and ends in master degree. But and get the point of taxes. But like how far? Too far? So we start talking about the commercial elements here. This becomes a very difficult conversation. And so I've asked these questions for technicians, okay? So you're not earning enough money, you don't feel you're being paid what you're worth. Got it. What if we pay you over? I know. I don't wanna sacrifice time. I don't wanna be spending more of my time. Working on cars 'cause I've got backyards to do or I'd rather relax or hobbies or whatever I wanna do. And so we end up in, well is it actually about the money? Is that really because it was about the money, it was purely dollar. You'd take the overtime. I certainly know I did as a tech. There's overtime sign me up like can I do more overtime? Sure. I get handled by the tax department without question. But that's why the tax department exists, isn't it, to handle people. At the same time, I end up with more money, you know, and there's work around, there's ways and means and well, we're not gonna talk about that. There's formal and informal payments. There's all sorts of ways of doing this. But certainly what I see with the younger technicians is that it's, you know, we talk about lifestyle versus pay versus overtime, and there are three competing tensions. Yeah, it's about the money, but it's not just the money. It's more complex than just the, the surface level complaint that we receive. And so some of the other things that, that I've tested, I've gone well. You're earning this much money, where's it going? And that's an interesting conversation. Okay, so, so you, you are single or you know, you in a partner with a mortgage and or kids, where's the money going? And certainly for the younger guys that are maybe in relationships, but not out of home yet, or shared accommodation or something like that, I, I, you know, how much do you spend on food a week? And like, it is eye watering. The, the money that gets wasted. Coming from a, a part Scottish family. So one side of my family was part Scottish and they're very in touch with their inner Scotsman, deep pockets, short arms, all of that. My inner Scotsman has a moment. It sort of goes pale and slumps against the wall and collapses. You're spending how much? And so I go back to the complaint, okay, well is it really about pay or is there something else at play here? And I asked the question then of, of service management. If they're managing their finances badly, well paying them more money isn't gonna solve the problem, right? That's just a, a self perpetuating loop. They get more money putter away on stuff. There's no planning, there's no responsibility, there's no acumen around finance. So we're just gonna start another cycle, aren't we? And so I ask it, is it worth going well, how about rather than me paying you more money, how about I pay for you to go and do a class on financial management? How would that sound? Because I can claim that on tax, right? I can call that workplace training and you get to learn how to manage your money. And so now you're actually not spending your money up against a wall. You're actually got some sense and some logic and some reason around it. So I go back to the question, well, is it, is it really. Just about the money because it could be like you might be under pain, but is it that? How do you know until you test?

Thanks for joining us for this deep dive into Technician Pay Reality. If you found this diagnostic approach to compensation issues valuable, you gonna love what's coming up next. In our next episode, we're shifting from dollars to Dignity as we tackle the complaint that technicians don't get enough recognition. Andrew reveals why your. Best people feel invisible and shares groundbreaking research that shows exactly how much positive feedback transforms workplace culture. Plus, we'll explore why promoting your top technician might be the worst decision you've ever made. Don't miss the recognition revolution coming up soon, so don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. This is The Frictionless Workshop Podcast, produced by podcast done for you. Online all details in the show notes.