How to Hire and Keep Good Technicians

Finding and keeping skilled technicians is the single biggest operational challenge facing workshop owners today. The industry-wide shortage means candidates have choices — and the workshops winning the hiring battle aren’t just offering higher wages. They’re offering something better to work for.

What You’re Actually Competing For

Technicians today have options: independent workshops, dealerships, fleet operators, even leaving the trade altogether. The pay gap between independents and dealerships has narrowed significantly, which means wages alone won’t win the war for talent.

What makes the difference is culture, hours, management quality, and the environment people work in every day. Word travels fast in the trade. Your reputation as an employer is already preceding you — the question is whether it’s working for you or against you.

What to Look For Beyond Technical Skills

A common hiring mistake is filtering purely on trade qualifications. Technical skills matter, but attitude is harder to teach. When interviewing candidates, pay attention to how they talk about previous employers — people who blame everyone else tend to bring that pattern with them.

Look for reliability signals early: did they show up on time, call ahead when they were running late, respond to messages promptly? Ask how they handle a comeback — a candidate who takes ownership and explains what they’d do differently is telling you something important about their character.

Team fit matters too. A technically brilliant technician who creates friction in your workshop costs you more than they contribute. Reference checks aren’t optional — call previous employers, not just the ones listed.

Making Your Workshop Somewhere People Want to Work

A clean, organised workshop signals that management cares. Modern tools and software show that you invest in your people. Consistent hours — minimal surprise overtime — means technicians can build a life outside of work.

A clear pay structure with a visible path forward matters more than you might think. People stay when they can see where they’re going. If the only pay rise on offer is to ask for it, your best people will eventually ask somewhere else.

Genuine recognition goes a long way too. Not elaborate performance programmes — just noticing when someone does good work and saying so.

Onboarding: The 90 Days That Determine Whether They Stay

Most small workshops have no formal onboarding process. A new technician turns up on day one, gets shown the bays and the coffee machine, and is expected to figure out the rest. This is how you lose good people in the first month.

Structure the first 90 days. Pair a new hire with your most capable technician for the first few weeks. Set clear expectations from day one — in writing. Schedule brief check-ins at two weeks, four weeks, and eight weeks. Ask what’s working and what isn’t, then actually act on the answers.

The cost of re-hiring after an early departure — lost productivity, advertising, interview time, another 90-day ramp-up — far exceeds the cost of a proper onboarding process.

Keeping Them Once You Have Them

Retention is mostly about avoiding the reasons people leave: feeling undervalued, no path forward, a poor relationship with management, being paid below market without realising there was a market.

Annual pay reviews — proactive, not reactive — signal that you’re watching and you care. Losing a skilled technician costs the equivalent of three to six months of their salary when you factor in lost productivity and recruitment. A modest annual pay rise is not an expense; it’s an investment with a clear return.

Fix problems before people quit. Most resignations don’t come out of nowhere — there are signals weeks or months earlier. Regular 1-on-1 conversations create the space to surface problems while they’re still solvable.

3 Things You Can Do This Week

• Write down your current pay structure — if it’s not documented, it can’t be explained, compared, or improved.
• Ask your newest team member what their first month was genuinely like.
• Identify your highest-performing technician and have a conversation about what would make them want to stay long-term.

Use the Workshop Health Score to benchmark how your workshop performs across people, processes, and profitability.