By : Pierre Desmarchais

The lack of succession has been a very popular subject in recent years. Usually the first questions I ask are: 

• What is the basis for knowing if there is a real shortage of staff? 

• What types of work will this person be required to perform? 

• What level of skill would be required to accomplish this task? 

Are there really staff shortages? 

What we should know first is whether every hour worked by the team of technicians is being billed. Based on the overall average accumulated by GURU, the industry struggles to charge 60% of the available time. So 40%, the equivalent of 16 hours per tech per week, never gets billed. If we continue our reflection, according to CPAs, a tech works 2,000 hours per year X 40% = 800 hours so 800 hours per tech per year never ends up on an invoice. 

If we extrapolate:  

800 hrs ÷ 40 hrs/week = 20 weeks 

20 weeks ÷ 4.5 weeks/month = 4.44 months/year 

It’s the equivalent of saying that the team is going 

 4.5 months per year without working and/or invoicing  

So this calculation changes the game and the question becomes: is this poor schedule management and/or a bad mix of talent on the team? 

I agree that it’s always easier to blame the shop than the counter, but in reality, it’s the culture of the whole company that is driving this issue.  

Remember from my previous article  

Everything that goes on a car, goes on an invoice, 

Labour too!!     

Put unscientifically but very simply, if you bill more than 80% of the time all your techs are present and your appointment schedule is full for the next 10 days on a regular basis, you probably need another tech. 

Just something to think about…