Don Shilling and Ron focus on employee development and working with Technical Schools to "grow your own" technicians.

Yes, I have a backyard full of blossoming. trees, and they're at their peak right now. And by next week, all those blossoms will fall off.

Yep, that's right.

Well, I think you really have to go back to how I started my career in the industry, which I started in the service department, working part-time in service while I finished college. just kind of got in my blood so that by the time that I moved on from after graduation from college and into sales and management, I still had that seed in me that said, you know, there's a lot that goes on in the shop and this is where we need to kind of pay attention and help our customers and actually drill. into some customer loyalty because of the fact that you have a service department that can take care of the needs of the customer and understand that. And so as I continue to work my way up through management chain and ownership at General Equipment, to me it became one of the elements that was missing. How do we get a technician? How do we attract them? How do we keep them?

And so I actually got an invite from the technical college to be on their advisory board in the, must have been about early 90s sometime,92,93, something like that. And I said, yeah, I'd be more than happy to sit on the advisory board. And I went to the first meeting and I had this idea that you know, I'm going to change the world. I got all these things that I want to get them to do that will help me. And it was kind of funny because I learned a lot during that first meeting and all the things that I threw out on the table and said, you know, we need to do this, that, or the other thing a little differently. By the time we had the next annual meeting, they had made those changes. And so it kind of was like, okay, this is something I can work with. These guys are willing and able to learn and trying to understand what they can do to be better at what they do. And so it kind of went from there, kind of grew from there.

And we eventually, we always had a relationship with that college. And eventually now we have a dedicated Komatsu technician program there that we started in. 2013. And right now we're graduating eight. Actually, on Friday, we graduated eight technicians that are going to come to work for us after they graduate. And we've graduated approximately eight technicians every year since 2014.

We have about, I suppose, right around 100. Pretty close to the end

Yeah. The funny thing about it is that we've also used the program as, you might say, to grow our own. So we have the technician that goes through the program. He's the right guy to begin with because we've interviewed him. He's worked for us for... in the off school times for two years by the time he graduates. And so the retention thing is a really important element for us where the technician, after he graduates, works for us, works his way up the ladder, maybe to a lead man, shop foreman, that kind of thing. We continue to promote from within. And so all the other guys can see that as well. And they realize that, oh, well, I started as a diesel technician, but now I'm a product support sales representative or whatever, because I always wanted to get into sales. So they've got that element kind of similar to what I had. They had that background in the service department, but now they're doing something else within the company.

Yes.

we're trying. The parts program that used to be available at that technical college, which is North Dakota State College of Science, was phased out a number of years ago. And really, it was mostly a John Deere program. So it was mostly John Deere Ag parts people that were being trained there. It really doesn't matter, but the fact of the matter is they were doing like everybody else. They were finding them other places, stealing from other dealers, whatever. So we started an apprenticeship, parts apprenticeship program. That's been roughly 2016,17 when we started. And we haven't gotten too many guys through it yet. I have a full-time recruiter that recruits for, positions at the technical school. And she also kind of recruits for the apprenticeship program, but it's kind of a different person. We haven't connected with a pool of people yet.

But I would like to do the same thing because what we've built into our apprenticeship program is there's quite a number of classes that they have to take that's connected to the college. Some introductions to diesel, to electrical, to powertrains, that kind of thing. They get a flavor for what a technician goes through. Then they learn things about marketing and management on the soft side. And basically, and then work within the dealership 1,500 hours a year. hands-on and they kind of whatever they're studying in their online classes or in their classes, they're learning that also when they're on the floor working side-by-side with a mentor. So I think if we can get enough people through that program, I think we can enjoy the same success that we're having with the diesel program. to be able to promote from within and find people that want to make a career of this. And I think that's kind of the important word is career.

Because the parts people that we've hired, we tend to hire from a Napa store or something like that. They kind of have got a sense for what they want to do. But they want to do something more interesting rather than just pull fan belts off the wall and make sure they're the right size for the customer.

Right. It does. And, you know, for a lot of our guys, you know, they like the consistency of coming to work regular hours. They work in an indoor environment for the most part. Occasionally they're outside with a forklift unloading a truck or something. They're provided uniforms. And so there's things like that that are better than if they were working construction or, you know, working in the field somewhere. Typically the kind of person that didn't want to go to college, couldn't find anything in the tech school that they wanted to be involved in. And so now apprenticeship program kind of makes sense.

Well, I definitely believe that training has to be ongoing. There's no question about it. And even for our parts people, they are trained. There is some training available for them, whether it be factory training or in-house. Every year, we try to do something to improve that. But I really think that when you take somebody that perhaps graduated high school, didn't find what they wanted in a tech school, they went to work and kind of work their way up within a parts department, there's a lot of things that they need to learn. basic marketing, basic customer service skills, inventory control things, that kind of thing. So it's a huge deal. And I guess that's why with our apprenticeship program, we're trying to introduce them to some of those elements so that they grasp it and continue to learn it. Because where's my next inventory control manager going to come from?

It would be nice, you know, before we'd probably go hire some guy out of college that had some statistical background, but it really needs to be a guy that understands the industry and knows that, you know, when you're replacing a cylinder and an engine, you're not replacing one, so you have to have a complete kit if you're going to do an overhaul, et cetera, et cetera. You need that industry knowledge. in order to, along with the training, to grasp what's going on.

Well, we've had our annual performance reviews. Actually, we do it more than annually. I think we actually do it every six months. And that's probably been ongoing for, boy. 15 years, I suppose, or more. We probably made an attempt at it before that. Didn't get, weren't very good at it and had a lot of paperwork that didn't mean a lot. I think we've, we've gotten a lot better with it. And our people that help are, we usually use an HR person to assist the manager. The manager needs to be doing the performance evaluation of the, of his direct report.

No.

No. You know what? We have to know how to compliment people better. And we always try to work at that. But we also need to ask the question and then listen. You know, what is it that you would like to learn? Where would you like to be in the next three years? What's missing from your resume that you'd like to see an improvement on? And, you know, you have a handful of people that will just kind of. shrug their shoulders and not answer that question very well. But you can really tell when you've got an employee that's engaged and he's going to tell you right out where he'd like to be, what he'd like to do, where he thinks he needs training, what he's interested in. We also instituted a thing a number of years ago where we provided training for things that were non-job related. So if you wanted to take photography class or something like that.

And we'd pay the tuition, let you take the class, whether it be online or, or night school or whatever, so that you can learn something else that interests you. And I think that's important.

It's nuts.

You know, I, unfortunately it probably does to a certain degree. And I think we're always kind of watching for that within our organization. because we don't want somebody that's brain dead. And so I think our managers use that evaluation tool to find out what this person is really like and what he'd like to learn and what he's not learning and challenge him, say, this is by the time we do our next evaluation, here's the next couple of things I like. to see you do. And if they, if they're not interested in doing that, they're probably not going to have a very long tenure here.

think, you know, in a, in a, our state is historically for the last, you know,15,20 years has been so low on unemployment rate. It's hard to get people. So once you get somebody, you know, I think the, The theory is that, well, we better hang on to them. But our theory has been more that that person could be dragging down other workers that work right alongside of him if they're not fully engaged. And so we want all the employees to be on this similar level with customer engagement and doing their job performances the way that they need to do it. And if they don't want to stay, then we're both better off by having to move on.

That's right. Yeah, I think like the local chamber of commerce, they always list, you know, the top 100 businesses that people want to work at here or whatever. And it's nice to be on the list, but I think it's also nice that people debt and they understand as they read through something like that, that they look at ABC company down the street and by golly, they're doing exactly the same thing that we're doing here. But we didn't get on the list for whatever reason. And lots of times it's just nobody sent enough, you know, information in or whatever. But the reality of it is we want I don't want to just say family, but it has to be somewhat kind of like family oriented. You have to enjoy coming to work. You have to be engaged in what you're doing. You want to learn while you're here. You want to take empathy with people that have things going on in their life and try to help them.

And, you know, those are the kind of qualities that we continue to look for. And it kind of becomes reflective of how. The customer senses it, too, when our customer walks in the door and realizes that there's not a lot of bad feelings going on between people within the receptionist area or the back office or whatever. They don't want to deal with that. They want to know that everybody's on the same team kind of thing.

Right.

That's correct.

And I think it's the kind of thing that people kind of grow into. And so we have people that have been with us for a lot of years. are here for a while and then they leave. And it's because they didn't quite, you know, they didn't quite buy into our, our, our focus and our plans. So, and that's fine. That's good too. You know, that, you know, we have to be able to, to address that and, and get the right people on the team. So.

That's right. Well, one of the things that we've always tried to do, we've been involved for a handful of years now with, with traction management system. And so we're doing, we can't, because of 10 locations spread out through four states and two Canadian provinces, it's hard for us to do quarterly meetings, but we do at least semi-annual meetings, face-to-face management team with each, at each, every branch and going through what our goals were. what our successes were, what our failures were, what we're going to work on, and what our focuses are for the next three to six months. But besides just doing that, I mean, they need to do their small group meetings. They do those about every other week, for sure, at least once a month. And so that they're bringing issues up the pipeline. So management becomes aware of, oh, we have a broken tool in the back and we're not getting it fixed and why are we not doing that?

So they have to know that their input matters.

I agree. But I still, what's funny is you still find people that have that same. desire or drive to satisfy, do a job satisfactorily and know that they're helping out the company and the customer in many cases and feel good after they do that. And those are the kind of individuals that you really want and you want to attract them and you want to keep them.

Yeah, it is.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's no short-term fixes when it comes to, you know, it's hard to go out and hire positions. For us, it's easier to promote from within positions. because we know the person already. We know what their strengths are. And sometimes you remold that position that's open to better fit that person and move some of the responsibilities elsewhere to balance it out. And I think that's the advantage you have versus reading a resume and doing two or three interviews with somebody, hiring them, and then find out. you didn't get exactly what you thought you got.

Well, when we recruit the technician, or the young person to be a technician through the Komatsu program. You know, there's time spent with them as they're finishing high school and as they've come to visit and got to know us. And our recruiter then spends time with them during the next two years and gets to know them pretty well. does lots of Facebook postings and things like that, is connected with the parents, and is always the feeder of information back to the parent of how their child is doing or their young adult is doing as they go through our program. And by the time they graduate, not only do they know us really well, we know them really well, but they've really picked up on the fact that how meaningful that is. And, and, and now their parents are proud of the fact that they're working for us.

And so I'm sure what goes around at the Thanksgiving table later is if the, if that student was making any issue about, well, I think maybe I'm going to look elsewhere for work. I think we're going to have the parents on our side, you know, that's going to say, why? And what are you doing? You know? So what's going on?

Well, I honestly feel that the way our management system is working right now with traction system, if that had been available earlier. If I was wise enough to have found it earlier, I would have moved to that. I attempted it in a number of different ways to kind of communicate better to people, get them involved. They used to call it balance sheet, open balance sheet when you talk to your employees about how the company is doing. And we tried to implement it while we were doing the rest of it. all the other things that we were trying to put, the fires we were trying to put out. So as a manager, I probably failed at that at the first couple of attempts, but getting the employee involved in what our company was doing and how it's doing and how it's succeeding and how they're a part of that success, I think is so critical to the continuation of future success.

Well, I always was the one that I like to ask questions, and I always appreciated somebody that had questions. You know, it's more like when you're done and you say, does anybody have any questions, and it's all silent. I don't like that. I'd rather engage. They were engaged enough that they. have a serious question, and then which spawns another question, which spawns another question. So, yeah, we want everybody to be engaged, and we want everybody to, you know, use common sense, ask a question if it doesn't make sense.

Well, I think we've come to a completely different part of the road here. We're a much different, bigger company than what we were when I started. And so the thing that was important when I started was my presence, you know, being. being there and showing my work ethic. And people will follow that and engage in that. And today, when we've got a number of branches, and like we talked earlier, doing team meetings and stuff like that, it's hard. I mean, now you could be sitting in your living room doing a meeting. What do the people think about that? And how are you showing your work ethic and engaging them to have that same focus and work ethic? And so I think the advice I'd give my young management team now is how do you do that? How do you engage? You need to engage with all of your direct reports and let them know just how hard you're working and how focused you are and how much you're available for them to listen.

if they have an issue or an idea.

I was going to say, if I had a martini before we had that, I could open up and we could do a lot longer.

You're welcome.

Very good. Thank you. Talk to you later.