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Dealership service departments are missing an opportunity to improve efficiency and technicians' morale and retention by disdaining four-day workweeks, some fixed operations directors and consultants say.
Such a schedule gives technicians more days off, during the week and on weekends, at the cost of longer hours per workday and perhaps lower pay. The four-day week isn't a new concept, but research suggests that no more than 3 percent of dealerships have adopted it.
"We've been doing this 10-plus years," says John Dowden, fixed operations director at Westboro Toyota in Westborough, Mass. Nine of the dealership's 25 service department employees work four-day weeks, he adds, and the store is open for service seven days a week.
Dowden says employees who choose a four-day week "love it. A lot of individuals like to have a weekday off, to get tasks accomplished."
Technicians at the dealership periodically get a Friday and a Saturday off. If they time their schedules right, they can stretch five vacation days and their days off into a "nice" annual vacation of almost two weeks, Dowden says.
Bryan Rakestraw, the service manager at Jones Junction Toyota in Bel Air, Md., worked both a four-day and five-day week as a service tech after he joined the dealership in 2001. He says he much preferred the four-day week, since that schedule regularly gave him more days off to spend with his family.
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