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If you were in charge of a fleet that operated its own a workshop and, after a detailed exercise into utilisation, you found that four out of your 10 technicians were idle at any one time, what would you do?
This was the position in which a US customer of ours recently found themselves. If you'd have asked me that question, like many people reading this, I'd have given you the obvious answer - I'd have made those four redundant, a painful exercise but one that would've saved, in this case, around £130,000.
But the fleet in question did something very different. They were keen to retain the full range of skills that were available within their workshop and decided to open their doors to external fleet customers. A brave move, I'm sure you will agree. However, within a relatively short space of time, they had managed to attract sufficient business to drive utilisation up to 90%, generating an additional £285,000 in revenue and making a net gain over the redundancy plan of £155,000.
I believe there is food for thought here. In the US and the UK especially, we do tend to have a headcount reduction mind set. If we can cut overheads by losing a few people, we will do so with a heavy heart but probably little hesitation. However, sometimes the right thing to do is take a look at the skills of the workers under threat and work out whether we can do something new with them. It won't always be possible, of course, but sometimes good managers can identify exciting possibilities.
By Ashley Sowerby, Chevin Fleet managing director
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