Each year the Whites display their dedication to the personal development of their 44 employees with an all-expense-paid trip to the Alliance of Automotive Service Providers of Missouri's (AASP-MO) EXCEL Trade Show and Conference.  This year the event is scheduled for Oct. 24-26 in the Lake of the Ozarks.

The Whites said they invite employees from each of their three shops in the St. Louis area, along with their spouses and children, to attend EXCEL each year, encouraging them to mix business with pleasure.  The combination of technical and management classes help White Auto Body employees fulfill the minimum requirement of 20 hours of training to remain employed, they said.

"I want to separate my shops from others and stay on top of things," Steve White said.  "Training doesn't cost, it pays."  Many shop owners fear that they'll make an investment in an employee, who'll eventually leave to seek other work.

"What would be worse, training someone and they leave or not training them and they stay?" White asked. Vehicle technology is changing so rapidly that it is becoming increasingly difficult to know proper repair procedures for everything, he said, adding that the more they know, the better.

At EXCEL, the technicians primarily attend I-CAR classes.  This year, there are five including, Customer Relations and Collision Repair; Steel-unitized Structures, Technologies, and Repair; Steel Full-frame Technologies and Repair; Collision Repair Overview for Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep; and Electric & Electric Hybrid Vehicles.

During the three-day event, the Whites said they pay for overnight accommodations, course registration fees, a dinner on Saturday night, and $150 stipend for each employee for the weekend.

Gathering at the EXCEL show also gives employees from the three stores in O'Fallon, Florissant, and Hardin, Ill., the opportunity to network and mingle, Steve White said, adding that they rarely get to see each other.

Although it's difficult to put an immediate return on the training investment in dollars and cents, White said employees are much happier and productive.  "Well-trained people are much more productive, which leads to a higher-quality product," he said.  A better repair eventually leads to more business and higher customer service index (CSI) scores, he said.

A pivotal training course that the Whites attended one year at EXCEL was taught by Jeff Hendler, whose course "The Game of Work" helped the couple better manage individual employees, Valerie White said, adding that she later hired Hendler to visit the shop and speak with the technicians.

"Not everybody knows the rules, but once known, people play to win if you communicate the objectives," Steve White said.  "Too many times somebody goes to work and doesn't know if they're doing a good job."  If objectives are laid out and rules are established, an employee will, more times than not, work harder to achieve the goal, gaining personal satisfaction in the process, he said.

During the time of Parts & People's visit, the Whites were celebrating the 20-year tenure of Technician Johnny McCarthy, who began working for the Whites in 1988.  The celebration included a catered lunch and the presentation of a diamond watch, inscribed with his name on the back.

"Steve, being a good employer, has helped me stay," McCarthy said.  "I never wanted to be the guy to go from shop to shop."

"You spend more time at work than you do at home when you're not sleeping," White pointed out.  The goal is to get co-workers to get along and make it a family-type atmosphere, he said.

"People stay at a job because they're satisfied with a job," he said.  "Pay is not the main thing they work for."  Training is a big part of the satisfaction, he said.  "How satisfying is it if you're trying to do something and you don't know what you're doing?"

That is especially important for flat-rate technicians, whose pay scale is based on efficiency, White said.  "The more knowledgeable they are, the more money they'll make."

Another employee benefit for White Auto Body employees is profit sharing, the couple said.  "Since the inception of profit sharing, we're put in over $1 million for employees," Steve White said. The vesting period is five years, they added.

A management technique that the Whites said has worked well is separating the departments in each shop, leaving the department heads responsible to each other as their job relates to the business.  The departments are split into four categories: office, sales, parts, and production.

Before adopting this system in 1994, when Steve White had only one shop, he said he was pulling his hair out trying to do everything.  "I was a bodyman, not a businessman.  So I hired a consulting company, George May Co. I learned to delegate and track performance, not actions."