Are there benefits to creating a team system within your shop? I suggest that there can be considerable benefit. Teaming technicians with a specific service advisor can increase communication effectiveness, reduce mistakes, and actually increase productivity. Of course, not every shop is a prime candidate for doing this. If you are tempted to team up technicians, considerations include technician skill level, technician experience level, service advisor selling skills, and shop layout. These all become considerations because teaming up technicians must be done in some sort of an equal manner. This is especially important if your pay plans incentivize production, labor sales, revenue, gross profit, or any other metric that is people dependent. If your paycheck depends on your service advisor’s ability to sell work and you get strapped with the worst salesperson on the planet, things aren’t going to go so well! There are usually ways of getting around common skill challenges. Most of the time balancing teams in terms of skill, production, and total sales can help to reduce common causes of dissention. Does the original team always work out? No! Sometimes you misjudge when pairing people up. This is where using and tracking metrics becomes really important. Give the teams enough time to gel, but monitor production, revenue, gross profit and work quality constantly watching for equality amongst the teams. If you just can’t seem to get teams built that have equal skill level, then you may need to consider changing the way employees are paid to help create a fairer system for everyone. Don’t be afraid to experiment – just give things enough time to work before scrapping the idea entirely. Over time teams can also help you discover exactly where you need to grow, where skills need to be improved, and what you are looking for in the next employee you hire. There are many benefits to developing a team system!