5 Proven Ways To Keep Your Team Motivated After Hail Season

Statistically speaking, this time of year is when hail season is coming to an end, and your team is heading home. From Texas to Colorado to even as far as Oklahoma, it can be tough to transition from the nomadic lifestyle of a hail chaser to a parent taking their kid to a game on Saturday. Even if it was a successful hail season, your team might need some motivation to keep them going before they’re back on the road in a few weeks or months. They may be back at home, with their loved ones, and in the comfort of their bed. But if they aren’t motivated to keep moving forward chasing their career goals, with or without hail, how can you provide that motivation? After all, Psychology Today defines motivation as “the desire to act and move toward a goal.” 

We researched 5 of the simplest proven ways to keep your team motivated after hail season. Check them out below: 

1. Provide opportunities to improve skills – Just because they aren’t on the road, doesn’t mean they can stop working and improving their skills. Your team can each learn something from one another, as each one has a unique background that got them to be a hail chaser. Perhaps have a “skillshare session,” where a team member can present a unique skill to the entire team. It’s essential to encourage your team to keep working on their skills even when they aren’t out on the road. What better way than to keep the group together when doing so? If your teams are remote, you can host an online video call to bring them together. Perhaps they can also pick up PDR jobs at various SMART repair shops or dealerships. This can also be a great networking opportunity for them.

1. Encourage happiness – Positivity is contagious, and so is unhappiness. Uplift your team by highlighting their accomplishments, having a successful hail season, noteworthy repairs, how various effective technologies were (like ReconPro, HailTrace, or MTRX). Even if it wasn’t the best hail season for everyone, always look for the silver lining and find at least one positive to accentuate. Perhaps it was someone’s first hail season, so the experience alone is something to commemorate. 

1. Work/life balance – Now that hail season is over, your team will have to return to their lives back at home. But going from a life on the road to Wednesday evening soccer practice can be a tough adjustment. Let your team know the importance of a work/life balance and that they chased hail specifically to have a better life [for themselves or their family]. 

1. Lead By Example – The actions and attitude of anyone in a leadership position (which could be you) will always affect your team. There’s no use to be telling someone what they “could have” or “should have” done differently, if only they “would have” done something else. This will make them feel unmotivated with no desire to do anything about it if you’re not making any improvements yourself. Constructive criticism is one thing, but follow it up by improving your methods as well. After all, the teacher was once the student and will always be learning. 

1. Understand it’s not going to happen right away – There’s a reason why people say, “happiness is an inside job.” Your team needs to be able to work on themselves from the inside out for motivation when they aren’t constantly working on PDR jobs from one location to the next. If they need to take a personal day, then that’s okay. You might need to sit down and have one-on-one meetings with your techs to ask about their hail season experience, what motivates them, and how are they feeling. Give them space and the chance they need to change their attitude. Be the support and voice of guidance they might need, even if it’s just catching up over drinks after work to see how their day was. The SMART repair industry is full of exciting ways to perform car repair, so their experience as a hail chaser alone will definitely help them on their path to success. 

There you have it, the five simplest proven ways to keep your team motivated after hail season. Even just implementing one of these methods will boost your team spirit. Give them a try today and see how your team stays motivated long after hail season is over.