Recently I had the opportunity to participate in an online web discussion sponsored by Advanstar in which our moderator Motor Age Technical Editor Pete Meier posed several questions to a group of stakeholders regarding future auto repair employees.
As a repair shop owner and board member of the Automotive Service Association I represented the employers. We had teachers and members of a group that help support the seeding and growth of young talent. As you know there are a lot of doom and gloom predictions about the likelihood of auto repair attracting talent in the future.
While I share the concern, I think that there is still plenty of time for all the forces present in our industry to combine efforts to change our approach to attracting our next superstars. One of the things that became obvious during the discussion was the level of agreement on what the problems are and what the best solutions are. I encourage you to watch and listen to the discussion that is archived here.
During our discussion there was a theme that emerged that I want to focus on here; is there a technician shortage?
While it is certain that there are fewer people choosing to repair cars it is important to keep in mind that the number of repairs is fairly steady. While there are more vehicles on the road most of them require less service and wider maintenance intervals. Anecdotally this means that there are about the same number of repairs but there is a growing shift in the types of repairs and that is where the real problem lies.
Fluid maintenance has been a long-term win/win for both repair shops and vehicle owners and as a result it will continue to be a staple of the auto repair industry. These services have become more difficult often involving the use of scan tools to perform properly. In the world of commoditized oil changes and transmission fluid services I see this shifting more of this work to shops that are equipped with diagnostic equipment. With the shift in educational requirements that students will see in the next few years I have no concerns that our entry level techs will have a handle on this work as they enter the work force.
The real challenge is going to come from the types of repairs that are going to become more prevalent and to illustrate that point I will give you one word that does not currently exist in the auto technician vocabulary: telemetry. For many years automakers have been employing systems with all kinds of names that provide onboard computers with the ability to sense the direction, velocity, and attitude of the vehicle.
From ABS systems that utilize multiple telemetry inputs to keep the car going where it is aimed in a panic situation to dashboard displays or ‘center stacks’ that offer directions to the best restaurants or off ramps these systems are dominating the body controls of new vehicles. You only have to look at a consumer magazine to see that these are make or break systems for most models of cars. No longer are consumers focusing on does the thing leak oil or have a clunky transmission.
Vehicles are being sold and purchased based upon how well they integrate into our electronic lives. I think we will see millennial customers walking into our shops more concerned about their misbehaving center stack than the tires that are corded underneath them.
It is going to take a different approach to these vehicles and certainly the education of the folks who are going to repair them going forward. Vocational programs spend a considerable amount of the time with students teaching safety, personal skills and systems. These advanced skills are going to either find their techs in other programs and/or from in service training programs. This has been a tough pill for many educators to swallow. The truth is something has to give in the limited number of hours that we can spend developing talent before we set them free to get repetition and real world experience under their belt.
Do we have a technician shortage? My take is we have a shortage of folks with the right skills in the areas that are most in demand. It falls upon all of us to work together to create opportunity for our current techs to adjust their skill sets and migrate toward filling the void.
Subscribe to Aftermarket Business World and receive articles like this every month….absolutely free. Click here.
