A few months ago, I had the awesome opportunity to travel to Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Outside of the city hub is the community of Thornleigh, home to our Motor Age Training CONNECT partner, AutoMate.
One of the purposes of the trip was to film some video introducing Motor Age to their existing Australian subscribers and to introduce AutoMate to you, our faithful readers. Along the way, I had the opportunity to meet Aussie shop owners, technicians, educators and corporate reps. Invariably, the conversation drifted to the same topics they do here: the growing technician shortage, the challenges of staying current on technology and systems the OEMs are developing, the availability of training (of any kind) and other challenges faced by those in the automotive repair aftermarket.
I found that we have way more in common than I thought.
Keeping up in the U.S.
While I was halfway around the world, U.S.-based technicians were gathered for the annual VISION training conference, held in Overland Park, Kansas. VISION is one of many aftermarket training opportunities offered around the states. Others include A.T.E. (Automotive Training Expo) in Seattle, the TST “Big Event” in Tarrytown, New York and, of course, NACE Automechanika, to be held this year in Atlanta, Aug. 8-10. In addition to these major training events, corporate training departments like CarQuest Technical Institute, WORLDPAC, NAPA, Federal-Mogul and so many others are making training available to the aftermarket in dedicated training facilities or are “on the road” in local communities. And for those who can’t make it to a “live” event for whatever reason, there are web-based training opportunities held by several reputable organizations, including ours.
In short, there is training available if you want to learn. The problem here in the states is an overall apathy among techs regarding training. Many seem to think they can continue to get by on skills learned years ago, and have – to some degree. But if your repair or service process results in a premature system or component failure, how do you know? If your repair simply failed, how do you know? The customer doesn’t always come back to complain; they just seek another repair shop.
Sometimes, it’s because a tech doesn’t know what he or she doesn’t know. Unfortunately, in a few cases, it’s more a matter of “I don’t care what I don’t know.”
Recently, a noted corporate training manager and I were talking about this very topic when the light bulb went off. It’s not the fault of the techs alone, shop owners play a huge role in creating this culture of apathy. I’ve heard so many times that “my boss won’t give me the time off” or “won’t pay for the training” or any of 100 other comments just like these.
The attendees who turned out for Automechanika in 2015 and again in 2017 were, overall, techs who had never attended any kind of training event in their lives but could then because we made it affordable. And more importantly, they were “hungry” to learn – engaging their instructors, offering their own experiences and asking probing questions. It proved to me and a few others what I had felt from the start – that the majority of technicians in this country want to learn, want to grow and want to make a better life for themselves and their families. But many lack the resources or the knowledge of how to do this. That’s where the boss comes in — a lesson reinforced by one of the Aussie shop owners I met with.
Keeping up in Australia
David Proglio is the owner of McGrath Hills Automotive, a European specialty shop not far from the AutoMate studios. I asked David what his thoughts were on training as a shop owner and as a technician. He absolutely believed in the need to stay trained and to continue his and his team’s technical education. But he also shared that live training events were few and far between there, and many of those that were offered were more “infomercial” than “informational.” He relies on internet services to provide him with the resources he and his two line technicians (“tradesmen” in Australia) need to stay current. I was pleased to hear he and his team enjoyed our webinars and Trainer videos and that he is a participating member of iATN, the International Automotive Technicians Network.
An additional training resource he has been using for a long time is AutoMate. He is a long-time subscriber to the AutoMate platform we now offer as Motor Age Training CONNECT to U.S. professionals. David and his crew watch a video over lunch every week or two, and find them a perfect supplement to their training regimen. Most importantly, David has made continuing education an integral part of his business model. Continuing education is mandatory and routine, not a burden or unnecessary expense. In fact, David shares his strong belief that failure to continually grow your people will eventually cause you to lose them to a competitor who will.
Shop owners – you listening to this?
When you encourage and support the continuing education of your staff, you’re not losing money – you’re making money. How much would be added to your bottom line by reducing comebacks? Or improving the efficiency of your team? How much does it cost you to acclimate a new hire?
Which leads me to another important similarity you and David share – the challenge to bring in new talent.
The global shortage
Finding talented new technicians is a challenge that is global in nature. Tell the Australian government you’re an automotive mechanic and watch your visa process speed right along. The country is literally importing technicians from around the world. And they are competing with you and every other country in the world for that talent.
But the way Australian shops attempt to fill the void is vastly different from most U.S. shop owners. In Australia, there is still an apprentice program (of sorts) that must be completed before an individual is certified as a “tradesman” and licensed to work on cars. The process takes about four years to complete. In the past, apprentices were actually “indentured” to the shop owner for that four-year period, under contract to stay with that shop for the duration. The apprentice would work under the guidance of the shop owner or a designated tradesman four days a week and attend an automotive trade school program one day a week. The shop owner paid his apprentice a wage and covered some of the school expenses while the government paid the rest. The system is still similar today, but the contract is not quite as binding and there is more of a partnership between the shop owner, the school and the government.
In the U.S., we have a significantly greater number of automotive programs (even on a per capita basis) than Australia does. The closest program to David is nearly 45 minutes, while nearly every public school district offers some kind of trade program in the states. David had never heard of an industry advisory council but admits he would gladly participate if one were established. Here, each public school program has an advisory council, but they can’t find enough interested shop owners to fill them.
Shop owners – are you listening?
Automotive apprentices in Australia learn by hands-on guidance from their tradesmen mentors and fill in the gaps with classroom hours. Here, we put students through two years of post-secondary classroom/lab training but provide very little practical experience while they are in school. The result is students who have lost much of what they’ve learned because they have had no real-life experiences to drive the knowledge home. Some shop owners get it, and they mentor their new charges as carefully as their Aussie counterparts. Most, I’m afraid, don’t and treat new graduates in one of two ways: either expecting them to know it all right out of the gate or making them shop gophers, charged with cleaning toilets and taking out trash. It’s a top reason many young techs cite for leaving our industry for more lucrative opportunities, of which there are plenty.
Fortunate to be an American (shop)
I can’t close out this month’s column without sharing one other key element that I learned while traveling. Here, we take for granted our access to OEM service information and tooling. That’s a luxury David and his Australian counterparts don’t share. They can’t access OEM service information; they can’t access or perform reflashes. They can only access a few of the OEM scan tools we can and should a customer vehicle require such service, the closest dealer is often miles away. The fight is on to get an Australian version of “Right to Repair,” but it appears that is still a long way off.
Overall, though, the similarities between ourselves and our Australian cousins outweigh the differences. They are driven by the same love of cars, the same love of the diagnostic challenge, the same desire to learn and grow and the same desire to earn an honest living. And they are struggling to overcome the same challenges we are. Isn’t it time to recognize that these issues are not just an American or Australian problem, but issues challenging the global automotive repair community?
