By Chelsea Stebner
The severity of the labour shortage facing the collision industry must not be understated. As long as we—as an industry—continue to struggle to engage and excite the next generation of collision repairers, the situation won’t just remain ongoing, it will become far more severe.
We have many obstacles in our way. Among them, we must convince children—and their parents— that a trades and apprenticeship education in collision repair can lead to a viable career path.
To do that, we have to make it clear that the industry has modernized. While we all know that the image of the dirty, mess-filled backyard shops is from a bygone era, breaking down such ingrained ideas about the industry is difficult.
Doing so is an uphill battle—but it is one we can win because the industry has so much to offer its recruits.
Today’s repairers are highly skilled. Industry professionals are required to perform highly technical frame measurements and repairs, diagnostics, calibrations, and safety, not to mention all the mixed metals, welding training and specialized refinish techniques. Even colour match experts require advanced training in computers.
So how do we encourage and promote this industry? Our approach is to get them while they are still wet behind their ears!
This spring, we hosted one of our most enthusiastic shop tour and demonstrations ever! The crew? A group of comprised of grades 5 and 6 students from a neighborhood school. Their current curriculum focuses on learning about business as well as the simple machine laws of motion and movement and their progressive teacher suggested a field trip to a local business—our bodyshop.
The kids came armed with questions (many, many questions)—lots of which were very thought out, and some that were downright interesting.
We had the opportunity to share a lot of aspects of our business with the class—from performing test welds, to spraying colour on panels and restraints and airbags. We even had the chance to discuss the more entrepreneurial aspects of the business. In fact, many students were particularly intrigued by the business side of collision repairing.
The class was, however, most excited by a presentation on the history of restraints and airbags in automobiles delivered by one of our valued technicians. He took the time to talk to the kids about Ralph Nader, the author of Unsafe at Any Speed, the 1965 best-seller that is often credited with shaking up the auto industry, leading to huge advances in automotive safety. Best of all, the students also got to see what an airbag looks like and how it acts when it explodes.
In my mind, serving as a host of the field trip was a win-win for everyone.
For one thing—it was great for our team. They got to showcase their talents, and even get the chance to develop their own public relation skills.
The collision repair field is one filled with uniquely talented individuals. If we got just one young person to think about building a career in the industry, it was well worth it.
Even if we didn’t sow the seeds of one of the next generation of repairers, we did we engage the kids and give them a small taste of what the modern era of collision repair really looks like. We sent them home armed with information to share with their parents about our shop—and that is an investment into our business and our community.
