Effective training, employee empowerment and better customer service are just some of the benefits.

There’s no question that two of the biggest issues facing the collision repair industry are staffing and training. For repair shops, finding the right people is essential to ensure the success of the business, and training them properly is critical to its long-term profitability and viability.

Given how quickly the industry is changing and the skills required to properly repair vehicles, a key consideration is the way in which staff are trained.

Not effective

For decades, the general approach was to hire an apprentice and then put the most senior technician in the shop in charge of that apprentice. The trouble was that often, the apprentice would spend many months, or even a year, doing only the lowest skilled work for the technician, which helped the technician make more money, but resulted in the apprentice learning very little. Often, the outcome was that the apprentice left and went somewhere else, putting the shop back in exactly the same position it was before they hired said apprentice.

Today, this approach simply isn’t practical. Firstly, young people entering the trade today expect to be engaged, constantly learning and feeling like they are a productive part of a team. Secondly, the pressure to get vehicles repaired quickly, coupled with the personnel shortage we are experiencing, means that a shop simply can’t afford to have an apprentice be held in a low skill position for that long, since it only exacerbates the shortage situation.

This is why we’ve seen a much stronger emphasis on “mentorship” programs in collision centres. Developing a mentorship program is a more effective method to train apprentices today.

More structured

A mentorship program provides a more structured and organized way of offering guidance, support and knowledge transfer to novice or less experienced individuals by pairing them with a mentor (experienced individuals).

Mentorships offer multiple benefits. Firstly, they identify the people within your business that need to gain new knowledge and skills. Secondly, they identify the best mentor for that person—someone with the correct amount of expertise, experience and patience to help the apprentice/employee gain those skills and knowledge—and thirdly, they help those apprentices/employees identify the next step for advancing their role or career.

There are some things to consider, however. A mentorship program does not necessarily mean pairing an apprentice with the most tenured technician in your shop—even though this may be practical at times or is perhaps your only solution based on your shop’s size and staffing. The best mentor often only has three to five years more experience than the mentee. Also, mentorship is not exclusive to apprentices and can be implemented at any stage in an individual’s career, and the best person to do the mentoring could even be younger than the mentee, if they have the required expertise, knowledge and appropriate attitude.

Active listener, good communicator

A good mentor must be committed and available, be an active listener, a good communicator and able to give feedback, along with constructive suggestions for improvement.

A successful mentorship program could go through many phases with multiple mentors assigned to an apprentice over time, each with a specific set of skills and knowledge to transfer. Each phase should have a pre-determined time limit and desired outcomes, and may be as short as a few months, or even as long as a year for more challenging skills.

A mentorship program should run concurrently with a training program from sources such as I-CAR Canada. This can enhance the skills development offered by the mentor and help lay a foundation for the employee’s future roles.

The structured format of a mentorship program helps to foster a smoother and faster integration of the employee into the shop, making them feel more confident in their roles and allow them to learn new skills more quickly, which will contribute to safe and proper automotive repairs. This, in turn will have a positive effect on cycle time, customer satisfaction, and employee retention.