AUTOCARE: Industry hunt for top talent

AUTOCARE aimed to address a key automotive industry issue at this year’s show, tackling the technician shortage head on with fresh data and recommendations from leaders across the automotive world.

Fifth Quadrant director, Ben Selwyn, shared alarming findings from a recent study, with 50 per cent of workshops losing a technician in the last year -- averaged across experience level from apprentice to master technician.

“Just talking to the scale of the problem we have…roughly we’re talking about being short one technician for every workshop in the country,” said Mr Selwyn.

“That’s more than 25,000 techs that we need as of today.”

In their study, Fifth Quadrant spoke to 150 workshops to assess the skilled labour shortage and find practical solutions moving forward.

“What most of them have is what they call master techs, with five plus years of experience,” he said.

“What we see less of and, again, it raises that question of the pipeline, is the junior qualified techs -- it’s harder and harder to find them as well as apprentices.

“One in two workshops we spoke to have lost technicians in the past 12 months, people are moving around, and people are leaving. One in four have also lost a more junior qualified tech and half the workshops who employ apprentices have lost one.”

The study also looked at the annual pay for apprentices and qualified technicians with the average qualified mechanic making $69,900, putting them below other popular trades like plumbers ($74,500) and electricians ($89,500).

“When it comes to the automotive technicians, it’s not just about the pay, there’s a lot of other benefits they can get within a workshop environment that can have a lot of value,” said Mr Selwyn.

“One of the points that came through most strongly in the research was the flexibility piece.

“The other one that we hadn’t actually thought of but came out really strongly, was the ability to basically buy through the workshop. So, getting parts at cost, being able to use the workshop resources.

“These are people that enjoy working on vehicles, they’re doing that at work, a lot of them are doing that outside of work as well.

“Money is one side of it, but there are a lot of other elements that are really important as well and that we need to be considering and that need to be part of the conversation.”

Fifth Quadrant also surveyed about 600 apprentices to find out what their experience was like, the challenges they faced, and what could be done to improve their time in the trade.

“It’s not just about today, though, it’s about the future and that brings us to apprentices,” he continued.

“And again, one in five workshops told us that if they could find apprentices, if they could get them, they would bring them onboard. And again, they’re looking for more than one.”

Young gun mechanic, Gabrielle Clift, who has the dream gig – working for Triple 8 Race Engineering – suggests attracting apprentices is less about offering more money and more about finding out what inspires the future leaders of this industry.

“For me personally, or in general actually, find out what motivates them,” said Ms Clift.

"Some of us are driven by experiences, for knowledge and training and things like that.

“For example, with Triple 8, I’d never left the country before this year and I’ve now left three times, and I’ll leave for Japan on Monday.

“Giving them the experiences to come to these trade shows, to go to training sessions, and definitely expand their minds and expand their knowledge – find what interests them and what's motivating them.”