AutoRaise seeks skills shortage overview
AutoRaise, supported by the NBRA, is reaching out to all vehicle repairers to build the sector’s first ever ‘big picture’ of the skills crisis and are recruiting data partners to assist with capturing this vital information across the UK.
This massive issue continues to impact in every corner of the sector. Capacity, technology, business viability, succession planning, future proofing… all of these come in to focus when considering how vehicles are going to be repaired safely in the future and critically, and who is going to carry out those repairs.
Everyone is agreed that the only sustainable way to solve the issue is to bring young people into our industry and train them to repair. There is no other real solution.
Yet still there is no central data that exists to understand where the whole of the industry is in relation to the appetite and capacity of training new technicians. No single entity has engagement with every vehicle repairer and every training provider to capture the ‘big picture’. Without this, the industry will never understand how big the issue is and what needs to be implemented to plan for the future.
AutoRaise, the NBRA and a number of the industry’s key stakeholders, will take responsibility for addressing this by going out to the industry and gather the skills data needed to understand where we are as an industry and what the task ahead really looks like.
Bob Linwood, AutoRaise CEO, said, ‘The crux of the task in front of us is fairly easily explained but a real challenge to expedite. We are looking for our data partners field-based teams to sit with every repairer in the UK and capture some specific information about where they are with their current workforce and what future resource thy will need, including apprentices, to continue trading in the future. I don’t think it’s sustainable for the industry to carrying on walking blindly forward without understanding the exact scale of the issue; how many technicians we have available, how many we are going to need to sustain the industry and then how and where they are going to be trained.’
Chris Weeks, director at the NBRA, added, ‘It really is critical to not only understand the immediate requirement, but to also forecast the need for newly trained technicians in the coming years as our existing workforce moves into other roles or retirement. NBRA will give this challenge it’s full support so the size of the problem can be gauged and the appropriate solutions sourced.’
If any business in the industry wishes to support The BIG Data Campaign, then please get in touch with Bob at [email protected]
