New Talent - Bob Linwood

Something’s becoming clear in Kirsty’s conversations. There’s one underlying issue that’s making the perfect storm particularly perfect.

 

People.

 

We’ve heard it from Steve Plunkett, who was quick to identify “a lack of talent replacing repairers who’ve retired.” 

 

We heard it again from David Shepherd, who was crystal clear that “you can’t repair cars without people!” 

 

And as you’re about to see in Kirsty’s latest interview, Bob Linwood is more concerned about the conveyor belt of talent than he is about shortages of semiconductors, or a lack of available vehicles to lease.

 

But Bob isn’t the sort of person who just identifies a problem. He goes out and does something about it. As one of the group who founded AutoRaise and then went on to run it for 6 years before stepping down in June 2021, he set himself the challenge of helping the industry address its skills shortage. By finding new talent and helping ensure they receive the tools and training they need to calm the storm. And now he’s doing it through his new ABLE TO business.

 

“The average age of a skilled worker is 50 or so. That’s a big problem.”

 

For Cogent Hire, one of the issues we’re facing is that there isn’t the capacity in the UK to make sure every single repair is completed as quickly as possible. It’s a lack of capacity that’s causing delays in putting drivers back on the road.

So the obvious place to start was to ask Bob what he believes that’s down to.

 

“The average age of a skilled worker is 50 or so. That’s a big problem. It’s not limited to the repair industry either. This isn’t acknowledged by the public, or by the wider engineering sector, but it’s widely understood by people in the know that the average age of a skilled worker is already 50 years old, and that’s getting higher and higher.”

 

Is it just a matter of aging repairers? Or is there a contributing factor at play here? Another aspect of the perfect storm to be aware of?

Bob has his suspicions.

“It’s been bad for a couple of generations. We’ve seen decades of underinvestment. But more recently, Brexit has seen skilled Eastern European technicians decide to work in their home countries instead of working here and sending money home.”

“And then one of the impacts of Covid was that a lot of people saw it as their time of reckoning. Everything slowed down, so lots of technicians aged 55-60 who thought they’d carry on until normal retirement age just thought it’s time to get out early.”

 

A drain of younger skilled workers back to Eastern Europe, hitting at the same time that thousands of older skilled workers decided it was time to hang up their spanners. Two issues that would be difficult enough in isolation combining to make things more difficult.

No wonder it’s so dark overhead.

 

Great businesses aren’t always great employers

Repairers in their late 50s and early 60s must have known they wouldn’t be working in another 15 - 20 years, even before Covid. So where’s the next generation? Why haven’t these older skilled professionals been training up their replacements to safeguard their businesses?

“Repairers have great businesses and more and more of them are expanding and putting qualified support teams in place. But whilst many of the smaller repairers are good, skilled people who are great at what they do, their core skills aren’t around administration, human resources and team welfare. Their focus is not on administration. Their reason to exist is repairing their customers cars professionally and trying to do it profitably. And this, unfortunately, means they’re not always focussed on doing the best thing for young people as their employers.”

A focus on repairs over administration makes for good repair services, but isn’t this sort of short term thinking an issue when it comes to hiring and developing talent?

Bob concurs.

 

The whole issue has led to salary costs and wage costs spiralling. Repairers have to pay more and more to technicians, even knowing that within the next six, nine months they’ll potentially be off to a competitor for a raise. Every time they switch position, they get a little bit more money and with income levels remaining mostly static for too many years, that leaves less in the pot for repairers to invest in developing younger talent.”

 

“Only the precious few employers in our industry have seen that they’ve got to start future-proofing themselves right now by bringing in young people and training them how to repair the increasingly complex motor vehicle safely and professionally.”

 

Investing in young people isn’t the problem. It’s the solution.

It’s not an overnight fix, but surely that future-proofing, that investment in youth, is going to be what secures the repair industry even after the perfect storm has blown itself out?

Bob’s passionate about this. And he’s doing something about it. He’s seen the solution to the talent shortage, and it takes the form of apprenticeships.

“Having an apprentice is a fantastic thing to do for young people, and for your team as well. The energy young people bring into a business is uplifting. But there is a downside.”

Time is one issue - an apprentice with six weeks’ on the job training can’t step in for a retiring technician with 40 years’ hard-won experience. But there are other barriers to this solution that Bob wants to overcome.

“The process of taking on an apprentice isn’t easy, and there’s a cost, a hassle, someone who should be productive taking time to mentor young people. Lots of employers think it’s too much grief. Too much effort. So they decide it’s easier to keep paying more money to qualified staff instead.”

More and more money to a diminishing pool of talent. Wage bills going up as income goes down. Surely there’s got to be a way to make it easier to train apprentices?

 

We need to focus on making the industry accessible to young people

“We know that in the past our industry apprentices weren’t treated particularly well in the industry, and that they were being sent to local college facilities who weren’t investing in the right people and equipment. We know the reasons why apprentices didn’t finish their apprenticeships.”

Is it all down to issues with the industry, or are there wider factors at play?

“It’s a societal problem, complicated by a lack of consumer awareness of our industry and how important it is. Young people who aren’t going to go on to further education because they don’t want to, or they’re not academic need to find a career destination and our sector can offer a rewarding, sustainable and lucrative career for the right person. Young people don’t have any skills to demonstrate when coming straight from school and they’re not prepared for a life work. But there are programmes we can offer that help them integrate into that environment.”

Things need to change.

 

Things will change.

Bob has ideas about the changes that are needed, and he’s working on making them a reality.

“I would love to see insurers collaborating even more with repairers. It would be great if they could collectively find a way, AutoRaise being a perfect model, to contribute to sustainable recruitment and talent development, because they’re the ones who’ll have to turn round to their customers and say ‘I’m sorry, you can’t get your car repaired for six, nine, twelve months.’”

“When repairer business owners accept they will soon have a problem and commit to futureproof themselves through investing in the apprenticeship system, we can find young people for them to develop and help them make sure they have a positive and rewarding learning journey.”

 

Bob is already doing his part, recruiting 40 new apprentices over the last 12 months and with scores more coming on board this summer, for businesses who are willing to go above and beyond to train the next generation.

“Businesses have just got to take that leap of faith.”

A leap of faith into a more collaborative, sustainable way of working. That’s the kind of leap Cogent Hire can get behind.