Unlocking Skills and Cost: Redefining Automotive Training

Anthony Perl: Andrew, what we think we should do now is probably just do a little bit of a recap on, on, on the skills and what the cost is of obtaining those skills. Because I think what we're going to unpack from there is. Some different approaches to the way we can look at this,

Andrew Uglow: Yeah. So putting a dollar figure on it is, is a little bit of a challenge. There are some general, things that we can talk about. We know the cost of wages. is a direct cost and that needs to be offset by what the person is producing for the company. And particularly with like first year apprentices, they, we talk about them being maybe 25%, productive as in of their All of their hours there, I can probably only charge maybe 25 percent of them, , which given that they're not paid a lot of money is probably a good thing for the business.

It's not necessarily a good thing for the technician, um, but they are being paid to learn. So there's a bit of a trade off. You know, we're investing in, uh, skills and knowledge and effort and that is a form of payment. I'm sure they'd rather the money sometimes, but they need it. Like that's the, that's the challenge.

The longer it takes , to get them up to speed, the greater the drain on the business. Typically in workshops, if we want to quantify the Productiveness of a person. Um, you fully qualified people or anyone pretty much from their third year onward. We, we want them to be about a hundred percent, uh, productive as in, uh, I can charge close to a hundred percent of the time that they're working on a car.

Um, a hundred percent efficient. Years usually goes 25 percent per year. So first year, 25%, second year, 50%, third year, 75%. Although a lot of places can, can do better than that. Or a lot of people can do better than that. When we, we zoom out a little bit more and go, well, of all of the work that's coming into my workshop, what percentage of work can this person work on without additional supervision, without, wild amounts of lost time, and solve the problem, fix the vehicle?

The first time to the customer's satisfaction, what percentage of work that comes through the door can this person perform that, perform to that standard at? And given that work has a, um, a range of scale, um, being some work is really basic, you know, basic services on a car, like at a midway through your first year, you should be able to do it without someone holding your hand.

Um, That's at the simple end. At the other end, you've got this complex compound problem that has been to four other workshops and no one's been able to fix, and now it's here and you know the spotlight's on you. Right? So in terms of the, the, the scale of work, what percentage of work can you, can people work on?

And typically at the end of the end of people's apprenticeship, it's somewhere about 60%, 60, 65%. Being that they've still got a lot to learn. , we find that four years after their apprenticeship, so eight years in the industry in, in, in total, um, there's somewhere about 80, 85%. And that sort of 20, 15, 20 percent is a really weird, quirky stuff.

And the really weird. Quirky stuff is the stuff that is the time black hole in the business that costs me the money. And so I have to have the skilled people that have been there for 16 plus years to be able to fix that stuff. And if I don't, I've got a problem. Um, so cost is, is, is really quite significant and it's directly proportional to the time it takes to get people up to speed.

To that, that, um, senior or mature technician level.

Anthony Perl: because I think this is the thing, isn't it? That we, we touched on this before in a previous episode, but the volume of information that they need to know across brands, across different components, across ages of cars is unbelievable. And there's a certain amount that you get from repetition. And as you, we've talked about that, that bottom axis, but. That whole idea of being resourceful. I mean, that's. You know, if, and you would not bet much better is, is that there are gurus in the industry, right? And there are these people that, that know how to do stuff, but they don't remember it all. You know, they can't possibly remember it all. There's got to be a better way of doing it than just trying to commit it all to memory.

Andrew Uglow: Anthony, you're absolutely spot on. The amount of knowledge that's required to be able to work on even just one brand is really, really significant. And if you're in aftermarket or your franchise and you're working on multiple brands, you start to multiply, um, by, a significant amount, the amount of information someone has to have access to, to be able to understand being that, uh, what Ford do is completely different to what Toyota do.

And that's a whole different language to how the Koreans are doing that, which is different again from what the Europeans are doing. Um, and while there's commonality across things at a fairly broad level, when you start to get into the specifics and specifically you start to try and chase some of these weird problems, um, It gets really, really difficult.

Um, and then you add to this, the complexity that, uh, some manuals are written in Italian English or German English or French English or Korean English or American English. Uh, and that they're not, it's not the same language that we speak here in Australia. We speak Australian English. And so what we need our people to do is not try and jam their skull full of information. We need to give them the strategies. To be able to operate in a highly dense information environment. So as I have access to the information that they need, they're able to then apply that information in a way that's meaningful and or adapt the information.

To suit the problem that they're working on on the car rather than looking for the perfect checklist and Just following the check the box. I checked this I checked that I tested this I did that my number was this But I did it and and don't get me wrong checklists are great Absolutely great, but checklists have limitations And the, the more complexity of information, the more complexity of technology, the harder it is to follow a checklist.

And we're really at the stage where we're seeing more and more specialization because of this, that there are workshops that only specialize on cars from this date to this date, or they only specialize on this brand, or they only specialize on, , this performance area or this repair type. And some of the.

Problem that we have around this complexity and density of information comes from how we do our technical training. So technical training is usually systems based training. So , we run a class on fuel systems. We run a class on, transmissions. We run a class on body electrical systems. We run a class on, , collision avoidance systems on, you know, uh, all the different types of systems on the cars.

Um, And we, we teach it from the perspective of, we go through, well, these are the parts, this is what the parts do. Um, this is, this is normal operation and this is how you service it. And then depending upon the class, the instructor will go and put some faults in the system and go, there you go. I broke it and have the technicians try and figure out , what the, the trainer has done, um, for the point of trying to build some experience or some so that when they see weird, funky data.

They've now got a, a, Oh, hang on a minute. I know we did this in class. When we saw the data do this, it meant I had this type of problem. When we saw the data do that, I mean, we had that type of problem. And so we try to build in some experiential or discovery learning, which is, which is the right thing to do, but it's still demands that people remember this.

And if I go to a technical training class and I learn all about this new system, whatever it is, uh, electric drive systems, whatever, and I And then I don't touch a car with that system for two months, six months. And then when comes in, I got to go and relearn it there on the spot. Now the customer's not going to pay for that.

They're not going to go, Oh, look, you know, just add two hours of labor because he had to go and read the manual again, because he hasn't touched it for two months. I'm fine with that. I'm, I'm fairly confident customers are not going to say that. Um, and, and so that comes back on the business, right? So that's like lost time.

But how do you fix a car if you don't know what you're dealing with? And this is where I think the industry has, has missed the mark in that we haven't touched it. people how to become successful without having epic memories. We've just done the rote learning. We've just gone shut up and jam more in there.

Um, learn this, learn this, learn this, then pay attention to this. And, and with respect, there are people who can do this. They have outstanding memories and I, I, I would like to be one of them. Um,

Anthony Perl: I,

Andrew Uglow: but the really, really good people have actually developed a way to operate in that high technology. high stress, intense, information density, as in there's so much, and there's so many distinctions that you need to be aware of. And if you get it wrong, well, that's expensive and costly in terms of time. And these people that operate differently, these gurus, these technicians, they're successful because they've developed ways and strategies for being resourceful.

And so they can operate in that high knowledge, high skill, high complexity, high stress environment and they'll succeed 99 times out of a hundred.

Anthony Perl: which is amazing when you have those people, but I think to a point that you made previously, it's about this whole idea of resourcefulness and I think it's worthwhile trying to define what that actually means, because, you know, we want to unpack that a little bit to see how that is something that we can, you know, Learn from and that the industry can then take up some different approaches to really attack that problem.

So, so how do you define resourcefulness?

Andrew Uglow: I define resourcefulness from a, very technical, like specifically automotive technical way. And, , before I, before I answer that, I'm going to just zoom out and just go, well, how does the dictionary define it? Being that I'm going to narrow that down. definition even further. Resourcefulness is the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties. Um, another definition that I came across says that, um, Resourcefulness involves using creativity, imagination, or making the use of available resources to cope with difficult situations.

And can I offer difficult situations on cars are largely the norm for a lot of workshops. Resourcefulness also means being able to make decisions and act on your own. And I can hear all the All of the workshop owners and workshop management cheering going, yes, I would love a group of people who could do that.

And, and look, for the most part, people can, but there's opportunity to improve. Um, resourcefulness is a quality that can help people deal with, uh, sorry, let me say that better resourcefulness. is a quality that can help people deal well with new or challenging circumstances. And that's, that's the generic term for resourcefulness.

In an automotive context, , I define resourcefulness as a structure or a series of strategies and tactics that that allow a technician to get a valid, to have a valid perception and then to apply those insights skillfully and efficiently in a successful remedy. So it's effectively two parts. It's one actually understanding and seeing clearly what's really going on.

And now that I can see what's really going on, the insight that I have that allows me to identify what's going on also allows me then to find a solution that will solve the problem quickly and accurately. And, and so when we talk about resourcefulness for technicians, it's those three bits, getting a valid perspective, a valid perception of the problem, identifying an effective and efficient solution and applying it.

Anthony Perl: You mentioned earlier in relation to resourcefulness as well. There's this whole idea of being By achieving it by accident Or on purpose. I think that's it. That's a pretty important, differentiation that needs to be made.

Andrew Uglow: Oh, for sure. And this is the, you say that, um, Anthony and I, I, I go to frustration straight away, um, given that for years I've been working with technicians doing technical training and I would have people that come out of the training and they were just awesome. They would perform brilliantly at work.

The service manager, um, just about hug them at the end of the day because they were pulling miracles out of thin air and solving all of these problems. And another person, an equivalent, would go back to work and struggle. And it would drive me burko trying to figure out, well, how is it that this person is so successful in this person isn't.

And it took me years of looking at this to figure out what was happening and effectively it was exactly as you said. We've taught people ability, technical ability, and we've just left them to stumble into, um, Resourcefulness, however they did, and, and there was, there's been no strategy for teaching resourcefulness, there's been no plan for teaching resourcefulness, there's, there's been no concept that we should even be teaching resourcefulness and, and, and, and effectively has, what has happened is people have sort of caught it in bits and pieces through the training that they've attended.

So, um, I think of my journey as a technician, I did my apprenticeship. Um, I had a really good boss who would send me to new classes. So I was learning, you know, new, exciting things like anti lock brakes when they were new, that was like, Whoa, look at this. And fuel injection. And, and I got to go to these other classes and by rubbing up against the trainers, I learned some of the ways that they thought they would talk about stuff and go, well, don't think like this, or don't say it from this perspective, say it from that perspective.

And so I learned some of those things. And gradually over decades, I ended up with a resourceful strategy for dealing with complex, difficult problems. Now, if you'd asked me how I got that, I couldn't tell you, I would have said, ah, experience. Because that was the only word that we have for this, but it isn't that it involves that.

Don't get me wrong, but it isn't that it's actually resourcefulness. And so, um,

Anthony Perl: I thought you're going to tell me a minute there. You got it from, uh, from watching Gilligan's Island and watching the professor, or maybe it was MacGyver.

Andrew Uglow: yeah, MacGyver, right? I've got a dental floss and a cigarette lighter. Look out world. I'm going to blow you to pieces. You know, it's just. If, if only it was that easy, Hey, um, Hollywood has a lot to answer for, uh, among other things. Um, and so if, if you would have been sort of, um, I don't know what the word is, peel the lid off this box, this mystery box called resourcefulness and have a look inside.

we're finding is that people, um, start by noticing. and another way of noticing is, is insight. And what they're doing is they're comparing from a reference, which was given to them technically in training. This is normal. And then I know how to, or I've learned how to pay attention to these particular pieces and notice how they're different.

So there's, there's multiple skills here. There's, I need to have a reference that's valid. I need to have the ability to look at what's happening on the vehicle with the problem and then reference that back to this valid reference. And then I have to understand the, the, the points or the distinctions of where they're different.

And so we call that insight. That would, that would be a simple way. So that's part of it. And. We then have a historical view of that, which we call hindsight, right? And we know that hindsight is 20 20. You know, I would not have written the name of that CD ROM up on the whiteboard had I been aware that it actually meant something quite explicit in another language.

Um, And hindsight is 20 20. Every other market I went to after that, I would check with them. Hey, are you okay with this acronym? And, and they go, yeah, that's, it only means what the disc says. And I'm going, phew, you know, that's a,

Anthony Perl: And by the way, for anyone not following along, check out the previous episode for that gr that doozy of a story.

Andrew Uglow: um, So at a, at a, at a surface level, those two parts insight and hindsight are, uh, are, uh, key, key functions of resourcefulness, but it's not the whole package. It's how I apply that. It's all of the distinctions and the underlying structure to those parts that, and how I apply that then on the vehicle is effectively what resourcefulness is.