Five Steps to Top-Notch Training

A new approach to training can turn your shop into a model of effective education.

Knowledge—your most important tool. Spend some time in business—or at business school—and you’ll hear your share of similar slogans breaking down some facet of work into a grand generalization. You, of course, pay little heed to such statements, realizing that any business is a complex structure operating according to numerous rules, actions and laws. Still, you might find yourself agreeing that knowledge, along with skills, largely determines whether a business succeeds or fails.

If you’re like a lot of operators, you probably lump knowledge and skill into one category—training. After all, it makes sense to. The necessary learning for the tasks performed at your shop is acquired through training. Every year you send your employees off to I-CAR or other classes, hoping to produce better skilled, more knowledgeable workers. Every year you are rewarded for your efforts with a professional workforce whose skills remain current and whose knowledge of the industry grows. 

But are you making the most and getting the most out of the training available to you? If you’re running the ideal shop (following this month’s theme) you are. When it comes to training, being the ideally trained shop doesn’t mean sending your employees to every available class and collecting every possible certification. Rather, it means making the most of training—attending the most effective classes and putting that training to work in a way that best benefits both your employees and business alike. Here’s a five-step plan to help you reach that goal.

Step one: Adopt a new attitude

Many operators use a point-A-to-point-B approach to training. They’re looking to update skills and certify employees. They’re looking for results. While this approach may prove useful, it fails to take into account all the variables and factors surrounding training. For example, it ignores just how much knowledge employees retain from a class; how new or updated skills are fully affecting a shop; how well employees are growing in their positions and what the overall level of training is at a shop.

If you’re going to make the most of training, you need to start with a better approach to training—a new philosophy that encompasses all of these factors.

What is this approach? Go back to the “knowledge—your most important tool” slogan. When you’re managing training, you’re managing skills and knowledge, which are as tangible and measurable as any other tools in your shop. Your new approach to training, then, is managing your shop’s knowledge base (its knowledge inventory)—the sum total of all the skills and knowledge possessed by your employees and you. That may sound a bit grandiose, but it’s also accurate.

In order to direct your training and maximize its effect, you have to have an accurate count of where your shop stands and where it needs to be in terms of knowledge and skills. In short, you need to manage training much the same way you direct the use of your best equipment. You acquire the best possible and make sure it’s used properly, with maximum benefits.   

Using your new philosophy, your goal is creating the best knowledge base possible—the base with the most comprehensive and up-to-date set of skills and knowledge possible.

Managing knowledge is a three-stage process.

• Stage 1: Evaluation. Find out what you know and what you need to know.
• Stage 2: Building. Acquiring the best skill sets possible, the ones that will most benefit your shop.
• Stage 3: Maintaining. Finding a way to keep those skill sets at your shop.

As you work your way through steps two to five of this five-step article, you’ll see where each of these stages fit. Keep in mind that working through them is a continuous process. When you manage your knowledge base you continually evaluate where you are and where you want or need to be. Following that, you build and then maintain skills, often through the same actions.

Step two: Use a process to determine goals

What kinds of training goals should you set? The answer here differs from one shop to the next. However, your method for resolving it is the same—evaluation, determining where you are and where you need to be.

Determine where your shop stands in terms of knowledge and skill thorough a survey of your personnel (yourself included). Put together a spreadsheet detailing all the skills acquired and classes completed by each employee. From there, decide what skills or updated skills you want at your shop.

This question needs to be answered comprehensively, ideally with professional help. Begin by talking with a business manager or consultant, along with training experts from the various outlets offering training (I-CAR, tech schools, etc.). Using your survey, ask these professionals, based upon your particular business model and industry trends, what your next step should be—what training areas you should target. Next, take their advice to your employees, along with a list of all the training available to them. Ask employees for their input on training they want and believe your business needs.

Once you collect and analyze this information, set training goals both for individual employees and for your shop. It is important that these goals be clear to your employees since they need to understand how these goals benefit them and your business.

Based upon these goals, select training classes and set a firm time frame for their completion. As you select classes, don’t forget about yourself or your managers. The Automotive Management Institute (AMi), paint companies, Rome Technologies, the Masters School of Autobody Management and other educational centers offer management courses.

While you’re setting goals and selecting classes, consider cross training your employees. If your manager or one of your best techs quit tomorrow or had to go on extended leave, do you have another employee who could step in take over the position? Do you even have a viable candidate? You would if you cross trained your employees in multiple areas. In fact, you might want to set as one of your shop goals getting all of your employees cross trained in a second work area or cross training in critical areas, such as management.

Motivation is an integral part of building and maintaining skills.

Step three: Motivate and reward

When customers walk into Akins Collision Center in Santa Clara, Calif., they’re offered an immediate view of the shop’s “Wall of Education.” The 11-ft. by 31-ft. wall is covered with plaques and certificates, many of them spilling over to adjoining walls, recognizing the training of Akins employees.

The wall speaks to the shop’s dedication to training, as do the actions of owner Bill Rupp who supports his employees’ enthusiasm by paying 50 percent of the cost for their work-related training. If you want your employees similarly motivated—and you do of course—you’ll similarly compensate and reward them.

Motivation is the key to ensuring your employees get all they can from training. As professionals, they’ll certainly work hard in class. However, their motivation and interest can be sapped by the sheer expense of training. Classes, course materials and transportation all cost money. If your employees are paid on commission, they stand to lose wages when they’re at class. Given these factors, how motivated will your employees be in a course if they see it—even temporarily—as a money-losing proposition?

If you’re going to make the most of training, obviously you need to send highly motivated students to class. You need to show them, like Rupp, that their dedication is important. This starts with compensating for training expenses, including finding ways to reimburse any lost wages.  Look too for other ways to reward training excellence.

Step four: Get involved

If you’re familiar with labor projections for the collision repair industry, you know that the current outlook isn’t too bright. The core of the industry’s technicians is aging and heading to retirement in the next two decades. More techs leave the industry each year than are being replaced. Mentoring and in-house training are being looked to as viable solutions to hiring shortfalls.

Programs like Mentors at Work, I-CAR’s People Actively Creating Employability thru Short-Term Task Training (PACE+ST3) and the Automotive Youth Education System (AYES) help shops train their future workers. Getting involved with these programs or something similar is a great way to give your shop a healthy labor pool and keep your current employees at the top of their game.

Acting as a mentor provides additional incentive for employees to take all they can from training courses. With a trainee looking on, your employees will have to demonstrate the latest skills they’ve studied. They’ll have to use these skills daily and be able to expound on them intelligently and thoughtfully. In addition, by functioning as teachers, they’ll understand the classroom process better and improve their own study skills.

Step five: Organize professionally

Unless you operate in a fairly remote, rural area, you probably have access to a number of training options. Indeed, the sheer volume of classes offered by

I-CAR, AMi, vendors, tech schools and other outlets can prove daunting when it comes time to select classes for your employees. With challenges like this, along with the job of tracking your employees’ progress and evaluating your shop’s needs, you might feel like hiring someone specifically to oversee your training. Not only is that a good idea, it also should be part of your training plan.

Properly organizing the training process is one of the keys to its success. Therefore, you’ll want to dedicate one of your employees (yourself if you have the time) to managing training. This person will keep records, collect feedback from employees and investigate available courses to determine their content and value. If you don’t have an available person to manage training, consider hiring a consulting group. Many shops now hire consulting companies to help them reach other goals, such as meeting environmental and safety codes. These same companies can also oversee training. To locate one, talk with other owners or work through your local trade association. Above all, locate a company with collision repair industry experience.

Final word

Education—a lifelong process. Another slogan you’ve no doubt seen, and another statement rooted in truth.

The truth is education is just as much about choice as it is a lifelong process. At some point, you decide where to get your schooling and what to do with it. These decisions determine where your professional life takes you. With your future hanging on these decisions, an organized, thorough approach to the decision-process is in order. With the future of an entire business and its employees hanging in the balance, an organized, comprehensive plan should be a requirement.