You may have noticed we're after your input again today as we're running a short survey on Winter Servicing.

We've run similar surveys around this time for the past couple of years, so it's interesting to keep track of these things, to see if much has changed. 

One message which came out of last year's survey from dealers who responded, loud and clear, was that one, if not the, biggest challenge facing workshops is the difficulties in attracting qualified staff. Or not even qualified staff - simply just interested candidates with an aptitude to learn!

76% who responded last year said they hadn’t employed any new people during the previous year. And not a single respondent described the process of finding staff as easy. In fact, an overwhelming majority of 85% described it as difficult

One comment we received from a dealer last year which typified responses read:

"Finding good service technicians is desperately difficult. For too long our education system has side-lined the STEM subjects and there are very few school leavers with any mechanical interest. What few there are, are attracted by the higher wages other industries can offer. For several years we have felt that we are relying on the experience of our older staff but they are now struggling with modern technology and the younger generation don’t seem interested."

Does this sound familiar to you?

It's certainly a sentiment I tend to hear whenever there's more than one dealer in a room together. It was a subject discussed at length at November's Service Dealer Conference, with talk that it is a problem faced by independent specialists on both sides of the Atlantic.

It's a subject which hasn't been far from discussion from all areas of the industry recently. Again today the subject crops up in one of our video interviews conducted at LAMMA last week. Richard Miller of Fendt cites it as one of the major challenges which he believes dealers will be facing in 2020.

And coming up in the next issue of Service Dealer magazine we have an interview with Keith Christain, director of BAGMA, who addresses the subject in some depth. Keith of course, is very much involved in looking for solutions to the recruitment issues the industry faces with his work with BAGMA and LE-TEC. He spoke knowledgeably on the subject at last autumn's SALTEX and addressed it as part of a panel debate at the Service Dealer Conference. 

Keith tells us in the next mag that failing to encourage enough young people to choose a career in landbased engineering is an issue that the whole of the industry needs to address together.

"We have a fantastic industry, across all sectors, with some fabulous career opportunities which deals in some very advanced technologies," says Keith. "We just do not seem to do enough to tell people about it - and this is stifling recruitment. 

"We need to shout about the landbased engineering sector and its cutting edge technology and opportunities - but we have to do it as a whole, with one voice and one recruitment plan. Not the fragmented way we have been up until now. We need to challenge ourselves to make the LBE sector better known to young people and those looking for careers."

You can read the whole interview with Keith in the March / April 2020 edition of the magazine. He raises some very interesting points.

In the meantime please take our survey today where you can let us know how your winter servicing has been faring this season - and indeed whether issues surrounding staffing have affected your processes.

As ever we'll include the results of the survey in the next issue, alongside a selection of your comments. 

Thanks for your help.

p.s By the way, don't miss next week's edition of the Weekly Update - we will have a very exciting announcement which for one lucky reader and their guest, will mean an EXPO-sive October!