Page 32 - Australasian Paint & Panel Jan-Feb 2020
P. 32

WOMEN IN COLLISION
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FROM LEFT:
Troy Johns, IAG; Angela Manteit from Drive Accident Solutions; editor Sam Street
most effective way to do it is create an advert for it. The advantages of the paid advertising is that you can set your own budget. Facebook make it difficult to do paid adverts well, it's a confusing pro- cess but it worth persevering to master it as it is very effective for lead generation or getting people to like your page. She recommended using a social media scheduling platform such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social or Buffer.
Author Loretta Smith gave a fascinat- ing talk, with many amazing original photographs, about Alice Anderson who was a motoring pioneer and ran an all- female garage in the 1920s. Anderson learned how to drive at 18 years old and was only taught by the mechanics at her father's business on condition that she learned how to dismantle and reassem- ble and engine by herself. She designed her own garage which held 22 cars. An- derson interestingly is credited with in-
vented a trolley to roll under cars -which sadly for her she didn't patent. She ran an all-female limousine service and once drove her “Baby” Austin 7 car to Alice Springs and could make spare parts for her cars with her lathe. She was tragically found dead at just 29 years old. You can read more about her in Smith's book A Spanner in the Works.
IAG has supported Women in Collision since its inception back in 2014. IAG's Troy Johns was there to enjoy the after- noon and to present the awards. "From an IAG perpective it's really important for us to acknowledge the success stories in the industry, " he said. Each of the award winners told the audience about themselves and received their award.
REPAIR HUB CULTURE
Veronica Jory from Repair Hub gave an engaging and candid presentation about her industry journey and the importance
of building the right business culture to at- tract women. Repair Hub has a high per- centage of female staff in a variety of roles. Culture was a word used throughout the day and there appears to be growing awareness that a healthy business culture is vital to success in terms of attracting and retaining talent of either gender.
Suzi Finkelstein, director of leadership and advocacy at Women & Leadership re- ported some frankly depressing statistics about how Australia is actually going backwards in the number of women in leadership positions and how far we are behind other countries. She looked at some of the ‘blockers’ for women to reach leadership positions and explained the opportunity for women in the automotive sphere to apply for free scholarships.
Suzi Finkelstein, director of leader- ship and advocacy at Women & Leader- ship reported some frankly depressing statistics about how Australia is actually going backwards in the number of wom- en in leadership positions and how far we are behind other countries. She looked at some of the ‘blockers’ for wom- en to reach leadership positions and ex- plained the opportunity for women in the automotive sphere to apply for free female leadership scholarships.
Sandra Noach for Extreme Dents and iQ Bodygroup gave a moving talk about her journey to becoming a successful woman in automotive. She learned from her mother that being the underdog can often be an advantage as people don’t expect you to succeed. She outlined some failures encountered along the way that she and her husband, Jason, had learned from.
Christinne Quix from Ford combined personal insights with Ford technical talk and opened a lively debate on original parts and pre-and post diagnostic scans.
The seminar finished by discussing what a Women in Collision not for profit organisation could achieve to recruit and support women in this industry. The aims of this organisation can be to support and mentor female technicians in the workshop, raise money to create promotional materials to encourage women of all ages to consider careers in the collision repair industry and look to support and train female victims of do- mestic abuse looking for careers to sup- port themselves and their children.


































































































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