Page 47 - Australasian Paint & Panel Nov-Dec 2022

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shift towards flexible working hours where possible — COVID shifted many to value more time with family, and working ‘norms’ have been disrupted, possibly forever. The vast majority of our finalist shops have one or more OEM badges and have identified that having relationships with those OEMs will be- come increasingly important as cars be- fore more and more challenging to re- turn to pre-accident condition.
WHAT’S CHANGING?
It’s good to see an improvement of awareness of health and safety, but sad- ly we’re still seeing people either on Zoom or in person not looking after themselves. This is particularly preva- lent in the spray booth where we see people not wearing appropriate PPE – painting without gloves or even eye pro- tection. On the plus side this was the ex- ception rather than the norm.
I’m also going to stick my neck out and say that it seems to be that slowly but surely the number of women we are seeing working in collision repair busi- nesses is increasing. There are more fe-
male managers, more female refinish technicians and parts managers. Go back to judging these awards 10 years ago with the husband and wife teams the wives seemed to be very much in the background and now this seems very much more of an equal partnership.
We know that attracting and retaining apprentices is challenging to say that 99% of our winners and finalists all have apprentices. Some of them have really impressive amounts of them like Fortress Group, AMA Group and Adams Smash
CLOCKWISE FROM MAIN: Partnerships are prevalent. Diversification is a growing trend and few do it better Than Bodytech Automotive in Sydney. Lean, green and so clean at Sommerville Smash Repairs in Queensland; it’s not just passenger car repairers that are branching out into the recalibration landscape.
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