Injury Lawsuit

So now is the ideal time to reconnect with your top talent if you want to retain them. Post-COVID, your disengaged employees will start looking for a better deal elsewhere. Will the return to normal tempt your best people to pursue other options?

The best thing to do is to step up employee engagement and keep everyone in the fold. Turnover can seriously impede a body shop, and poaching can spread quickly. Joe Technician is happy at his new shop and the word is out they’re looking for more people, so a strong bond with your employees is more important now than ever.

Focus on retaining your female employees, because they are the most likely to switch or quit altogether. According to NPR, 865,000 women left the U.S. workforce— four times more than men—in just September last year.

“The coronavirus pandemic is wreaking havoc on households, and women are bearing the brunt of it,” the NPR study said. “Not only have they lost the most jobs from the beginning of the pandemic, but they are exhausted from the demands of childcare and housework—and many are now seeing no path ahead but to quit working.

Keep Millennials in your discussions. They’re focused on things such as diversity and inclusion, so keep them in the loop. The worst thing is to have them feeling like they’re not being heard. Let them play a role and watch them excel as people and leaders. To accommodate your younger crew members, keep your meetings short and sweet and create mechanisms to enable them to contribute.

It’s a whole new game out there and those shops that can adapt will succeed, while others might encounter a never-ending carousel of new and returning employees.

The pandemic changed the rules, but many principles of employee communication are still the same. Try to keep stress levels low, keep your eyes open for changes within your team and proceed carefully, and you will be able to retain your people and avoid the pitfalls of the Great Resignation.

www.autobodynews.com

A Kia Optima recall has been announced for 2012-2013 Optimas with right and left headliner plates that may detach when the side curtain airbags deploy.

Kia said the fault is found in how the headliner plates are secured in 258,000 cars, placing occupants in danger of being hit by the plates.

The Kia Optima headliner plates are used for the energy absorbing structure of the headliner, but a lawsuit let Kia know there may be problems.

The legal department learned of a product liability lawsuit alleging a metal bracket injured a driver during the deployment of the side curtain airbag in a 2012 Kia Optima equipped with a panoramic sunroof.

Kia engineers inspected the Optima and determined the driver’s side headliner plate may have detached from headliner during deployment of the side curtain airbag.

The automaker opened an investigation and learned 2011-2015 Optimas manufactured in Korea have a different supplier and different adhesive application process to the headliner plates compared to Optimas manufactured at a Kia plant in Georgia.

The one known case occurred in the Optima built at Kia Georgia, and Kia is unaware of any other incidents.

Kia dealers will add an industrial-grade adhesive tape over the left and right headliner plates to further secure the plates to the headliner.

Kia Optima recall letters will be mailed Sept. 26. Owners of 2012-2013 Kia Optimas may call 800-333-4542 and refer to recall number SC245.

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