5 minute read
Doesn’t Ease
strong evidence of student interest in the trade.
“I’ve done job fairs and that type of thing, and it’s not that people aren’t attracted to the industry,” Alley said. “It’s the presentation of the industry that they get once they come in.”
Too often, she said, shops aren’t willing “to invest in people, and to offer them fair wages and a career path, because they’re scared that someone down the street is going to give them a dollar more. But not everyone is going to make it at your shop. We all have to be willing to take the calculated risk of investing in someone. We can’t have the attitude that they need to prove themselves to us. We need to prove ourselves to them.”
Oden agreed that offering a career path is essential to keep young people in the industry.
“They want to know what those steps are: This is where you are going to start. This is the compensation package, and here’s how you grow that,” Oden said. “I can tell you: Every single student in our career tech programs wants to see that.”
But at the same time, Alley said, the industry needs to have “a serious conversation” about what it will take for shops to pay competitive wages that attract and retain technicians in the industry.
“None of this is going to matter if we can’t keep our doors open, if we can’t charge what the work costs, if you can’t pay the people what they need to earn to stay in the industry,” she said. “That needs to be a priority, having that conversation. We need to be big boys and girls about it, and be really serious…None of this is going to get solved unless we can pay people what their value is.”
Center said when he asks shop owners what they are personally doing to help address the technician shortage and if they are involved with local schools, they often say they don’t have the time.
“If you don’t have time as the owner or manager of a business in this industry to help solve this problem, who is going to do it? If you don’t have time, designate someone on your team to take that responsibility, and get this stuff done,” Center said. “Somebody has to take the lead.”
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Data Sharing
need a customer’s home address.”
Tagliapietra said the industry as a whole is addressing the problem, but there’s a lot of work to be done.
“When you’re standing on the basement floor, there’s nowhere to go but up,” he said. “That’s where the collision repair industry is in protecting personal identification information.”
Tagliapietra said a solution needs to be offered to shops that addresses data segmentation and deletes customers’ personal information before sharing data with “practically everybody,” controlling what is shared based on what the partner—be it a parts provider, salvage yard, rental car company, etc—actually needs.
He said he believes a solution to control data flow will be available to collision repairers by the end of 2022.
“Like any other problem the industry has faced, I’m confident, Paul’s confident, it will be dealt with,” Tagliapietra said.
“We need to move away from EMS, to a more sophisticated standard, that’s easier to manage so we don’t give away data simply to anyone who wants to take it,” he said.
Tagliapietra said currently, shops don’t have a way of finding out which data pumps are running in their systems, but that technology is coming.
“Shops should be able to identify data pumps running on their system, validate them and determine which data should be shared,” he said. “Auditing software will be available before the end of the year to detect and advise a shop on how many [pumps are running] and who’s operating them.”
Barry said there is no silver bullet that will eliminate the problem; it will require collision repairers choosing to work only with partners that will protect personal information.
“It will take shops demanding it,” Barry said. “Millions of transactions are done every year through EMS. Shops will have to say, ‘I won’t do business with you unless you’re doing it through BMS.’” Barry said CIECA’s developing CAPIS Standards will use more current technology, but he thinks it’s going to take a while.
A new poll shows small businesses fear they will have to shut down within six months if inflation continues.
The Alignable Small Business Inflation poll asked 5,268 businesses in May if they were concerned about inflation and over half said they fear they won’t be able to stay open over six months.
Illinois was in line with the national average, with 49% of small business owners concerned over inflation-driven shutdowns.
Many business owners said this is a more difficult time than the pandemic, researcher Chuck Casto said.
“In one of our polls we asked point blank, what has been more damaging for your business, inflation or COVID, and over 60% said inflation,” Casto said.
Rastaurants are the most concerned sector of the economy. Of those asked, 72% said they were concerned about shutting down because of inflation this year. That was followed by beauty salons (65%) and gyms (63%).
According to the poll, 49% of small business owners said their costs have increased by more than 25%, but only 16% are able to pass those expenses onto customers.
The states with the most-worried small business owners included Maryland, Connecticut and Tennessee.
One business owner said fuel costs would be the death of his business. In Illinois, gasoline is averaging $5.40 a gallon, putting a strain on many businesses.
Relief doesn’t appear to be coming anytime soon. Laffer Tengler Investments’ Arthur Laffer Jr. told Fox News inflation will get “higher” and be here a while.
“We think that inflation is going to be here higher and longer than we would have thought. But, this is pretty ugly. We have CPI coming out Friday, so we’ll see what it is. But this is definitely putting pressure on the economy. I think these prices are here for a while,” he said.
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