What a mess.....

What a mess. These were the words my Mum said when she found out she had a few days to live. She suffered from depression, my dad wasn’t well, she was worried about money. My Dad suffered from anxiety, he had contracted TB and only had ? of a lung functioning, I had TB as well, but I fared better. He was anxious about going out, catching something, and after mum died he chose to be with her he couldn’t cope. What a mess.

All I can say here is thank the lord my parents weren’t around the last few years, I miss them like mad but what an awful life they would have had with COVID, the current economic crisis and the way of the world. They would have suffered, as many are today.

After Brexit, came Covid, the latter we didn’t really have opportunity to prepare for. The government bailed out businesses with loans, the furlough scheme, keeping people employed, costing billions, many businesses and charities applied for them because they were entitled rather than needed them, some having never paid them back, all money out of the coffers. We lost 843,000 days in December because of strikes, hampering the UK economy, causing businesses relying on rail for example to suffer losses too. What a mess.

“We want more pay”, don’t we all. I’m down ￡25k on what I earn, I’m self-employed, I can’t go on strike, trust me some days I feel like it. Pay has increased 6.7%, whereas inflation is 10.5%, we can never keep pace. We give more pay rises, if it’s the public sector, it comes out of the pot, we need to then increase tax, NI and now Councils have increased their tax. If private companies pay more then it eats into their profits, hampering growth, we know some of the bigger ones can afford it, but pressure on smaller firms creates a whole new set of challenges. Start to take one or two people from a smaller business and they can fall over quickly. The gap between Private and Public sector pay has narrowed though, but unemployment is 1.27m with vacancies around 1.15m. Cost of living is through the roof, interest rates at 4%. What a mess.

Now, I’m not saying people don’t deserve to be paid for what they are worth, but where is the money coming from? The more we ask for, surely the more the UK economy will struggle and take longer to recover, prices will go up, maybe pay will as well, who knows I'm no expert this is just me and my tiny little mind saying this.

Cazoo made redundancies, Ford expecting to lose 1300 jobs, there will be more to come. Are we faced with a further challenge of how to attract people to come and work in automotive when they may not see it as a secure and stable future when its plastered all over social media? Other manufacturers have plans to reduce employees by 2025. We are vulnerable, but it is cyclical and we are a resilient bunch.

Mark my words (I always wanted to say that) some of my other predictions will come true and soon. There’s a saying which is “you get what you focus on”, it’s absolutely true but if you focus on the wrong areas or keep them narrowed you will miss an opportunity or two. Whilst we focus on becoming a better, more diverse industry of choice, we are forgetting that age is a big part of that, we are still not focusing enough on the next generation of talent. We need to focus on all areas not just EV’s, that’s just a small cog in the wheel. We still want ready made Technicians and when we expand or move into another area we need more people, so we get them from competitors, we offer more money or better perks and so the cycle continues and so does the revolving door in all areas of automotive.

If you rely only on skilled people all the time, you don’t have the talent coming up through the ranks, you will never achieve the inclusivity and diversity that the industry remains focused on. We get young people approaching us all the time, but we can’t find anyone to give them a step up. We have people who have a Level 3 qualification, not quite the finished article but a great example of emerging talent, we don’t give them a chance. Whilst the EV skills gap may start to be narrowed, the generation gap will never, until we start to look at our succession planning and where our next stars come from. Eventually the skilled Technicians will run out or be demanding ridiculous salaries, but we will pay them because we are desperate. There are great companies like Halfords, Apollo, Solus, DLG and Steer who are doing the right thing and doing it well.

We have more unemployed people than vacancies in the UK, so lets do our bit to force change – lets recruit unskilled technicians, lets train other people in our businesses to do different roles, let’s try and bring some of the older generation back, those that have left after COVID, let’s get them to mentor and coach the next generation, lets work with Job Centres and government initiatives such as Sector Based Work Academy Programme (SWAP), lets pledge a place to a school leaver or college student – if we do all that and don’t just rely on the skilled piece we won’t be in a mess and we won't be doomed.