By GEORGIA WESTGARTH
“WE decided that we needed to address the stigma around panel beating because it’s no longer the ‘barking dog at the door, hat, beer in hand and dirty, dusty’ job people think it is.”
Cranbourne Body Works is taking on the panel beating and spray painting industry one apprentice at a time.
The business has been operating in Cranbourne for 27 years and owners Nicky and Kevin Slattery said they had to make some drastic changes to ensure its longevity.
Cranbourne Body Works along with the entire trade have been struggling to find and keep interested apprentices for more than two years.
“We thought why aren’t the kids coming, where are they, why don’t they want to learn?” Nicky said.
“We’ve always had young school leavers knocking on our door asking for work but that has all stopped.
“And the current tradesmen are an ageing workforce and there’s a skills shortage Australia wide because there are not enough young people coming through.”
Earlier this year Nicky and Kevin decided to hold a staff meeting to discuss where to take their business.
“We spoke about what we needed to do to get the apprentices back and with the region experiencing high unemployment we figured there must be all this talent sitting out there wasted.
“So we’ve tried to address the problem in schools,” Nicky said.
Joining forces with both the Cardinia Shire and Casey councils and numerous schools in the area, Cranbourne Body Works is now seen as an employment trailblazer in the field.
“The VACC (Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce) have got on board and said they haven’t been able to penetrate schools as effective as we have,” Nicky said.
Since January this year the business has held information presentations at numerous local schools and on 26 November took a group of Pakenham High School Year 9 students on a tour of their garage.
“After putting it all into practice this year we saw results within the first three months,” Nicky said.
“We are showing the young students that panel beating and spray painting is not what it used to be – it’s safer and cleaner now and is a very technical and highly skilled job.
“Our tradesmen are constantly getting re-trained in areas that are changing as cars are changing.”
Nicky said shifting the way career counsellors at schools thought about panel beating had been an even more productive tool than just educating the student’s themselves.
“We’ve changed the way we are going about things to see a return of young people in this field,” she said.
The innovative and forward thinking team has also identified mental health as a problem in the trade.
“We’ve had to educate ourselves in mental health because we’ve realised that what’s happening outside of work can heavily affect a young person’s work performance,” Nicky said.
“It’s important to us to make sure our young apprentices feel like a worthy part of our team because they are.
“That’s why we are using our older experienced tradesmen as teachers, mentors and friends for our younger tradesmen.”
Utilising all ages and skill levels at their Cranbourne garage, Nicky and Kevin have two apprenticeships to fill and five VCAL positions available for high school students.
“We are open to all ages and genders,” Nicky said.
