Fixed Ops Journal - December 2019 - F18

FIXED OPS JOURNAL

ONLINE:

GENDER GAP

Minorities are also struggling to gain
footholds in dealership shops. Read the
story here: autonews.com/minoritytechs

Underrepresentation of women contributes to dealerships' technician shortage

RICK POPELY

foj@autonews.com

bout half the customers who take
their vehicles to franchised dealerships for service are women, but
their odds of being greeted by a female service adviser are only 1 in 5. The
chances that a female technician will work on
their car or truck are far slimmer - a little better than 1 in 100.
The minuscule number of female techs isn't
surprising, given that historically few girls or
young women have been steered toward auto
repair. Since women make up nearly half the
U.S. work force, they represent a largely untapped pool of potential techs.
Most dealers are scrambling just to find men
to work as techs, let alone women. But they
may be missing an opportunity by not proactively trying to recruit and retain more young
women to replace older technicians who are
retiring or moving to other jobs, industry experts say.
According to the National Automobile Dealers Association's 2019 Dealership Workforce
Study, women hold 20 percent of service adviser jobs, up about a percentage point since
2016. Just 1.3 percent of technicians are women, a level that has increased only slightly in
recent years.
The NADA study concludes that turnover also is higher among women service employees
than among men. The lack of a welcoming environment for women at many dealerships is
likely a root cause, says Jody DeVere, CEO of
AskPatty.com, which trains dealerships, including service departments, to attract and
sell to women customers.
"There is some hesitation on the part of dealerships to hire females because they feel, rightly
so sometimes, that their culture isn't ready for
that yet," DeVere told Fixed Ops Journal.
That can mean male employees will be indifferent or even hostile to women coming into territory that traditionally has been a man's
domain. That is still hard for some men to deal
with, says DeVere, a co-founder of the Women
in Automotive advocacy group.
If a dealership's culture isn't ready to accept
women, DeVere adds, then it needs to change.
"The owners, the dealer principal and the
managers need to want that," she says. "It cannot be driven from the bottom up. It is driven
by the vision and decisions of the leadership,
that they not only see the value but they have a

PAGE 18

DECEMBER 2019

Saydi Booth is
service adviser team
lead at Walser Toyota
in Bloomington, Minn.
NADA says women
make up 20 percent
of dealership service
advisers and barely
1 percent of technicians.

Shop ceiling

Percentage of women in fixed ops
jobs at new-vehicle U.S. dealerships
Service adviser .........................20%
Parts consultant .........................9%
Parts manager ............................7%
Service manager .........................7%
Service technician ....................1%*
A tech ...........................1%
B tech ...........................1%
C tech ...........................2%
D tech ...........................3%
*Exact figure is 1.3%. A and B techs are more
experienced and skilled than C and D techs.
Source: 2019 Dealership Workforce Study, National
Automobile Dealers Association

plan. It can't be that if it doesn't work in 30 or
90 days, we aren't going to do it anymore."

Active recruiting
Some dealerships and dealership groups
have succeeded at recruiting women as technicians and for other service department jobs.
When the Toronto-based Pfaff Automotive
Group launched a "grow your own" apprentice
program six years ago, it made attracting women a priority, says Robert Morrison, fixed ops
manager at Pfaff Porsche in Vaughan, Ontario.
About 5 percent of the company's techs and

10 percent of tech apprentices are women, the
group says.
When Pfaff visits local high schools and colleges, the company actively recruits women to
participate in co-op programs that enable students to split time between school and working as apprentices in its dealerships' service
departments, Morrison says. The apprentice
program is the group's main source of new
techs, he adds.
Most of the group's larger dealerships now
have at least one female technician, Morrison
says. The shops have a "professional and welcoming" environment that accommodates
women as well as men, he says
"You can't say you're engaged in [recruiting]
women if you don't have the facilities for
them," Morrison says.
"You can't have a changing room for the
men and not have one for the women as well.
You're paying lip service if you don't have a facility that shows a true commitment to being
open to women."
Turnover among Pfaff 's technicians is 6 percent a year, Morrison adds, well below the average for U.S. and Canadian dealerships.
Pfaff operates 17 dealerships in Ontario and
British Columbia. About one-third of the company's service advisers are women, Morrison says.
see DIVERSITY, next page

http://www.autonews.com/minoritytechs http://www.AskPatty.com

Fixed Ops Journal - December 2019

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