SKILLED LABOUR

Simply put, one of the most important aspects of running a successful business is the effective and skilled labour of the staff. There are different ways of ensuring that a staff member is effective and skilled through training and supervised work or simply hiring an already skilled mechanic. Both of these methods have their advantages and disadvantages. 

Advantages

Hiring an unskilled labourer and training such an employee would take a lot of time and effort to train up to a reliable and effective employee however this way the employee will be very familiar to the business and how everything operates in that particular business. This way the trained employee not only will be effective but can also contribute to the business in other ways such as giving feedback on how to improve the business from the experience he has acquired through training in such a business. 

Disadvantages

Hiring a skilled labourer with qualifications such as the NZQA approved National certificate in Automotive Engineering would already know what to do but the employee may not be very efficient at the start as it may take time for the newly hired employee to become accustomed to the new workshop and the working environment. 

However, having employees that are capable of doing their job alone is not enough to be efficient. Proper managing of the employees and allocating appropriate time for the work and proper distribution of responsibilities are also very important to effective staffing and work. One of the most obvious problems that I have observed is that the distribution of responsibilities within a workshop is not always optimal due to a lack of trust. 

Often employees are made to work under supervision and this could take up time from another employee. This is usually resolved over a long period of time when the supervisor finally trusts the employee to work on his or her own without problem. This lack of trust is due to the supervisor or manager having to take on a lot of liability should an accident occur or if anything gets damaged.

Once the employees are properly trained, supervised and are effectively working on their own with the proper workload distribution you have achieved a very skilled and effective staff. However, this must be maintained as well. Regular meetings with staff to discuss any changes and making sure that the employees are aware of their responsibilities are very important. 

Also employees need to be kept up to date on new technologies in the automotive industry and the managers can help by sending their employees to have special classes to learn about new technologies. This way the effectiveness of the staff is always kept up and kept up to date with new technologies.