Somerford Mini "Can't get the staff..."

[richardACS]

So back to the subject.. Somerford cant get the Staff .. maybe it is time they funded their own young person(s) within a proper Apprentice Scheme & pay the lad or girl proper money as they develop their skills
Bicester Heritage are trying to provide such training scheme

Nice positive way forward - I believe CMC in Bridgnorth are doing the same thing - We wish them great success. It is also very rewarding in a one to one human way to observe an enthusiastic youngster making progress through skill development. Lets hope the pendulum might swing to the other side....

[Brynmor]

When I left school in the mid 90’s apprenticeships were not even mentioned. I’ve had an odd career, mainly supply chain and procurement but what served me well in the latter career is I could read engineering drawings, which barely anyone in procurement could do I found.I’ve also dabbled in motoring journalism on and off since 1998, now there’s an industry that’s done for!

The last 8 years have seen me running a retail and Motorsport events business but still do occasional days of procurement consultancy. The dearth of knowledge and money being offered is genuinely making me consider going back full time …I was glad to see Airbus have visited my sons school and talked about apprenticeships and pay rates with his year group (15 year olds) and it’s got him truly enthused at the idea of a career in machining.

[gazza82]

Blair's aim was to keep them off the dole and therefore the unemployed stats too!

And surely these "uni loan" debts will only hamper some from getting mortgages and the like at a later date. They used to encourage them as "cheap" .. but they are nothing of the sort. You start building interest on them from day 1 and don't have to pay anything for at least three (or four) years so the interest mounts very, very quickly!

We seem all three of our kids go through Uni .. as we encouraged all of them to pay off their debt at the first opportunity .. the third and last one was enough to buy a small car!! (Luckily a small inheritance helped ..)


There are other examples of Blair's ideas being proven to be badly (or not) thought out ...

[Herbert]

Somerford have a incredible range of stock. The problem is that who is on the counter just hasn't got a clue, which is a shame. Staff makes or breaks you, as they say. At Minispares they have an incredible range of people who really know their stuff. Gary and Dave on the counter, Rich at Harrogate knows more than anyone bar Keith Dodd, Simon is a encyclopaedia of bits. It just makes ordering the right bit so much better. So come on, Somerford, get some decent staff !

[Costafortune]

I’ve also dabbled in motoring journalism on and off since 1998, now there’s an industry that’s done for!

Tell me about it!

It was once my very well paid full time job, now it's beer money in between more rewarding pursuits.

[Pandora]

I work in an Art college. I'm sayin' nothin'!

But I kind of hope my youngsters (Teenagers) get a trade. I certainly wouldn't discourage them from becoming plasterers, plumbers, Joiners.... They will always be needed. Even when the Construction industry takes a downturn, folks need maintenance done.

Al

[timmy201]

Somerford have a incredible range of stock. The problem is that who is on the counter just hasn't got a clue, which is a shame. Staff makes or breaks you, as they say. At Minispares they have an incredible range of people who really know their stuff. Gary and Dave on the counter, Rich at Harrogate knows more than anyone bar Keith Dodd, Simon is a encyclopaedia of bits. It just makes ordering the right bit so much better. So come on, Somerford, get some decent staff !

I would say it’s an extremely hard job to start at, especially when your two main clients would be:
People who don’t know what they need and rely on you to know everything about a car they’ve never seen
People who know everything about what they want and expect you to know everything in the same level of detail

You need someone with years of mini experience, problem solving, customer support and also a passion for minis

It’s something I’d love to do and I think I’d be decent at, but not something I could do now, with a family, house etc to think about first

[Polarsilver]

Tim ..dont do it you will end up working for nothing restoring Classic Cars

Slight off topic .. i had a look at the new Inios Grenadier 4x4 Car .. some say an alternative to the the old style Defender .. i though it a nice thing built at the old Smart Car Factory in France .. assembled with good supplier parts such as BMW Engine & Recaro Seats etc with quirks such as racks built into the outside flanks of this car for clip on "Bits" & a quater size rear door wide enough to let the Dog Get in .. Yes i can have a Test Drive in one months time & we are now taking orders for this car .. so what about aftersales service ? .. we are still setting this up but that is coming .. So it is not just Somerford who have Staffing issue

[snoopy64]

Somerford have more of a chance than some… imagine trying to recruit for a forging company..it’s a nightmare!

[mab01uk]

Somerford have more of a chance than some… imagine trying to recruit for a forging company..it’s a nightmare!

I am guessing that is why Somerford put the article/job ad in Mini magazine in the hope that a couple of keen skilled Mini enthusiasts might come forward to fill the two workshop positions that have been vacant for a year, especially if they are willing to put the hands on 'job satisfaction' of working on Minis above perhaps taking a higher wage working elsewhere in a line of less interesting work.
As said in the article Somerford also have a vacancy in their stores which might suit a less hands on Mini enthusiast with a good memory for numbers and the many Mini change points, etc! I am told they already have an an Apprentice training in their workshops.

[bryan]

I recall a story my father told me back in the mid sixties when he was in charge of a bit of the Dowty group near Wolverhampton that was designing and making the powered flying controls for Concord.
Following a request, he agreed to allow a group of teenagers from the local school to tour the manufacturing halls. My father heard the teacher say "If you don't study and pass your exams you will end up in a place like this". He was beyond rage. The problem has been with us for a very long time

[BAD942B]

in 1969 or 1970 we had our History teacher/ Deputy head who used to think it was funny to ask us what our parents did & belittle us, I replied coalman which he thought was very funny, what I should have said was haulage contractor hauling coal & aggregates, my father is long gone but the company turns over about 12 million & hauls very little coal but a fair chunk of the grain shipped in the midlands, aggregates still.
My mates father laid hedges amongst other agricultural work, this is now considered a dying art & good hedge layers are back in demand.
Working with your hands was being looked down then, the deputy head / history teacher called them dirty finger nails jobs, told abother mate that he would end up in borstal but he ended up running a company with 650 employees, retired now three years early

[Exminiman]

I recall a story my father told me back in the mid sixties when he was in charge of a bit of the Dowty group near Wolverhampton that was designing and making the powered flying controls for Concord.
Following a request, he agreed to allow a group of teenagers from the local school to tour the manufacturing halls. My father heard the teacher say "If you don't study and pass your exams you will end up in a place like this". He was beyond rage. The problem has been with us for a very long time

And now the Chinese are laughing all the way to the bank……safest place for any country to be is to have a broad based economy, not just service based….what were we thinking ?
EDIT, we should not forget our route to being one of the top economies in the world was driven by the industrial revolution….rant over, sorry…"back in my box"

[mk1]

For years & years this country has denigrated any sort of work in manufacturing. This really started in the 1980's with Mrs Thatcher telling we could all live quite comfortably selling each other hamburgers and that Manufacturing was of no importance when you had a thriving financial sector.

30 years on from that we are seeing the chickens come home to roost.

For generations kids have been told that the only way to earn a living is to spend 3 years & fifty grand getting a meaningless degree, after that they think they are "too good" to get their hands mucky. Technical schools are pretty much non-existent, I would suspect that there is less technical education in this country than there was in the early days of the industrial revolution.

As Mr Frazer in dad's Army used to say . . . . .We are DOOMED! Doomed I tell you

[mab01uk]

Kingston Polytechnic where I studied Engineering on day-release in the 1970's, while working for a company in an apprenticeship, is sadly now a University....

Apparently..."at their peak there were over thirty Polytechnics in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, often located in urban areas large enough to support industry or commerce, from which they usually took the city name. These are all now universities. Polytechnics were often seen as ranking below universities in the provision of higher education concentrating on applied science and engineering education and because the qualifications necessary to gain a place in one were sometimes lower than for a university. In UK culture, an engineering, applied science and technological education tended to be looked down upon socially. Industries and activities such as "manufacturing" and "engineering" were perceived to be things of the past, boring and "dirty". The connection to polytechnics did not help their cause in terms of achieving status in the public eye. This attitude and influence led to an expansion of the more popular subjects in the "creative" industries, such as fashion, arts and design, media studies, journalism, film studies, and sports management. The social influence caused many polytechnics to change their faculty of "Engineering" into a faculty of "Design and Technology".....

[woodypup no 2]

We don't make anything anymore. To pander to this ridiculous need to be leading the world in low carbon bollocks, we have got rid of manufacturing on a mass scale.
It seems we prefer to let others make (with the pollution that involves) so we can say look at us, we're perfect, even our cows are carhon neutral.

[gazza82]

Somerford's need to get in on the Apprentice-act again (Not Alan Sugar's lamentable bunch).

There are a few "classic" companies training up their own staff .. the rest need to. Not for cheap labour but teach the kids a proper skill.

A young member in our Club did a weeks work-experience at the SOS Workshop .. he wasn't bckward in coming forward and grabbed Fuzz at an NEC event and asked. He's now working as an apprentice mechanic and hopes to broaden his skills to move into Classics.

[Exminiman]

To pander to this ridiculous need to be leading the world in low carbon bollocks

Off thread, but sort of connected... now, we even have to fill our Diesel cars up with diluted cow piss, or they stop working

[gs.davies]

I recall a story my father told me back in the mid sixties when he was in charge of a bit of the Dowty group near Wolverhampton that was designing and making the powered flying controls for Concord.
Following a request, he agreed to allow a group of teenagers from the local school to tour the manufacturing halls. My father heard the teacher say "If you don't study and pass your exams you will end up in a place like this". He was beyond rage. The problem has been with us for a very long time

I can quite imagine this. At school in the late 80's we were actively pushed into industries that we may have had no interest in, with anything practical being seen as a 'drop out' kind of outcome. Consequently, my entire working life has been pretty unenjoyable and I hope for my own children that they go an do something they've got a passion for to make their way.

[Peter Laidler]

If only Gary...... when my daughter was at junior school,she would come into the garage where I was restoring my S and doing my weekly overhaul on my Commando. Most Brit Bike owners will understand this. She was a maestro at sorting out spanners and doing up bolts and knew the differences between metric, AF and Whitworth like it was second nature. She was destined for mech engineering or better still, civil or construction engineering, but I digress.

But once at grammar, things changed and dirty hands, helping dads with cars and bikes were for other kids. Wifey was happy but alas, no dirty hands for Sarah!

On the subject of apprentices, I mean REAL apprenticeships, the Army/RAF and the Navy had the right idea. You take the cream of the school leavers to train for 3 years and make them sign an undertaking that they'll stay with you for at least 5 years. No get-outs.... You sort of repay what they've given you. A bit of a PITA double edged sword though.....