Are we designing our way into a skills vacuum?
My father was from Ireland, and I’ve spent many a summer enjoying all this beautiful country has to offer. I am now introducing my own children to the joys of a couple of weeks spent in simpler pleasures — long walks along the bay hunting for sea life, mooing and baaing at cows and sheep, and all that comes with country life.
The last few times we’ve visited, my uncle — the one who remained on the small family dairy farm, who has long since retired — has mentioned more than once just how things have changed. We’re not talking about the Irish way of life, but the technology that so many people in this country rely on — the tractor. He gave his very old tractor away to a cousin a few years back because he wanted something to work on and rehab for himself. And another friend showed me videos of her teenage sons working on the old tractor they, too, have fixed up for their own use.
Notice anything there? They’re both old — as in decades-old — tractors. Modern tractors are exactly what they should be — more efficient, more reliable and much more digital. But modern tractors don’t allow most small-time farmers to repair and service them themselves as they have been used to for years. I’ve had similar conversations with farmers in the U.S. One thing many smaller farmers hang onto is their older tractors because they just can’t work on the new ones themselves.
While pondering this, I came across a report from McKinsey & Company, “The future of sales and service for off-highway-equipment dealers.” The big theme throughout this report was digitalization — that dealers who get themselves up to speed on digitalized and electrified vehicles will have the edge in sales and service.
“To continue to thrive in this new environment, dealers must invest now to build the sales and service organizations they will need to operate as digitalized, customer-centric businesses. This includes investments in new talent — for example, setting up analytics organizations and digital capabilities such as e-commerce platforms. Dealers will need to balance this with the need to manage nearterm shortages in talent — such as diesel technicians — by hiring from parallel industries or by tapping formerly retired technicians,” the report noted.
This isn’t just a problem in agriculture, either. I have read similar reports that many of the airline industry’s woes with planes being redirected or making unexpected landings come from a swathe of layoffs during COVID, when they lost a huge chunk of their brain trust when many older technicians retired early.
My concern here, like the report notes, is the lack of skilled technicians to work on these modern machines. Advancements in technology are necessary, and OEMs must continue to make them. While we continue to operate in an industry where a skills shortage will only continue to grow, how can we expect those who keep the lights on, so to speak, to keep up? Technological advancements must keep pace with the skills of those maintaining the machines or we’ll soon face breakdown after breakdown. It’s not just about honing in on training. It’s also about understanding the human element needed to keep those machines running. We need to strike a balance between modern machine advancements and the trained service personnel to maintain these machines.
Mary C. Gannon • Editor-in-Chief
mgannon@wtwhmedia.com
linkedin.com/in/marygannonramsak
Filed Under: Digital Issues