Breaking the Mold – Rethinking Shop Roles

by Alana Quartuccio

There seems to be an unspoken rule that there is only one way to set up an auto body facility.

The traditional body shop likely consists of anywhere from one to multiple workers in the following roles: body technician, painter/refinisher, detailer and estimator. Nothing wrong with this set up per se, but in this ever-evolving and challenging world of collision repair, having an “ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality may not go very far. Shop owners who lament about struggles with finding good workers and hope to improve efficiency may need to consider breaking the mold to change things up.

Shop owners in the greater WMABA region are achieving success and improving efficiency through role segmentation – dissecting traditional jobs into specific roles geared toward employees’ strengths. 

In this day and age where it is absolutely paramount to fix cars correctly to OEM standards, having certain workers perform specific tasks is crucial toward ensuring repairs are done right. 

“It’s completely unfeasible to have one person do a repair from start to finish,” believes Barry Dorn (Dorn’s Body & Paint; Mechanicsville, VA), who started to implement role segmentation in his facility a little more than 15 years ago. 

He recognized a need to look past traditional norms when it came to recruiting staff, finding that everyone looked toward the same talent pool. He often found that shops would pay “high wages to folks who may or may not have been what they claimed to be,” so he set out to start an apprenticeship program. Now all these years later, just about every technician on his team has only worked at his facility. “They started out as apprentices, and we trained them up to be full class A techs.”

Taking a close look at other industries, Dorn saw the potential in better isolating tasks. For example, one doctor doesn’t perform an entire operation. It takes a team of physicians, each of whom specialize in a certain area, along with nurses and an anesthesiologist to perform one operation. He also took a good look at the aviation industry, which shares some similarities with the collision industry, such as the use of aluminum – and most importantly, they share the need to protect the lives of consumers. 

It all comes down to the fact that one person “can’t be good at every aspect of a repair,” he says of the common misconception. “So, we took those traditional roles and broke them up into four or five different parts.” 

Dorn paints a vivid picture of what operations look like at his factory-certified facility, which has a total of 62 employees. “We have technicians who only do structural repairs. We have technicians who only work on aluminum. We have technicians who only perform small repairs. There’s a team of technicians who do certain aspects of the vehicle and another team that only does mechanical repair work, and there are technicians who only perform ADAS work.” 

Employees will cross-train on different tasks as well, but the idea of mastering one skill ensures they are the right person for that job role. 

K&M Collision of Hickory, NC began implementing role segmentation when the business was just starting to build up. “We were a super small facility at the time, and it just seemed like training someone to specialize in one role was an easier way to fill roles as we grew versus searching for an individual who had a wide range of skill sets,” shares Michael Bradshaw of K&M Collision.

“It can be pretty easy to bring someone in who has never worked on a car before and teach them how to change a mirror by the end of a work day, but it’s impossible to teach that same person how to change and weld a new quarter panel on a vehicle. That’s the thought process we looked at. The majority of collision work is non-structural; there’s far more cosmetic work, so structural was one of the first areas we looked at when we focused on segmentation because we realize the critical nature of structural work and the skill set required for it versus changing mirrors and doors and similar tasks. Having a dedicated structural technician allowed us to change our hiring practices, and it really opened things up.” 

In addition to a dedicated structural technician, Bradshaw’s 18-person team consists of a dedicated mechanical technician, two detail technicians and specialized disassembly and reassembly crews who are devoted to certain manufacturers. 

According to Dorn and Bradshaw, role segmentation leads to increased efficiency at their facilities. But it most certainly didn’t happen overnight. Shop owners and managers need to be involved in the process and will need to seek out solutions, whether that be with tooling, training or mentorship, stresses Dorn. “You have to go through that process, and you’ll quickly see what strengths that apprentice or technician has, and you’ll also very quickly see what weaknesses they have,” he advises. 

Bradshaw believes having manufacturer certification is another key factor. Having his disassembly and reassembly teams dedicated to certain manufacturers allows the technicians an opportunity to truly master those brands. “We’ll have a technician work on no more than three to four brands, so their familiarity with those brands, along with the repetition, helps improve efficiency within those brands.”

 Dorn also segments roles by OEM certification. “We do higher-end certified repairs. We don’t have any DRPs, and we follow the OEM procedures to the letter. They must be done, and they must be paid for, or we cannot repair the vehicle. 

“We have repair planners and technicians who only work on certain OEMs. Then depending on the material makeup of the vehicle, it will go to a certain group of techs who specialize in steel or aluminum to do their portion of the repair, another may work on the disassembly and blueprinting side, and one tech will do the structural aspect while another group will put the vehicle back together, another performs mechanical repairs and then another for ADAS.”

Having employees dedicated to certain OEMs and certain roles has not only helped to create efficiency, but it’s also made for happier employees.

“We all like certain aspects of a role, and then there are roles that we don’t like, so we always like to have folks doing what they want to do because putting people in roles they don’t like will clearly make them not proficient at all,” Dorn points out, reminding others, “These are ongoing conversations that you have to have with your employees.” 

It’s a constant process. “Once someone gets good at a role, the first thing we want them to do is to start to train their replacement before they move up. In some cases, people do stay in one role, but some like to move up, and if it’s feasible from an operations side, then clearly we would want them to remain in that position.” 

Bradshaw says the willingness to continuously seek improvement is part of the K&M Collision culture. 

“The fact that we’ve implemented role segmentation and continue to refine it speaks to the continuous improvement culture that we have as well,” he says. “That leads to the staff being engaged and understanding that we’re not just setting up one way to do things. We’re constantly looking to evolve and improve, and that helps foster those ideas from our staff. Many businesses are not willing to listen to employees’ ideas and ways to improve and are very slow to make changes. We’re willing to listen, and if it makes sense, we implement it. We won’t think about something and not act on it.”

At Dorn’s Body & Paint, turnover is very low which is a good thing, but as Dorn points out, growing one’s own team is not immediate. “The person you hire today is not going to be a Class A tech here for a timeframe of four to eight years.” It’s also important to find people who fit into the business’ culture. He likes to look for those who believe in being “a perpetual student. You can never stop learning because you’re always behind. I don’t care how good you are; you are always behind.” Dorn himself continues to take part in training alongside his employees. 

WMABA President Kris Burton (Rosslyn Auto Body; Alexandria, VA) has shared SEMA and Southeast Collision Conference (SCC) stages with Bradshaw and Dorn on the topic of role segmentation and the importance of valuing one’s employees. 

“Our ADAS technician is 19 years old. I’ve been sending him to training. Invest in your staff, and they will trust you and know that you have their best interests at heart,” Burton told the SCC audience last spring. 

“From an efficiency standpoint, yes, I can certainly tell you that when folks are proficient at what they’re doing, they are much, much faster. Period,” exclaims Dorn. “Years ago, the average body tech did most of the repair with the exception of painting. If you go back even further, you would have what’s known as a ‘combo tech’ who would literally do the entire car from start to finish, including painting and washing the vehicle. Well, those days are long gone. 

“We’ve evolved from being a body shop/paint shop,” he continues. “There’s a bunch of operations that fall under that, so we segregated it down to eight different departments with certain folks involved in the process who may have the car for an hour or maybe three to four hours. The car moves through the production sequence similarly to how it was built.” 

Shops considering taking on role segmentation should start by looking at what type of work they have and examining the volume to see what roles could be segmented, Bradshaw suggests. “The industry tends to have us believing we need to hire a body man who can do it all – metal work and structural – and I think that [mentality] is what leads to some of the labor shortage claims in the industry.” 

“Don’t give up,” Dorn directs anyone considering moving to this format. “It’s going to fail one, two, maybe three or four times, but keep trying. You will find the correct balance for the team, your customers and your business, but you’ve got to keep trying. Many may have different historical views of how things are done, but just because it fails once or twice does not mean the process is a failure. It may not be with the same group you have now, but you’ll get there.” 

Bradshaw agrees that it takes commitment. “A lot of people who come to my shop look at the size of the facility we are in and the way we do things and say, ‘We could never do that, because we’re not like you,’ and that bothers me because when I started, we had three employees including myself. It’s a progression. It doesn’t happen overnight, and I think anybody can do it. You have to get the ball rolling and understand that there will be some growing pains. You’ll come out on the other side and find that people will feel a lot better about the job they are doing and the quality of the repair they are performing once you get this process implemented.”

Want more? Check out the January 2025 issue of Hammer & Dolly!