ASE, S/P2 to offer workplace mentoring program

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — The ASE Education Foundation is launching a workplace mentoring program for the automotive repair and service sector, designed to help businesses identify and train their service personnel to become mentors.

The foundation — formerly known as NATEF — is teaming with U Inc.'s S/P2 divisionto develop and distribute the Workplace Mentoring System, which offers online courses covering the roles of the three key players — the mentor, the mentee and the manager.

The courses explain the roles and responsibilities of a mentor and a mentee, as well as laying out the responsibilities of the manager who should oversee the mentor-mentee relationship. It includes content from choosing the mentor and hiring the mentee, to handling business decisions such as pay plans and tool issues.

"Mentoring is an essential component of a successful 'grow your own' employee process," Trish Serratore, president of the ASE Education Foundation, said.

"S/P2 has created an online mentoring program that…allows the instructor to be involved, to monitor and to be a resource. We see this opportunity to team up with S/P2 as a way to help the industry grow the next generation of technicians, both in the classroom and in the shop."

S/P2 President Kyle Holt said, "To provide a complete mentoring system, we knew we had to provide a framework for the tasks shops should use to train and evaluate an entry-level technician.

"The ASE Education Foundation task lists…are used in hundreds of automotive schools, are industry generated and industry approved. Working together allowed us to provide a mentoring program with task lists for automotive service, medium/heavy truck, collision repair and refinish and collision estimators.

"By teaming up with the ASE Education Foundation, industry can use the same road map that is widely used across education," he said, "with the flexibility to customize the task list to fit their facility's specific needs.

"Those shops who are going to thrive will have to grow their own technicians," said Holt. "With the Workplace Mentoring system, we want to give the forward-thinking shops a true competitive advantage."

S/P2, ASE and the ASE Education Foundation have been meeting since early 2017 on the issue of technician shortage and developing a mentoring program.

The next steps for the groups are to integrate the ASE Education Foundation tasks into the Workplace Mentoring System and to develop a pricing model for accredited and non-accredited programs and ASE Education Foundation partners.

In addition, the development of downloadable, customizable task lists, as well as mentoring tracking via computer, tablet, or phone, is under way.

Overland Park-based S/P2 provides online training anually to more than 175,000 workers and students nationwide on industry-specific safety and pollution prevention, ethics, soft skills and human resources topics, as well as an online workplace mentoring program for the automotive industry.

The National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) was established in 1972 as a non-profit organization to help improve the quality of automotive service and repair through the voluntary testing and certification of automotive technicians and parts specialists.