Thanks to everyone who took part in the paintshop survey - we had 269 responses and the survey is now closed. The vast majority of respondents were refinish technicians at 64%, business owners 27% and apprentices 10% - nice to see apprentices taking part too. Here's some brief observations from the survey, we'll be publishing the results in full in the July issue of the magazine.
Which paint do you use?
Waterborne still doesn't dominate the market with 36% using solvent paints, 37% using waterbased and 27% using a mixture of both. Painters clearly have a fair bit of influence on which paint brand or type is used with 47% saying they have a lot of influence on choice. When it comes to colour matching it seems the majority of painters scorn digital options with 70% saying old school is best and use spray out cards.
Willingness to train & safety culture
It was gratifying to see that 83% of respondents were happy to train apprentices, with 12% saying they will if they are asked to but it isn't really their bag. Only 5% said they felt its not their job to train. On having a robust workplace culture 69% of respondents said they their workplace takes WHS seriously, 26% said there's a policy but it's not really enforced and 5% said their workplace didn't give a stuff.
I'm going to say that I was suprised at the the answer to this question as I so seldom see painters wearing full PPE - no gloves being the main culprit but 85.5% of respondents said they wear the appropriate PPE including gloves. A mere 14.5% said they wear PPE most of the time unless its too hot or invenient and none admitted to not caring about the risks.
We will announce the winners of the survey prizes in next week's e-news.