BEN, do you know who they are?
If you run a garage and employ people, you are playing with loaded dice if you do not know about BEN, and worse if your team have never heard of it from you.
BEN – Support for Life is not a random generic charity in the distance. It exists specifically for people who work or have worked in the automotive trade, along with their families. It isn’t just their in times of need and emergencies. It offers confidential, free support around mental health, money worries, physical health and general wellbeing, with life coaching and crisis help when life really falls apart. Support for life is not just a strap line, that is the job. If you don’t know them. Don’t waste this chance to find out. Make BEN part of your employment strategy.
Most owners know their staff are under pressure. Rising costs, mortgage stress, childcare, relationship problems, substance use, burnout from years on the tools. You see the short temper, the sick days, the quiet bloke who has gone even quieter. What you do not see is the moment they sit in the car outside in the morning and wonder if it is worth turning the key. You are not supposed to fix all of that. But you can put a very real lifeline in reach by making BEN part of the way your business looks after its people.
Just think about it. If you like to talk about the team as family but you have never once put Ben posters in the canteen, never mentioned the helpline in a tool box talk, never dropped the web address into the employee handbook, then the family line is just noise. You cannot claim people matter then stay silent about a service that exists entirely to keep those same people afloat.
The real strength of BEN is that it sits outside the business. Your technician who is drowning in debt can talk to someone who is not their manager. Your service advisor who is having panic attacks can get support without worrying it ends up in a performance review. That independence is often the difference between someone asking for help and someone quietly falling apart in front of you.
From an owner’s view there is a selfish angle too, and there is nothing wrong with admitting it. Every time BEN helps one of your people sort their money worries, build better coping skills or manage a mental health issue, it reduces the risk of absence, sudden resignations and costly mistakes. The charity talks openly about improving resilience and productivity in the automotive workforce. That is not fluffy language. It is exactly what an independent garage needs to survive.
There is also more on offer than a helpline and a few web pages. Ben runs training for businesses around men’s health, equality, diversity and inclusion and wider work health topics. A half-day session with people who understand the automotive world can land better than any generic corporate wellbeing talk. It shows staff that you are prepared to bring in specialists rather than just telling everyone to toughen up and get on with it.
If you have not taken the time to learn what BEN offers, and you have not put those details in front of your team, then you do not really have the right to be shocked when a member of staff breaks down, disappears on long term sick or leaves the trade completely. You cannot control their private life, but you have ignored one of the simplest tools available to help them cope.
In practical terms this does not need to be complicated. Print the posters. Add the helpline number to your staff induction and contracts. Mention BEN at least a couple of times a year in team meetings. Put a discrete link on your website, your internal communications or staff portal for people to find in their own time. Make it normal, not a big emotional event, to say if anyone is struggling there is confidential support out there that has nothing to do with pay, appraisals or whether last week’s job ran over.
Independent garages like to think of themselves as part of a wider trade. BEN is part of that same family. If you run a workshop, support for life should not be a secret your people have to stumble across by accident. It should be one of the basics you give them, right alongside a contract, a safe ramp and a working torque wrench. What are you doing to protect your business and it’s workforce?