What is it?
If your reaction to the above is the same as mine was when I was living in ignorance, then this blog is for you.
Four times a year the ADINJC hold a half day member’s meeting which allows members to meet with the ADINJC governing committee members, network with other members and benefit from external speakers, within and without the driving instruction industry, but all experts in their field which may benefit you and your business.
What happens then?
The first part of the day is taken up with ADINJC administrative stuff and if you are a numbers nerd who enjoys statistics, there will be something in it for you – not so much for me.
However, one of the main benefits of being a member of the ADINJC is that you can contact them if you encounter a problem that is so bizarre that it falls outside the knowledge that you have as a driving instructor.
For example, does accruing 6 points on your licence whilst training as a PDI immediately disqualify you from becoming an ADI? My reaction would be yes, I think it probably does. In fact, it doesn’t but the registrar cannot consider those 6 points until you have qualified at which point they may refuse to enter you on the register or they might accept your application regardless.
Furthermore, even if you contact the DVSA with that question, there is no guarantee that they will answer the question correctly or that they won’t subsequently change their advice. By using the ADINJC as an intermediary, they will be able to fight your corner for you.
Some of these are reported back at the member’s meeting and they can be a real eye-opener.
What’s in it for me?
I have attended many training courses throughout my working life, some technical and some professional. Technical courses tend to be full of information where I need all of it i.e., you can’t exactly prepare a presentation if you don’t know how Windows Powerpoint works. They are teaching you a skill and you need to learn all of it to use even part of it.
Professional courses tend to be different. They can be full of disparate ideas, theories and suggestions which can be adopted in part or in whole. Sometimes they can be mostly full of information which you already know and don’t really need to be reminded of – but then there’ll be a little nugget, some new, shiny idea that you’ve never even got close to considering and nuggets, as any reasonably competent prospector will tell you, are worth their weight in gold!
ADINJC member meetings are a gold field when you are looking for nuggets and there are nuggets aplenty.
Presentation – David Mann
The benefit of having external speakers can be massive. David Mann is the National ADI Enforcement Delivery Manager for the DVSA so if you are a PDI, he is responsible for the availability of Part 2 and Part 3 tests and if you are an ADI, he is responsible for the availability of Standards Checks. That makes him a prime target for instructors as we all have a beef with the DVSA, right? However, he quickly got his audience on-side and acknowledged the problems that we faced but only accepted responsibility for those he can change.
Lots of statistics followed and I could list them all here but I’m not going to. A couple of nuggets though, 44,052 currently on the register, in excess of 5,000 PDI’s currently in the system. 22,000 part 2’s and 10,000 part 3’s delivered so far this year. Astonishingly those tests are delivered by just 45 examiners who cover the entire country.
David also explained what the examiner training consisted of and dispelled a few myths about the standards check (SC), all of which was very interesting. For example, you do not need to mention the dual controls at the beginning of the SC but you do need to cover it if you use them during the lesson. The term ‘wheels moving’ is also a myth; you can stop at the side of the road, if it makes sense.
Whilst I could regurgitate everything that David said, I know I would not be able to do it justice and would be unlikely to get it perfectly right. If you want all the nuggets that he was so freely handing out, then attending the meeting is the only way to go.
Adrianne Carter
Adrianne is a communication expert on interpreting non-verbal behaviour.
Although I was really interested in what she was going to say to us, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one going into her talk worrying that she was going to dissect my personality just by looking at me! I wonder if that was why I sat towards the back? Of course there was nothing to worry about.
Adrianne, obviously used to this kind of presentation, took us through the seven basic faces, which just for fun, I’ll let you work out for yourself:
- H____ (5) ☺️
- S_____(6)😨
- D________(9)🤢
- S________(9)😯
- S__(3)😔
- C______(7)😌
- A____(5)😡
She talked a little about how to deal with certain emotions, based on the non-verbal clues, like how to deal with fear, born out of a feeling of a ‘lack of control’.
One of the thought-provoking questions she asked was “Why do we always take pictures of our successful students after test when actually we should be in the photo as well?” If we are using it for marketing purposes then surely we should be, saying ‘I did this’ and looking and being confident.
Finally she imparted some nuggets about confidence, having it and dealing with things that would detract from it. If you lack confidence, then the statistics would say that you are definitely not the only one. Supremely self-confident people are definitely in the minority but that doesn’t mean you can’t show that you are confident.
Why should I join?
Quite simply, the benefits outweigh the costs. Premium membership, direct from the ADINJC, is £4.50 per month. However, if you sign up through MyDriveTime, it is just £2.50 per month – that’s about 5 minutes worth of lesson time. You will get more than that from one member’s meeting just in terms of the odd nugget or freebie. For example, Adrianne offered everyone at the member’s meeting an evaluation of their non-verbal communication completely free, a service which normally costs £25 – that’s the equivalent of 10 month’s membership – completely free.
It all counts as CPD as well and if you have declared to the DVSA that you are committed to it, then you need to do some!
That plus the benefits that you get as a member, things that you need as an ADI, make this an absolute no-brainer. The benefits include:
- Comprehensive Support, because we all need advice from time to time
- Specialised Assistance, for those really obscure problems that might crop up
- Exclusive Discounts, to help with rising costs which affect us all
- Resources including templates for your driving school
- Comprehensive, discounted PI/PL Insurance for you as an instructor
- Industry Representation, via the ADINJC, direct to the DVSA
- Continuous Professional Development, through discounted training courses and workshops
- Member meetings, 4 times a year with nuggets aplenty
I cannot hope to list all the benefits of being a part of the ADINJC but having attended this most recent members meeting I am more convinced than ever that the benefits vastly outweigh the costs and membership is as essential a part of a driving instructor’s business as a car to teach in!
To confirm that what I have told you is an accurate representation of the ADINJC – although I haven’t told you everything – and to sign up, go to the Partners page on the MyDriveTime app or click this link and then follow the process through.
…and finally
Just in case you haven’t managed to work out the seven basic faces above, they are Happy, Scared, Disgusted, Surprised, Sad, Content and Angry.
As always, if you find any issues with this blog or anything else, please contact us at support@mydrivetime.co.uk.
Feature – Multi-Profile Accounts
Ever had a new student come to you and been unable to connect to you via the student app because their previous instructor also used MyDriveTime? That meant you had to contact us to disconnect them from their previous instructor to free them up for your invitation. Then this feature is good news for you and good news for your student. Whether they have had one or many instructors you will be able to invite them straight away and connect to you.
A byproduct of this feature is that it will enable PDI’s to transition from being a student to an instructor in MyDriveTime without problem and also gives instructors the ability to create themselves dummy student accounts so they can experience what their students will experience from the student app.
What’s the difference between an account and a profile?
Your account is what you log into using your login details, namely a phone number or an email address, and a password. Previously you could only have one profile for each account but now you can have multiple profiles attached to each account.
So, an instructor will have their instructor profile but now can have a student profile as well, both using the same login details.
Furthermore, a student can have multiple student profiles, one for their current instructor and one for a previous instructor – or more than one if they have moved between a number of instructors.
How does that work then?
When you click ‘Get Started’ you will enter your login details exactly as you do now. If you only have one active profile linked with your account, you will go straight into it and not notice any difference at all. So that’s most of you!
For the few complicated souls out there who have multiple active profiles, you will get to choose each time you log in which profile you want to work with.
It’s all about hats! If you only have one hat, you wear that hat; if you have more than one hat, you choose which hat you’re going to wear today.
I’m an instructor – what hats do I have?
As an instructor, you can now create a student profile so you can see what your students will see. As an instructor, create a student using your phone number and/or email address. Invite the student to use the app. When you receive the invitation, click on the link.
Rather than create a new account, click “Sign in to link your account with …” and then log in to your current account. The app will connect your new profile, i.e., a student profile, to your current account.
Now, whenever you log in, you will be asked to select whether you want to wear your instructor hat or your student hat.
I’m a PDI and I’ve just got my Instructor hat!
As a PDI you have probably been a student of an existing instructor whilst doing your part 1 and part 2 and therefore have an existing student profile. Now you need to move on to part 3 and have a new hat, as an instructor.
When your school invites you to become an instructor, instead of registering as such, click “sign in here” and log in to your existing account.
Your account will now be connected to your instructor profile as well and you will be able to select which profile you want to work with, when you log in.
My student had a previous instructor!
In this situation, you can now invite your new student to use the app. When they receive the link, they click on it and when asked to register, click “I already have an account”.
They log in using their existing student details and then they will be invited to connect this new student profile to their existing account.
When they log in, they can choose either this profile or their previous profile with their old instructor if it is still active.
Notes
- Transferring a student from one instructor to another within a school, will create the required student record and automatically create the profile so they will not need to be invited.
- When a student has started with a new instructor, not within a school, they will need to be invited in the normal way.
- Presently the only way to swap between profiles is to log out and log in again. This will be changed in the near future so that there is a ‘Switch Account’ button included within the app.
…and finally
As driving instructors, we need to be many things to our students:- instructors, assessors, mentors, advisors, counsellors and sometimes care workers. To misquote from a popular sci-fi franchise, “The needs of the one aren’t necessarily the needs of the many” and we need to wear many hats. This change to the app is to facilitate some of the different hats you may need to wear. We hope you will find that it makes your lives easier.
p.s., There is a subtle change to this blog, different from our standard blogs. Have you spotted it?
As always, if you find any issues with this blog or anything else, please contact us at support@mydrivetime.co.uk.
Feature
Enquiry Management for Teams is a new web feature which allows you to manage enquiries to multi-instructor schools, dealing with them appropriately and efficiently. This improves customer service and broadens your control of incoming business from enquiry to student, allowing more oversight of their overall learning journey and giving you as a business owner more opportunity to grow your business.
What’s in an Enquiry?
Every enquiry to your driving school is an opportunity for new business, even if you can’t fulfil the requirement at that moment in time. Creating a comprehensive enquiry record, allowing you to decide, in an instant, whether you want to accept or discard the enquiry and be able to do that as well as passing it to one of your instructors easily is essential.
You want to keep track of all your enquiries and be able to see at a glance where a specific one is at. You want to be able to take that enquiry and process it efficiently and accurately first time, every time.
When I was looking for my current vehicle I decided not to get another lease car but opted to buy one instead, my lovely VW Polo. My thinking was that I would continue to teach manual for about 5 years and then swap my teaching to automatic whilst keeping my car and leasing an automatic for the remainder of my time as an instructor. I would keep my VW Polo as my car because I like it so much – did I mention that?
To be honest, this was a bit of a gamble because whilst we all know that the drift towards electric and therefore automatic vehicles is constant and irresistable, I didn’t really have any idea how long that would take and the fact that the government keep moving the deadlines show that they don’t either. Ultimately we probably will all be driving electric cars but it may well not happen in my lifetime.
What I needed was an enquiry management system so that I could keep track of all the enquiries I wasn’t able to fulfil at that time. Then I would be able to identify when shifting my business to ‘automatic only’ made business sense. Far better than a piece of paper that I would then lose or keeping a rough idea in my head – which, these days, would stay there for about as long as an available test slot!
So what else do I get?
Consider what enquirers say when they contact you. Do you have any space (in your diary)? Do you have any female instructors? Do you do automatic? Do you cover ‘location’ (somewhere in the middle of nowhere)? If you are an independent instructor, you should be able to answer these without too much of a problem but if you have a school with 20 instructors, you might need to check. Then you get the more extreme requests such as “I’ve got my test on Tuesday, do you have a car I can use?” or “I want to book some lessons from June 18th next year, can I do that?” (Yes I have, genuinely, had one that was 8 months ahead…)
Enquiry Management for Teams makes all of that a whole lot easier. You can search on postcode or transmission type and you can also see your instructors’ diaries at a click to identify whether they have any capacity. You can see those enquirers that have tests booked and see all enquiries by date so you know who wants lessons when. You can also prioritise students if you want to bring them to the top of the list.
What if…
… one of my instructors says no?
You can simply transfer the student back to the school or directly to a different instructor. Furthermore, we’ll keep track of their journey through your school, no matter how many times they change instructor. The integrity of your data and the traceability that gives you is one of our founding principles and we have maintained it through our transfer tracking facilities.
… one of my instructors leaves the school?
They’ll keep the student (unless you have an agreement with them that they won’t) and their history will be updated accordingly.
…and finally
We don’t believe in only doing half a job. This is phase 1 of Enquiry Management specifically for multi-instructor schools. Phase 2 is already in the works and will concentrate on an enquiry form for you to include on your website to take enquiries directly into the app. Following on its heels will be enquiry management for independent instructors but that won’t signal the end of the road for Enquiry Management. Beyond that, we have several really exciting ideas which will simply blow your socks off…
As always, if you find any issues with this blog or anything else, please contact us at support@mydrivetime.co.uk.