Lily Burt

Hi there! I’m Lily and I’ve been a part of our Deloitte team for just over seven years now. I grew up on a farm in South-East Queensland, and finished Uni at the Gold Coast, before starting with Deloitte in Sydney.  

I’ve loved living, working and building friendships in Melbourne now for the last 5 years, and can often be found doing Hot Mat Pilates or having a Prosecco with pals!   

What about your journey in the Automotive industry – what roles did you have along the way, and where has it brought you now? 

Starting as a Graduate with the firm, I’ve had the chance to work across every facet of the Motor Industry Services business. In Sydney, I was a part of the team supporting clients on the eProfitFocus (ePF) Benchmarking Platform. When used properly, the platform has the potential to transform our clients’ businesses, through insights and analytics that can drive performance.  

I really enjoyed the people side of the business and so transferred to our Melbourne practice, to be a part of the team building out the Training and Consulting services. 

Over the years we’ve had the chance to develop some great relationships (and friendships) with many of the major OEMs, Dealer Groups and Dealers across Australia, and together we’ve developed a series of training and capability development programs for every job role within the industry.  

What do you love most about the Automotive Industry? Why does it ignite your passion so much? 

I love the people! It’s an entrepreneurial bunch that make up the industry. They have a great attitude and an appetite for growth and change. The industry has a huge opportunity to become an ‘employer of choice’ if it really sets its mind to it.  

This sentiment transcends the OEM and Dealer divide, and it’s really interesting to see how different people and businesses are coming together to evolve their policies, workplaces and pathways to help to solve this challenge.   

What do you think will be the biggest change we’ll notice in the evolving Automotive industry over the next 5-10 years? 

The future of training and development in Automotive is very exciting!  

Already, we are seeing major shifts in the way that OEMs and Dealers are training their people. The aim is to build a resilient, emotionally intelligent and empathetic workforce that can drive business and operational performance in this changing environment.  

There are already a couple of training and development trends that we have started to see in this post-pandemic world… 

Blended learning formats are here to stay! Programs that utilise virtual and face-to-face learning are quickly becoming the preferred format for OEMs and Dealers. They allow for significant travel and time cost savings that can be better invested in learning and development.  

OEMs and Dealers are also exploring how they can place learning in the flow of work by incorporating personalised development into training programs. Things like one-to-one coaching and dealership-based projects really bring the learning outcomes to life for participants and accelerates the return on investment in training.    

How do you see Deloitte playing a role in navigating and shaping this change? 

At Deloitte, we have access to a global network of automotive and training-design experts that are regularly providing insights on innovation and leading practice, that we then incorporate into our training programs. We’ve recently introduced a range of new training components (e.g. e-learning modules) to our programs, so as OEMs and Dealers continue to think differently about how they train their people, it’s exciting to think about where we could go next!  

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, our business (like most others) had to pivot to fully virtual delivery of work for our clients. Leveraging our technology systems and national network of offices (local hubs), we were able to deliver many of our programs virtually and have worked out how to make this a great experience! Virtual resources present a huge opportunity for the industry, so we’d love to use these tools to support our clients to grow their reach, accessibility and engagement in training.