Best Dealerships To Work For in Canada 2019

Location: Winnipeg, Man. 

Dealer principal: Steve Chipman

Dealership group: Birchwood Automotive Group

Number of employees: 55

2018 new-vehicle sales: 1,047, up 9%

2018 used-vehicle sales: 504, up 5% 

Chief Human Resources Officer MaryAnn Kempe on unusual methods developed to reward employees and show them they are valued: By leveraging our team members, Birchwood provides referral bonuses of up to $2,000 for team members who refer candidates from their personal networks. We have the highest retention from this referral pool. Every quarter, our top sales, finance and service consultants are celebrated and recognized. We hold an annual “Birchwood bucks BB” auction for all our customer-facing staff, who earn BB dollars and in a fun evening, use the bucks to bid on a wide variety of gifts. The annual event brings our teams together for an evening of music, food and team member recognition. 

General Manager Joe Garcia on the automaker’s practices to promote or incentivize hiring and retention: Honda educates our team regarding recruitment and retention practices by providing mandatory training. Participants will explore a variety of tools and techniques associated with managing team member turnover, recruitment, goal setting, training and engagement. Honda’s recruiting philosophy is “do not hire for the sake of hiring” and to have other managers involved in the recruitment process.

Garcia on lessons learned from hiring/employment mistakes: We have had some setbacks when it comes to hiring team members too quickly. Our learning lesson is to hire slow and to gather feedback from the team to help assess fit and skill set.