Diversity, inclusion, youth key ingredients to the Best Dealerships To Work For

For Marlborough Ford in Calgary, building an inclusive workplace began with firing half the staff.

Managing Partner Brent Walker isn’t shy about describing the dealership as “a store that was pretty rough” when his group, McManes Automotive, took over in April 2021.

“Unfortunately, we terminated half of the employees,” he told Automotive News Canada. “It was very poorly run and we replaced them with people with the same goals we have as a group.”

Walker and his team built a dealership that in a short time landed on Automotive News Canada’s 2022 list of Best Dealerships To Work For. Part of that resulted from recruiting from communities of varying ethnicities, and attracting young-er workers and women.

• View all 25 Best Dealerships to Work For here.

Of the 25 Best Dealerships, 10 had programs aimed at ensuring their workforces reflected Canada’s racial diversity.

When hiring, Walker said, his team places ads on government websites aimed at various ethnicities, and it works to overcome the male-domination of the automotive industry.

“We recognize the automotive industry is demographically made up of more men,” he said in the 2022 Best Dealerships survey. “We actively search for female candidates . . .

“Since there are typically fewer female resumes for certain positions such as technicians or sales positions, we make an extra effort to pay closer attention to those candidates.”

That includes working with trade schools to recruit women while they are still in school. “This is a work in progress,” Walker said, “but one we are proud to be working on.”

THE VALUE OF YOUTH

When a dealership has a staff of diverse ethnicities, ages and genders, it pays dividends when customers deal with staff with whom they identify, he said.

Specifically, hiring and retaining younger staff is important to future revenue.

“We are always trying to grow a younger customer base and loyalty to our store,” Walker said. “It makes it much easier when you have someone who is similar in age and can relate to the customer.”

At Lockwood Kia in Oakville, Ont., General Manager Michael DeFreitas said the dealership is “always looking to diversify our team.

“We have [employees] who can communicate in over six languages and can accommodate almost anyone looking to speak in their own language.”

Languages spoken include, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic, Mandarin and Polish, said DeFreitas.

At the Montreal-based HGrégoire dealership group, which placed seven dealerships on the Best Dealerships To Work For list, its HGreg Nissan Chomedey in Chomedey, Que., was cited for success in recruiting and retaining millennials — broadly defined as anyone born from 1981 to 1996 — by meeting the minimum requirements of at least 15 millennials or 10 per cent of staff, plus an average 80 per cent positive response.

For Harry Kasparian, chief marketing officer for the HGrégoire group, recruiting millennials has been profitable, both for the company’s progress in innovation and the bottom line.

“We’ve had the most innovation when we’ve had this generation come and offer their input,” Kasparian said. “For us, it’s an investment in our future, but we’re already seeing it pay off drastically over the last couple of years.”

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

HGrégoire tracks employee satisfaction in the same way it tracks customer satisfaction, Kasparian said, adding that the two go hand in hand.

“It’s a leading indicator,” he said. “Whenever we see employee satisfaction increase, in a few months, we see it in an increase in customer satisfaction.”

Understanding what motivates millennials helps also understand what motivates the next big demographic of customers, Kasparian said.

Above all, millennial staff want their employers to listen to ideas; they take great satisfaction when those ideas are enacted and prove successful, he said.

HGreg Nissan Chomedey also stood out in the Best Dealerships survey for female staff representation. It was one of only two best dealerships — the other was HGreg Nissan St Eustache — that met criteria, such as having a minimum of 10 women employees.

In New Minas, N.S., Bruce Hyundai General Manager Brittany Deveau credits flexible working hours with helping to attract and retain female employees, who comprise four of the dealership’s six managers.

“Providing a good work/life balance is essential for many of our female employees, especially those with small children,” she said. “We always strive to work around our employees’ schedules as best as possible, whether it be for child care, extracurricular activities for their kids or any personal care appointments.”

An emphasis on hiring millennial staff has also paid dividends at Riverside Dodge in Prince Albert, Sask. Cameron Bates, the dealership’s chief financial officer, said that in the summer of 2020, Riverside took advantage of government student employment grants to hire a University of Regina student in a role it created to add punch to the dealership’s social media campaigns.

The dealership has long sponsored golf tournaments and other community events, Bates said. And while they generate photographs for the store and for advertising, “we weren’t really getting the marketing credit we could,” he said.

Hiring a student, Bates said, allowed Riverside Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep-Ram to tap into his knowledge of all social media platforms — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok — and create campaigns that engaged with customers, regardless of when they might purchase another vehicle.

The plan worked, Bates said.

“It showed us this needs to be a permanent position.”