Small dealerships get highest ratings

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Employees at small dealerships consistently rated their workplaces higher than those at medium or large stores.

Where was the gap widest between the 100 Best Dealerships To Work For and other stores that applied for the honor? Pay and benefits.

Those are some of the findings from employee surveys conducted as part of the screening for the 100 Best Dealerships To Work For. Employees were surveyed in seven categories in addition to pay and benefits: leadership and planning; corporate culture and communications; role satisfaction; work environment; relationship with supervisor; training and development; and overall employee engagement.

In the pay and benefits category, employees were asked to respond to questions such as "My pay is fair for the work I perform" and "Overall, I'm satisfied with this organization's benefits package."

At the top small dealerships, an average 91 percent of employees responding answered "agree somewhat" or "agree strongly" with those and related statements about pay and benefits.

That compared with 86 percent of employees at the best medium-sized dealerships, 85 percent at the best large dealerships and 74 percent at all dealerships that applied.

For the survey, small dealerships have 25 to 49 employees, medium stores have 50 to 99 employees and large dealerships have 100 or more employees.

In some other categories, the gap between the top 100 and the dealerships that didn't make the list was as small as 3 percent. After pay and benefits, the widest gaps between the 100 best and the rest were in training and development, leadership and planning and corporate culture and communication.

Peter Burke, president of Best Companies Group, which crunched the numbers to produce the 100 Best Dealerships To Work For, cautioned against interpreting the narrow gap in some categories as a sign that the 100 best were only marginally better than other dealerships.

"We can only survey those who apply, most of whom think they are a pretty great place to work -- and most are," he wrote in an e-mail to Automotive News. "So there is a natural tendency for most of these companies to be pretty good."

You can reach James B. Treece at jtreece@crain.com.

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