Competition gets tougher every year and dealers embrace the challenge

October 15, 2018 01:00 AM

JOE WILSSENS

Owner John Yark, left, and colleagues from Yark Subaru in Toledo, Ohio, gather for a photo at the ?2016 Best Dealership To Work For event after being named No. 1. The next year, Yark Subaru was No. 98.

At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Grenada's Kirani James won the men's 400-meter race with a time of 43.94 seconds. At the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, that same time would not have been good enough for even the bronze medal.

The takeaway: Ever-improving competition makes it hard to stay on top.

The same is true in auto retailing. In this, the seventh year of honoring the 100 Best Dealerships To Work For, the competition to make the rankings is tougher than ever. The percentage of employees giving positive responses to survey questions has gotten much higher for the winning dealerships since the program began in 2012. The scoring gap between the No. 1 dealership and No. 100 also has narrowed considerably.

Best getting better

Automotive News' 100 Best Dealerships To Work For have seen their collective average scores on employee engagement rise over the years.
% positive responses from Best Dealership winners
	2012	2018
Leadership and planning	93%	98%
Pay and benefits	86%	95%
Corporate culture & communications	93%	97%
Training, development & resources	89%	97%
Role satisfaction	94%	98%
Work environment	96%	98%
Relationship with supervisor	94%	98%
Overall employee engagement	95%	98%
Survey average	92%	97%
Source: Best Companies Group

"You drop one percentage point, and you're off the list," said Peter Burke, president and co-founder of Best Companies Group, which ranks the winners based on employee surveys and information from management. "The difference between [dealerships] 100 and 101 is minuscule. We could probably add another 300 to the list who in our minds are good enough to make the list. But we cap it at 100."

Employee engagement scoring, a survey of how employees feel about working at their dealership, provides prime evidence of the higher bar to make the list. It makes up 75 percent of the score that goes into the rankings; information provided by management about human-resources practices makes up the other 25 percent.

In 2012, the difference between the highest and lowest engagement scores for the top 100 dealerships was 16 percentage points. This year, that difference is a mere 7 percentage points.

One and done

Yark Automotive Group Inc. in Toledo, Ohio, has had numerous dealerships on the list over the years. Yark Subaru finished No. 1 in 2016 and No. 98 a year later.

John Yark, president of the group, put it this way: "With the employee portion of the scoring being such a high portion of the score, if you get one employee or two who doesn't like you, you're done. That can kick you right out."

But dealers, always a competitive breed, embrace the challenge. They say they value the feedback on how their employees view their workplaces. In addition, making the list in any position helps them recruit talent in today's tight labor market and prepares them for hiring uncertainties.

"I don't want to say this thing was ever easy," Yark said. He attributed the increasingly tight competition to the fact that "more and more dealers are feeling the pressure of not being able to hire all the positions they need to fill, so there's even more focus on what you need to do to hire and retain employees."

Walters: A lot to learn from others on the list.

Dustin Walters, executive vice president of the eight-dealership Friendship Family of Dealerships in Bristol, Tenn., another multi-year, multi-store winner, agreed.

"When one of your competitors is saying, 'We're one of the Best Dealerships To Work For,' I'd hate not to have that" award displayed on Friendship's own dealership website, he said.

The competition is so tough in part because it draws so many applicants, Burke said. He didn't say how many dealerships applied in 2018 but offered a rough analogy of how the screening works.

"Say one out of five makes the list, but four out of five are good enough," Burke said. By cutting the honorees off at 100, "you're really looking at the top of the top."

By contrast, if only 200 had applied, he said, "then the top 100 looks more like our other programs," such as the Best Workplaces programs his company runs for Maine and other states, and for other industries, such as health care.

The tight competition makes the annual rankings highly unpredictable. Indeed, no dealership has finished No. 1 two years in a row.

Take Friendship Chrysler-Jeep-Dodge-Ram of Bristol, in Tennessee. It finished No. 1 in 2013 — and out of the top 100 this year. But Walters isn't deterred.

"If you've been there, you want to be back. If you haven't, you want to get in on it," he said. "The year our Chrysler store won No. 1, that set the tone for the whole organization."

It also set off a competition within the group, with "OK, we can be that" as a rallying cry. Friendship Hyundai of Johnson City has made the list "every year since its inception," he said.

Steak dinner on the line

While he considers making the list to be a win, he still pays close attention to the rankings.

If he's at the awards gala representing one of Friendship's stores and a colleague is representing another store in the group, "we have a steak dinner riding" on which dealership comes out ahead, he said.

"It's exciting," he added. "I've had years when I just knew one store would be higher than the other, and it wasn't the case."

But ranking closer to No. 100 doesn't diminish the value of the competition, Walters said. For one thing, "Most of the things we've learned" about how to become an even better dealership to work for has come from participating in the competition. From conversations with other dealerships at the gala dinner to the Automotive News conference that precedes that dinner, Walters has had many moments where he realized, "That'd be great to do," he said.

Yark agreed that the value of the Best Dealerships To Work For competition goes well beyond bragging rights over the rankings.

"We've been up and down in the rankings, and I'd like to win it, but big picture-wise, this is really a great thing to be part of to make your organization better," he said. "Being part of this creates focus within our organization that we're really paying attention to what we need to do every day."

It especially has put that focus on valuing his dealerships' employees.

"Our employees have really been our strength — their relationships with our customers over the years. We need to maintain those relationships," Yark said. "Look at the future — autonomous vehicles, etc. If we lose the relationships, that could be the final straw jeopardizing our future."

Of course, competition doesn't scare off those committed to achieving excellence.

Remember Kirani James, whose gold-medal run in 2012 would not have earned him bronze four years later? Well, James didn't match his 2012 time — he improved it, winning the silver medal.

Just like James made the medal podium for two Olympics in a row, ever-improving dealerships can come back to the 100 Best Dealerships To Work For time and time again.