Audi Turnersville is first store to claim No. 1 spot a second time on Best Dealerships list

Even in a pandemic, the best place in America to turn a car — or work on them, or support those who do either — again is in a huge Penske-owned auto mall in Turnersville, N.J., about 20 miles southeast of Philadelphia.

Audi Turnersville, which in 2019 was No. 1 on Automotive News' Best Dealerships To Work For list, repeats that honor this year, making it the first multiple-time winner. The store was part of a dominating performance on this year's list by Penske Automotive Group, which captured more than one-third of the 100-dealership ranking.

Like virtually everything else about the last year, winning wasn't easy. It was a largely blind slog to keep the doors open, to keep employees working and to keep people informed about what they needed to do to work safely in these unprecedented times, said Jimmy Magee, general manager of the dealership.

"We did not close," Magee recalled of the painful first few months of the pandemic. "We stayed open, with just a skeleton crew in service, myself and another manager. We worked remotely with customers, we did remote deliveries — everything we could think of to conform to the protocols issued by [public health authorities in] New Jersey."

Many of the dealership's roughly three dozen employees were placed on temporary furlough as federal, state and local authorities — as well as the Penske group and Audi Turnersville — slowly felt their way through the confusion and fog of the pandemic. Those who remained working at the dealership did what needed to be done, regardless of title or station, to serve customers in service and sales.

"I was doing things I haven't done in years," Magee recalled. "I even cleaned cars one day. We set up tables outside. We saw customers by appointment only. We maintained social distancing. But the key for us was that we communicated and communicated and communicated. We told everybody everything we knew at the time to keep them as informed as possible. And we stayed flexible and responsive to accommodate our customers and our team members."

The early pandemic months were tough, but they were also incredibly valuable because they showed Audi Turnersville what its staff was capable of and how they wanted to be treated to make work an even more integral part of their lives.

Before the pandemic, "we thought flexibility meant working from home," Magee said, adding that the crisis put his understanding of work-life balance under a microscope in a good way.

"Now we realize that what they actually meant was the ability to fit their work into their personal lives in a more manageable way; prioritizing health and family, efficiency with regards to schedules and head counts, flexible scheduling and being open-minded when it comes to remote working."

Like many businesses across the nation, Audi Turnersville looked at those jobs that could be done remotely — the store's business development center, some of its back office staff — and found that workers not only retained their pre-pandemic productivity off-site, but actually grew it.

"We adjusted the hours of the dealership to give people more time at home. We used to be open until 9 p.m., and we cut back to 7 p.m.," Magee said, which allowed employees who work on-site to get home earlier and spend more time with their families, helping morale.

Notably, the dealership, which already was a top performer, didn't see its sales productivity dip at all with the reduced hours.

"The shorter hours actually helped everybody to become more productive," Magee said. "Morale has been increased tremendously. Productivity has increased tremendously. The technician hours per day and proficiency has increased. It's crazy, right? I think it's the balance of the work-home life. It makes everybody a little happier."

Happiness at work includes things beyond just flexibility and the ability to work from home, of course. Things such as compensation, time off, the ability to save for retirement and camaraderie with fellow workers also play big factors.

At Audi Turnersville, being part of the publicly owned Penske Automotive Group helps in those areas, providing a host of employee benefit and training programs as well as retirement compensation offerings.

"It all starts with hiring the right people and making sure everybody is good," both in what they do in their jobs and in their life outside the dealership, Magee said proudly.

Like other dealerships nationwide, Audi Turnersville is struggling to keep inventory in stock.

"It's terrible right now," Magee said. "We have plenty of used cars for now, but I think we have all of 11 new vehicles, and I don't know when I'm getting any more" because of the microchip and other supplier shortages that have wreaked havoc with vehicle production globally.

"The sales have been great for the last few months, and if somebody had a trade, we made sure we made that deal because we knew that we are going to need that car down the road."

Magee said that with customer demand strong and dealer pricing power stronger than it has been in decades, he's been cautioning his employees to enjoy the good times while they last but to understand that they likely won't last forever.

"The atmosphere is just so much better right now — not that it was bad before," Magee said. "I just think everybody's having a great time right now, and profits are way, way, way up. I mean, who knew that MSRP was a real thing?"