Retailers work to make company culture more inclusive

Leaders of stores on Automotive News' 2021 Best Dealerships To Work For list say they are working to recruit and retain a diverse work force, from advertising in multiple languages to creating professional networking groups for female employees.

Retailers from large public dealership groups to single-store operations want to expand opportunities for people from diverse backgrounds, with a focus on gender, race and ethnicity. Some companies with stores on the list have hired executives to lead companywide diversity initiatives, displayed support for LGBTQ pride and ensured that female technicians have dedicated locker rooms.

Their efforts are part of an industrywide examination of diversity, equity and inclusion practices after the killing of George Floyd in police custody last year in Minneapolis and the national social justice movement that followed his death.

"There's no way any of us can deny the impact that last year had," said Edward McKissic, who joined Group 1 Automotive Inc. in May as its newly created chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer. Group 1 has three stores on this year's Best Dealerships list.

Group 1 started its effort in March 2020 and formed an internal diversity council that aims to adjust its talent acquisition and development practices, among others, through a DE&I lens. Plans include making sure its online presence is more representative and creating diverse interview panels, said McKissic, who also is vice president of human resources.

The initiative gained more significance after Floyd's killing, he said. "All of us have learned from the events of last year," McKissic said, "whether you're a person of color or not."

Employment experts say a focus on diversity is not just the right thing for companies to do. It also makes business sense. And as the industry competes for a shortage of talent, dealerships will need a recruiting strategy that embraces diversity to cast the widest net possible for candidates.

"We're trying to recruit diverse talent into automotive retail, but everybody is working on expanding diversity in their organizations," said Adam Robinson, CEO of Hireology, a technology recruitment company that works with dealerships. "To be competitive and to really be successful in expanding diversity, dealers need to be as good as the other industries are in these recruiting and marketing efforts."

Many dealership leaders understand the value of having diverse teams that reflect their communities, but some have not yet developed a strategic approach to achieve it, said Fleming Ford, chief strategy officer for Quantum5, which provides skills training to dealerships. "To me, the win is when you are no longer saying, 'We need to have diversity.' It's just who you are and what your store looks like," Ford said.

More than half the stores on the Best Dealerships list said they have formal programs to recruit or retain employees of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds, according to an Automotive News survey. Nearly 9 of 10 said they make efforts to employ more women.

Vadim Makhlis, dealer principal of Monadnock Ford in Swanzey, N.H., said he has been able to hire employees from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds in a market that is predominantly white by creating an inclusive culture. Three key managers are women, Makhlis said, and his leadership team includes people of Cuban and Korean descent. His family is Jewish and immigrated to the U.S. from Ukraine when he was 6 in the 1980s.

Monadnock Ford allows parents to bring children to work and offers flexible schedules. Makhlis said he believes that is one reason employee referrals are a leading source of job candidates.

"I really believe if you provide a good environment, you provide flexibility and you provide opportunity, and you're open to it, the diversity will come," he said, "regardless of what part of the country you're in."

Quantum5's Ford said dealership leaders first should ensure their company culture is inclusive, so employees feel a sense of belonging, before turning their attention to hiring. It won't matter how great a dealership is at hiring diverse people if they don't feel part of the team once they come on board.

Ford co-founded the DEI Champions Council for Automotive Retail, a coalition of auto retail leaders that shares DE&I best practices. She said dealers have told her that past efforts to hire more diverse employees have not worked out. It's often a problem of leadership not creating a culture that roots out biases and elicits more empathy from its team, she added.

Dealers should create a culture by design rather than default — one that intentionally asks uncomfortable questions and challenges how things always have been done, Ford said. "Your inclusive culture is what attracts more diverse candidates," she said. If dealers haven't created conditions that make employees feel comfortable and safe, "you have to have the courage to admit that and work to change it."

Dealer Dave Wright said the hiring of a female technician this year at his growing Nissan-Subaru dealership in Hiawatha, Iowa, raised an issue overlooked several years ago when the building was constructed: The dealership did not have a female locker room.

Wright quickly converted a gender-specific restroom to unisex for her to use and, in September, made job offers to two more women for technician roles. He now plans to build separate men's and women's locker rooms in the service department, and unisex restrooms across the store, as part of a planned future dealership expansion.

But, he said, the situation illustrated the importance of making sure the dealership is living the story it's telling prospective hires.

"If our story's going to be, we want to include people, period, we've got to have an atmosphere that includes them," Wright said. "We can say all we want and tell them all the things they want to hear, but if we don't have a restroom for them or we don't have a locker room, we're just kidding ourselves."

Diana Kennedy was mentored solely by men working her way up from selling cars as a teenager to her current role as general manager at Volvo Cars Marin in San Rafael, Calif., part of Price Simms Family Dealerships.

That's one reason Kennedy co-founded Price Simms Women's Circle, a networking and resource group for female employees of the group. It started this year with 13 members and has grown to about 50.

"I wouldn't be where I am if other people hadn't given me the opportunities or believed in me," she said, adding that Volvo Cars Marin has more women than men in executive roles.

"I've been fortunate to have male" mentors, she said, "but I would have always wanted some sort of female figure in my journey as well."

Large dealership groups, particularly the publics, are leading on DE&I across auto retail, Robinson said, though dealerships of all sizes increasingly are aware.

Hireology is fielding its first survey on the topic to set a baseline to measure future progress, Robinson said. U.S. dealership employees were asked about their DE&I awareness, perceptions of its importance to business and recruiting efforts and their performance on matters such as equal pay and employee training.

Large groups typically have the scale, resources and market reach to go first, he said.

"But single-point stores in single metro or rural areas can do all of these things, as well," Robinson said.

"Whether you're part of a large group or whether you're a single-store platform, all of these things are accessible if ownership and management says it's important."