Fleming Ford’s mission is to help automotive dealerships bring aboard talented employees and retain them.
Just last month, the chief strategy officer of dealership consultancy Quantum5 spoke on the topic during the Automotive News Retail Forum: NADA in Las Vegas, and she moderated a panel discussion for the Center for Automotive Diversity, Inclusion and Advancement.
Ford, 51, recently discussed recruitment and retention of women with News Editor Omari Gardner. Here are edited excerpts.
Q: There has been much discussion on recruiting and retaining women at dealerships. What is different now is the Great Resignation. Has that changed how automotive retailers should approach recruiting and retention?
A: I think the Great Resignation is going to hit retail later than it hits the rest of the corporate America because there was so much money being made during the pandemic. We might have a delayed resignation. So when I’m working with my dealers, there is definitely a very big focus right now on: Are you engaging them? Are you growing them? Are you valuing them? Things all people need — men and women — [so] they don’t have a great big walkout.
That is a concern. I’m starting to see trickles of it when people are like, “I’m not making as much money and I’m still doing the same amount of work.” But everybody kind of got really those inflated paychecks for all of last year.
Are dealers making progress on recruiting and promoting women into leadership roles, particularly sales management and general management?
Some interesting things they’re doing are making recruitment cards for when they’re out in hospitality [settings] or out in places where there’s customer service involved. And the cards will say, “I was really impressed with your customer service today.” And then really talking about how great it is in automotive because they’re already working bad hours and they’re not making as much money as they could in automotive.
A really interesting thing I think came out of [the NADA Show] were the videos [dealers] were submitting with women. A lot of them have made their own videos of women in different roles because there’s that idea they’re not there in these certain roles.
I’ve had several women tell me they’ve chosen a dealership group because of those videos on their career pages.
What kind of resources does it take to fill the talent pipeline? It sounds like it’s not a passive thing anymore. A dealer doesn’t just wait for somebody to show up on the doorstep looking for a job. It sounds like they’re actively recruiting.
Yes. And I would say take a really hard look at your career pages. Are there women represented there? Are they underrepresented? Are some minorities underrepresented? Are you showing they are in your stores and successful?
They’re also using resource groups. In a women’s resource group, you feel a sense of community. Maybe there’s five women in your dealership, but in the dealer group, there might be 105, and that group gets together and they have different leadership lessons or they teach how to buy a house. So that is something I’ll use as a recruiting tool also.
How important is the general manager’s role?
Some of the dealers are helping change the mindset of the general manager. One of them had a great quote: “So the GM goes, so the dealership goes, so the culture goes, so the retention goes.” They’re spending a lot of time communicating the message of just treating everybody right. A lot of GMs have a granddaughter or a daughter, and they’re really thinking it through.
If you change their thinking through their hearts and connect it to someone they know, it changes kind of how their mind is.
Describe what “emotional salary” means.
What else are you going to do to help me and value me and show me you care? Those types of things you want to see when you’re recruiting. What’s the culture like? Do you have a career path? As a woman, you know, what are my opportunities?
I think job-sharing is really interesting if you can find the right people. That gives more flexibility to a lot of women who, because of child care and other things, wouldn’t be able to enter automotive.
What is an example of job-sharing?
If you have a full-time job, a lot of times it’s 50 to 60 hours a week. But maybe I take two people and they work 30 hours [each]. So you’re hiring more people. It takes more communication with a manager.
With more people on staff, does job-sharing increase dealership costs?
If retention goes up and you attract more talent during this time frame, that cost is pretty insignificant.
How do dealers measure their progress in recruiting and retaining women?
I would recommend employee engagement surveys. One of the tools I use is ESI Trends — it does an engagement survey. It asks, “Are you looking for another job at a different dealership?” or “Are you looking for a better job?” So when we start working with a dealership on their culture, we take that survey and measure it 90 to 120 days later, and then we measure it [again]. Are we seeing engagement go up?
So there’s tricks you can do to see what the inflow of applicants is and what your percentage of growth is. I always look at 90 days. Are you losing people in the first 90 days? Then you might need to tackle what you’re doing in the first 90 days and make them feel onboarded and included. If you’re losing people in the first year, there might be career growth problems. So engagement and retention and turnover is what I track.