AutoCanada is in the early stages of putting together a plan for its dealerships to encourage young women to consider a future career in all aspects of the company.
“You need to be intentional and that’s really, really important. It doesn’t just happen,” said AutoCanada’s Jennifer Lennox in an interview with Canadian auto dealer. She joined the company as VP of People, Culture and Learning eight months ago.
“A big priority for us down the road is to really promote more women in the workplace. This is where we’re at right now. We are not doing anything at the moment other than just getting our voices out there as much as we can,” she added.
Lennox moderated a panel last week as part of Canada’s Used Car Week symposium in Toronto, Ont.; one of the three days was dedicated solely to women in automotive. Lennox is one of three women working in executive positions at AutoCanada. That’s a story she wants to tell young women.
“We support women in every part of our business, so we just need to start and keep telling that story and then internally grow our own, get more interns, get more co-ops, bring women in here so they see how fabulous it is to work in this industry,” said Lennox.
She said a big part of this is changing the stereotype that automotive is male dominated.
“You go into our high schools or education system and there’s not a lot of young women who say, ‘I want to be in automotive when I’m older.’
“There’s quite a few women (in the industry) who would love to mentor and develop women of all ages. It is a very dynamic industry to be in, and I mean that in terms of it (being) fast-paced — there’s beautiful cars and people who get excited about selling, servicing, and helping consumers.”
Lennox said AutoCanada is trying to develop a central hub for all of its dealerships to find out how many co-ops they need and, in turn, to have the company represented at job fairs with a mixed group.
“We’re going to centralize it to make it even more powerful to support our dealers and go out and have a voice as AutoCanada, which reinforces the idea to grow and move around in the company,” said Lennox.
