The automotive retail industry has long been desperate to find more qualified and diverse workers to join the sector due to a growing demand to fill new positions — but that was before COVID-19.
As of June, dealerships have reopened in varying degrees across the country, and are slowly putting employees back on payroll thanks largely to the federal government’s Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) program. At the same time, unemployment reached 13.7 per cent in May (up 0.7 points from April), according to a Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey.
In other words, the game has shifted: there is now an abundance of people looking for jobs while employment opportunities have largely gone down, according to Jessi Kessel, Director of Operations at Ontario-based Auto Careers Group.
“As the reopening is happening, dealers have been thinking about who they want to bring back,” said Kessel in an interview with Canadian auto dealer. “Now we are actually seeing people being recalled. It’s happening in phases, depending on the need for the current situation — so how busy each department is.”
Further adding to this shift are the terms on which people are being recalled back. Whereas job seekers previously held the upper hand in a market (and economy) that offered a range of opportunity, the power to choose has diminished with the impact of the pandemic. Dealerships now appear to hold that upper hand.
“What’s happening is that, when staff is being recalled back, what we are seeing is that they are being recalled back on different terms, which includes a change in their compensation, a change in their responsibilities, and in some cases a change in both those areas,” said Kessel.
She said every dealership, big or small, is in a different financial situation — and they are all trying to do more with less. Which means there are a lot of variations on both the compensation and responsibilities side, as dealers are well aware there are a lot of people that have been laid off and are looking for a job.
It is not an ideal situation for Canadians, but within it lies an opportunity for dealerships to look at the bigger picture and consider who is essential and who is not — and consider what else is available that is perhaps better than what they currently have.
Assessing your talent for “fit”
With that in mind, the biggest consideration among dealers is thinking about what and who will contribute to the success of their dealership. Or as Sandra Conrad, HR Lead and CSR at DealerPILOT HR calls is: “building your success team.”
Asked what dealers can do as they consider their current employee/hiring situation amid COVID-19, Conrad said they should first look in-house and clarify what the various dealership roles look like — what dealers expect from their employees, while possibly “running a little leaner.”
“Do you actually need to fill all those roles? Because it’s vacant doesn’t mean you have to put someone in the seat,” said Conrad. “I think this is a great opportunity to do some low-cost investment in-house. Take a look at the people that want to be part of your team moving forward, and take some time and coach them and work on their skills improvement. That doesn’t have to cost immediate dollars.”
Conrad also advises looking within your community for candidates, focusing on what the dealership culture should be so that it attracts people that are also passionate about the same thing, and making sure the overall process is simple.
This means being purposeful in the questions being asked, promoting insightful dialogue-driven answers, and making sure the job posting includes a component of what is being offered (and not just what you want).
It is more of a time investment as opposed to a financial investment for the dealership, and one that will help ensure that — both short-term and long-term — the focus is on hiring “great people” who are going to be part of your success team. “And the best way to do that is to really make sure that you know what ‘fit’ looks like in your dealership,” said Conrad.
The term will have a different meaning for everyone, but a similar process will apply: the dealer’s expectations of a role will need to be clarified, whether that means hiring or shuffling people around in different positions at the dealership.
“And at all costs, try to really avoid the mentality of just putting someone in a seat,” said Conrad. “I do stand by the philosophy that sometimes nobody is better than the wrong body. And we’ve learned through COVID-19 that we can operate in the short-term with limited resources — so now is the time to really choose who is going to be part of your success team.”
Tools around organization, wellness check
Whether that success team means hiring new people or shuffling staff and jobs around internally, dealers will need tools to better manage communication with employees.
In our new normal, that could mean using tools like Skype, Zoom, or Google Meet (among others) to connect with employees working remotely. But it also means considering tools like digital HR (automation) platforms, which are offered by companies like DealerPILOT HR and The Minery.
Digital HR platform
Dealers will need clarity and easy-access to things like who is on leave, who has been recalled, who has been hired, and all the documentation surrounding that situation, according to Bri Newman, Vice President at HR4 Ltd and The Minery.
HR automation platforms can help dealers with implementing a new process or policy — and new processes and policies, if not already written up, are coming, said Newman.
“I think dealers will see that that is an absolute need for their business as they continue to go down that pathway for managing their teams, and managing their teams differently than before the pandemic,” said Newman.
Data from the Human Resources Professional Association’s (HRPA) COVID-19 member survey, which represents dozens of sectors and industries, indicated that HR professionals are anticipating “significant change” in the workplace.
For example, 38 per cent of workplaces are already planning permanent restructuring due to the pandemic.
Some of the restructuring includes physical changes to the workspace, new infection prevention and control measures, changes to shift schedules and hours of work, increased support for mental health, and toolkits and resources for people that oversee remote teams.
The survey also indicates that organizations are looking at changes to the 9-to-5 norm — things like modified work schedules, flex time, and rotating shifts. And 81 per cent of organizations plan to permanently retain or expand remote working options.
Among the HRPA survey respondents, 80 per cent of organizations said they will require a sign-off of new/updated policies or procedures around health, safety, or hygiene in the workplace. The survey also found that nearly all respondents (95 per cent) plan to implement or expand the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) for their employees. Which brings us to the next point: the wellness check.
Employee wellness check
According to Newman, the other tool that appears to be gaining traction among employers is the employee wellness check.
“That technology or methodology around risk-aversion and making sure that you are actually being intentional about asking your staff whether they have those symptoms before they enter the workplace, is definitely a shift we have seen,” said Newman.
She said some U.S. states have already mandated the employee wellness check. And although it has not yet been mandated in Canada, Newman said they are starting to see some of the bigger organizations implement it as part of their daily practices to better manage the COVID situation.
Health & safety task force
Furthermore, Newman said they have seen a lot of task forces come into play, where organizations have a specific task force designated to manage the health and safety of employees, customers and the dealership, around COVID-19.
“At this point, until we have a vaccine, the whole COVID-19 pandemic isn’t necessarily going away even though we are reopening. So it’s really important from that perspective that dealers are organized,” said Newman.
Retaining employees for the long-haul
Amid COVID-19, dealers will also need to consider how they plan to retain employees for the long-term once they have their “success team.”
“The core competencies, if you think about how we train our people, whether it’s kinaesthetic, visual or (auditory), all those aspects — I think as an industry we look as this asset of human capital and we take it for granted based on who they are,” said Jay Trotter, VP of Sales and Marketing at Driving Sales. “We don’t put in a good culture.”
That goes back to Sandra Conrad’s (DealerPILOT HR) comment about focusing on your dealership culture. Trotter said many dealerships promote managers based on what they sell, but that those managers have no experience in management.
“I think you have to look at a dealership in its totality and say ‘how is it running?’ and ‘what gives one dealership an advantage over another?’” said Trotter. “There are a lot of factors, but I think people are really that deciding factor — letting them grow, letting a newbie season into a veteran, and how do we do that?”
This includes things like providing employees with proper feedback, offering performance reviews — not necessarily in the form of a raise or a promotion — but a review to seek out weaknesses to help develop the employee. What are their strengths, their weaknesses? How can they improve?
Trotter advises conducting a performance review of some kind every five to six weeks at the least, and ideally every month. For the dealerships that are not doing this, he said the employee is likely already looking for a job. “And if they like the auto industry, they just won’t be working for you.”
Without that career path and performance review, Trotter said the dealership could be trapped in the same vicious cycle that the auto retail sector has been generationally stuck in over the last decade, and that is high turnover.
So while employers in the auto retail sector appear to have the upper hand now — now is also the time to plan, prepare, and create a “success team” for the short- and long-term, and before the situation shifts.
