What does it feel like to work within the walls of your dealership? Do you feel like your values apply to your everyday work, or have you felt that they’re less relevant?
Your company culture significantly influences your dealership’s functional areas. It can result in your team collaborating like a well-oiled machine or creating a revolving door through departures.
A checklist can help you see what you excel at and where to improve. Here are four things to ensure that you include in your company culture checklist:
Ensure Your Dealership’s Values Align with Your Day-to-Day Operations
How do your operations align with your company’s mission, vision, and values? According to Gallup, only 23% of employees strongly agree that they can apply their organization’s values to their daily work. For example, if one of your values is innovation, there should be a way for workers to bring their creativity to their jobs to solve your dealership’s most complex problems.
Start a dialogue with your team members about how they feel the dealership’s mission shows up in their work. You may discover that you need to reiterate these elements or that they have evolved, and you need to change them. Checklist items for this topic can include:
- Do workers feel the mission, values, and vision align with their everyday work?
- Do we need to add, subtract, or alter our current values?
Does Your Dealership Prioritize Empathy?
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) released its Global Culture Research Report in 2022. It revealed that 94% of their respondents felt empathy was essential to a healthy workplace. From the pandemic to finding childcare, workers have to navigate a lot.
Now more than ever, employees can benefit from leadership that practices empathy. Depending on your dealership staff’s needs, this can appear in many ways. This could look like offering flexible scheduling to better support parents and caretakers or holding monthly town halls to fully understand employee concerns.
Checklist items to include here:
- Are employees feeling valued and listened to?
- Do employees feel that they have an adequate work-life balance?
How is Company Communication Within Your Dealership?
A survey of 400 companies revealed that these businesses lost an average of $62.4 million annually due to inadequate communication. Effective workplace communication creates clarity, promotes clear employee expectations, and can streamline workplace operations. Take some time to look at workplace hiccups and see how communication may have played a part.
Do employees need clearer deadlines? Do sales professionals need to follow up with interested car buyers more promptly? How is communication playing a role in these interactions? You may determine that managers need more one-on-one meetings with their teams. On the other hand, meetings might be getting in the way. See where the breakdowns in communication are happening.
Checklist items for this topic:
- What does effective communication look like for our dealership teams?
- Are employees receiving adequate feedback to empower them to do their best work?
Can Employees Increase Their Skills With Learning and Development?
Many employees want to increase their knowledge and skills through training. Offering this creates a culture that values education and employee development. While it can give them the resources to further their career, a lack of learning and development opportunities can also send people out the door.
LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report revealed that “opportunities for career growth within the company” were the fourth most common reason individuals left to pursue new opportunities elsewhere. Adequate training can allow dealership employees to pursue promotions or even try another role. Is this something that your dealership is offering? Your employees can give you even better insights into what training you can offer.
Checklist points to include:
- How impactful is learning and development on company turnover?
- Are we offering learning and development opportunities that are relevant and helpful?
Final Thoughts
A solid company culture can strengthen your business and empower your employees. Taking time to look at how it plays out each day and how it can be improved can decrease turnover, improve your dealership operations, and lead to a more effective workforce.
