21 KENTUCKY AUTO DEALER • Lisa Lunsford (GS3 Global) • Claudia Marquez (Hyundai Motor Mexico) • Sejal Pietrzak (DealerSocket) • Kimberly Rodriguez (Dura Automotive Services) • Rosa Santana (Forma Automotive) • Anuja Sonalker (STEER Tech) • Sandy Stojkovski (Vitesco Technologies North America) • Chrissy Taylor (Enterprise Holdings). That’s a long list, and maybe you haven’t heard of every company listed after these names, but it’s encouraging so many women are CEOs as long as you don’t think about the number of men who are CEOs. Still, it’s progress. How do you encourage women to apply for work at your dealership? Think about what you can do to encourage girls to take classes to help them get dealership jobs. Reach out to local schools and teachers at those schools. In addition to public and private schools, talk to people at universities and community colleges. Attend career fairs and support organizations that encourage all students to gain valuable trade skills. Consider awarding scholarships and offering apprenticeships. Even a relatively modest scholarship can still help students pay for their training. Most people will visit the website before they visit the dealership. Make sure yours sends the right message. For example, look at your dealership website and post pictures of a diverse workforce. People notice inclusive content; have prominent pictures of female employees on the website. Train employees about gender diversity and inclusivity. Everyone who interviews job candidates should be up-to-date on these subjects. Have teams with as many women as men on them, especially those that customers see. Hiring women to work at your dealership is a good idea, but listening to them once hired is also important. You want to create a collaborative and supportive work environment. Talk to them about the demands on their time, personal and professional. Would job sharing, flexible hours or work-at-home options help? Offer everything you can that is situationally appropriate. If your DMS system requires a VPN, switch to a cloud-native solution so employees can log in from home. Promotions and pay raises encourage employees to stay with their companies. They are helpful, but make sure you don’t reward one gender and exclude the other. Given the gender biases of the past, it is easy to favor men over women unconsciously regardless of performance. Are women doing work that benefits the company but isn’t included in their job description? Rewrite the job description. Identify and reward high-performing employees, and provide mentorship, training and opportunities for career development available to and possible for every employee, regardless of gender. In an article by Bonnie Marcus that appeared on the Forbes website Oct. 13, 2021, she noted that women have been encouraged to speak up about workplace injustices ever since the #MeToo movement, but sometimes no one takes action after listening to them. That’s a problem. People who get ignored tend to stop giving feedback, and when they have the chance to go somewhere else, they are likely to take it. The result is high employee turnover. Any company with high turnover, including dealerships, will not be as profitable as it could be. The article noted that 75% of women discriminated against in the workplace because of age and gender chose to do nothing. More than two-thirds (70%) didn’t think talking would help. About onefourth didn’t trust HR, and a little less than a fourth thought talking would cost them their job. That leaves the 25% who did speak up. Some spoke with a manager, but 61% were dissatisfied with the result. Others spoke with HR; 71% thought that didn’t help either. When women feel ignored in the workplace, they may start thinking about filing lawsuits. Wouldn’t it be better to listen and take action to help them? What can you do at your dealership to change the dynamic? First of all, work toward making sure men do not outnumber women. According to David Mielach on the Business News Daily website Dec. 1, 2021, women are 75% less likely to speak than men when they are a minority. Groups without women reached different decisions than groups with women. The situation worsens when decisions are made by the majority instead of requiring a unanimous vote. They don’t get as much time to speak, and they don’t feel as powerful. Interestingly, asking for votes to be unanimous made it more likely for women to speak up because the group needed their vote to succeed. If women do speak up, it’s important to hear what they have to say and do something about it. They have a different perspective than men, and that’s too valuable a thing to lose. Listening to the perspective you get from female employees will help you retain them as employees, but it will also help your dealership be more innovative and original. Half your customers are women. Half your employees should be, too. If that isn’t already the case at your dealership, you’ve got a great goal to work toward. IF WOMEN DO SPEAK UP, IT’S IMPORTANT TO HEAR WHAT THEY HAVE TO SAY AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. THEY HAVE A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE THAN MEN, AND THAT’S TOO VALUABLE A THING TO LOSE.
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