5 Critical Steps for Effective Employee Onboarding
Recruiting and retaining a talented team is one of the biggest challenges in automotive retail today. Today’s younger employees often show little employer loyalty, and with margins shrinking dealerships often struggle to offer competitive compensation. To manage your team effectively you must have strong and structured on boarding process.
Below are 5 important processes to develop in finding, hiring, and training your team. By following these steps, you can go beyond typical car dealerships and develop competitive advantage by training your team more effectively and keeping your employees longer.
#1) Develop a Mission Statement and Organizational Core Values. Having a clear mission statement and real values is a critical path to expressing your vision to both employees and customers. Making sure that employees understand your values and your mission empowers them to think more clearly about the business and make decisions that you would agree with. Making sure employees understand what they’re working for and that your organization has values they agree with also improves retention and employee satisfaction. Of course, this practice is good for your customers as well!
#2) Ensure Potential Hires Have the Right Disposition. When evaluating new potential hires, it’s important for managers and owners to quickly consider if the prospect has the right core empowerment and interests. Though it may sound basic, dealerships often hire people without the right basic personality! A good hire for automotive retail is someone who likes working with people and is interested in cars. These are the first attributes to look for and any candidate who doesn't meet both criteria is likely not going to be a good fit.
#3) Move Away from Commission Only Pay Plans. Dealerships focusing on commission only plans are likely to suffer from much higher employee turnover and associated issues including lower customer satisfaction and higher higher HR and recruiting costs. Offering employees higher base salaries is the most effective path to retaining them longer and building a better-trained and more cohesive team.
#4) Provide Online Courses to Immerse New Hires into the Organizational Culture. Using online courses and online training is one of the most effective steps dealerships can take to onboard new hires quickly and communicate organizational values and knowledge at scale. Dealerships can develop their own training material or leverage existing car dealer training courses, or a combination of both, to help new hires learn fast and whenever convenient for them.
#5) Conduct Refresher Training. One common mistake that dealerships make is thinking that training is something to do just once when new employees start and then never again. In reality, training must be an ongoing effort for all levels of the organization. Things are always changing in the industry including changes to technology, changes to product, changes to regulations, and more. You must develop a process for learning new things and communicating them to the whole team in a structured and ongoing process.
All dealership owners and managers should understand the vital importance of building, training, and inspiring a team to success. These 5 steps are just the beginning of a comprehensive HR strategy for car dealers. To learn more and get your free strategy proposal, please contact Max Zanan today.