FCA opens industry to homebound kids

April 23 was supposed to be a day when about 1,000 children descended upon Fiat Chrysler Automobiles' suburban Detroit headquarters to get a taste of what their parents do every day.

But when the coronavirus outbreak scuttled the plan for "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day," the automaker came up with a Plan B: Bring the workplace to the kids.

FCA found a way to observe the day by creating a virtual experience to give children of its U.S. employees a glimpse into the company.

Its online portal, which came together in about three weeks, gives kids something educational to do while schools are closed and exposes them to the auto industry, said Kelly Tolbert, FCA's vice president of global talent, leadership and learning, who led the effort.

She said the company designed the portal so every department was represented. Youngsters can browse sections on product development, quality, human resources, marketing, design, manufacturing and other specialties. Content is available for students from elementary to high school levels.

Tolbert said the platform was bustling soon after going live.

"It was very easy for the kids to just kind of take over and look at the screens and click through what they want to participate in, so it wasn't something that was a heavy burden for the parents to facilitate," Tolbert told Automotive News. "I think we made it so that the kids were able to easily access, and you know how kids are with technology anyway. They just take it over and do things that someone like myself, it would take me a lot longer to figure out."

Each field has activities for students to participate in. FCA said the virtual experience begins "by encouraging kids to share a picture of their 'at-home' office and by taking a career assessment test to see where they might like to work."

The design section includes behind-the-scenes videos with designers and asks children to draw, paint or sculpt "the next great vehicle design." They're then directed to take a picture of the design and share it to the portal's community page, where they can explain the design and describe the people who would buy it.

The company assembled content from numerous sources.

"We couldn't do a lot of new video footage," Tolbert said. "We were able to take some of the existing materials that we had, videos and interviews of our designers, for example, [and] some of our vehicle safety information."

In one video the company put on the portal from YouTube, FCA's chief technical compliance officer, Mark Chernoby, has a vehicle safety discussion with kids.

The idea for the platform was embraced immediately by FCA's upper ranks. Tolbert and design chief Ralph Gilles, as executive co-sponsors of the company's working parents network, raised the idea during a meeting with Mark Stewart, FCA's North America COO. He encouraged them to move forward.

Tolbert said Stewart didn't want to just focus on the one day but look at ways the company could continue to deliver more content for students in the months ahead. She also wants to give those outside FCA a chance to dive into some of the content.

"It's content that I think anyone would find interesting and useful," Tolbert said. "It enables us to just continue to broaden the audience of how we can educate the kids about the automotive industry."