Biggest non-safety change for dealerships in the pandemic: Employee work flexibility

At dealerships throughout the U.S., more employees are working from home, and some employees' children are more frequently seen at work.

Flexibility on where and when employees work, as well as in how they provide care for their children, is a byproduct of the coronavirus pandemic, which uprooted dealership operations from coast to coast last spring and continues to affect day-to-day staffing decisions at stores.

In many cases, the relaxed policies have been a bright spot, helping workers with worrisome health conditions or those taxed by the double duty of trying to juggle a full-time job and manage children no longer able to attend day care or in-person school. And dealership operators, many of whom have long shied away from permitting telecommuting in such a hands-on business, have found benefits to the modifications.

"I do think flexible hours and work-from-home arrangements will remain because employees want it and managers are more comfortable with it," said Adam Robinson, CEO of dealership recruitment technology firm Hireology.

Robinson has seen more of Hireology's dealership clients provide flexible arrangements since the coronavirus crisis began in March. Dealership employees and operators have shared anecdotes with Automotive News about new options they've come up with for working from home or easing child-care burdens. An Automotive News survey of dealerships on the publication's ninth annual Best Dealerships To Work For list demonstrates how pervasive flexible arrangements have become in the industry.

Aside from safety measures, flexibility around employee work schedules was the top area of change that survey respondents reported making because of the pandemic. Nine of every 10 respondents said they had implemented more flexible schedules, and nearly two-thirds said they had allowed more telecommuting. More than three-quarters were conducting virtual training, and a quarter said they were even offering help with child care and virtual schooling.

The assistance with child care came about as day care centers closed and school districts moved to remote learning, leaving working parents scrambling. Many dealerships have allowed some employees in that position to work from home, while others such as Friendship Automotive of Bristol, Tenn., have welcomed children at the stores.

Friendship employees in roles such as sales rep, warranty clerk, service adviser and Internet director have brought their children to work with them, said Alana Wilson, human resources manager for the 10-store group in Tennessee and North Carolina. Friendship's Hyundai store in Johnson City, Tenn., even has a designated kids area complete with TV, books, Galaga arcade machine and colorful Dr. Seuss quotes and characters adorning the walls.

The space was finished in January, intended for customers' children. But when the pandemic hit, the room was repurposed into a space for employees' children, Wilson said. It's cleaned several times a day, she said.

In Friendship stores without designated areas, children are attending virtual school in a parent's office or setting up laptops and iPads in extra offices or conference rooms. Parents check on them between customers and during breaks, Wilson said.

Some employees have become more productive with their children at work, she said. They regularly do temperatures checks on themselves and their kids and keep on working.

"It's allowed them to maintain their position," Wilson said. "A lot of our positions don't really have the ability to work from home."

Some dealerships say they've always offered flexibility on the child-care front. That has been the case for Friendship, said Rachel Bays, executive assistant at the company.

"We've always been OK with, if something happens, someone has to bring their kid to work," Bays said. "But we're even more understanding now and more accommodating now because of the pandemic."

Several dealership leaders told Automotive News that productivity didn't falter even when employees worked away from the stores.

Prime Ford – Saco in Maine had long offered flexible hours to accommodate employees, General Manager Dave Blanchard said. But that took on a new life as the pandemic raged in the spring and the state of Maine deemed vehicle sales nonessential. Some employees were temporarily furloughed, and others worked from home. Even with the showroom closed, customers could still buy cars so long as the sales were completed in their driveways or the store's parking lot.

"Their productivity went up because they had to be focused, they had to have their work plans up to date, they had to make good notes in the system just so they knew what was going on the next day," Blanchard said.

Pennsylvania store Faulkner Subaru Harrisburg had several employees — office workers, business development center personnel and sales reps, for instance — go remote as the state shut down sales operations because of the pandemic.

"It has worked out very well," General Manager Doug Jones said in the Automotive News survey. "We have learned that many of our employees can be just as productive working from home."

Technology helped. Jones told Automotive News that instant messaging platform Slack, which the Subaru store had already used for years, proved an integral tool in keeping remote employees informed and operations running smoothly even with personnel scattered.

Being able to tailor messages to specific teams — the BDC or service, for example — helped with efficient communications, Jones said. Every morning at 9 a.m. during that period, Jones gave a thorough briefing to all employees, whether on furlough or not, to provide new information on COVID-19 or dealership operations. If he had no update to give, he sent words of encouragement.

"It was just such an uncertain time," Jones said. "People didn't know what was going to happen."

The virus is once again surging across the country, but auto retailing has rebounded since the spring. The recovery has meant some dealerships reevaluated some of the flexible arrangements. Some respondents to the Automotive News survey reported challenges with remote work and said the situation improved when employees were back under one roof.

BDC staffers at DCH Montclair Acura in New Jersey were able to take calls and wrangle leads from home, said Tim Hlavenka, general manager.

"It worked well for the most part," Hlavenka said in the Automotive News survey. "The only challenge was on pre-owned vehicles when consumers had a specific question on features or wanted a specific picture of the vehicle that wasn't available online."

Some members of the digital marketing team at My Auto Import Center in Muskegon, Mich., worked remotely for a temporary period but were brought back after state restrictions were lifted and safety measures were put in place, said Maria Secord, the group's community relations manager.

"We believe that all of us being under one roof encourages a sense of teamwork and ownership of our success," Secord said in the survey.

But at other stores, working from home is still going strong.

Sunrise Chevrolet in Glendale Heights, Ill., has had a service representative, a fleet and inventory manager and a warranty administrator all doing their jobs remotely during the pandemic.

"It has worked out great," store General Manager Dan Schomer said in the Automotive News survey.

The warranty administrator is once again working in the store, but Schomer said the other two positions "will remain remote as long as they need to be and possibly permanently."