Make yourself accessible. To me,
the idea of having an open-door policy means that an
employee will feel comfortable
enough to come to me, come
to their supervisor, their general manager at all times. To
make them comfortable, you
have to be active in your communication.
We have a managers’ meeting once a week that usually
takes two or three hours. We
instruct all of our managers to
list all of their problems during
the week and bring them to
the meeting. This way, we get
both sides of the issues.
When somebody comes to
you directly, you get half of the
story. You want to know what
both sides of the story are. As
an example here, are we out of
loaner cars, or are we just not
getting the service work out?
You need communication like
that because everything at this
dealership is a team effort.
That’s the only way it can be
done in business today.
Get to know your people personally.
We try to have less-formal social events during the year,
whether it’s a Pirates game, a
football game or a picnic or
even a pizza lunch once a
month. I believe it brings
camaraderie.
You know who their spouses
are, who their kids are, you recognize that one employee has
four kids and drives 45 minutes
to work or works a 10-hour
day. You realize what issues
your employees face, what
they need to do to be at their
best.
Getting down to a personal
level is important because it
leads to longevity with your
employees; they want to stay
where they are. It gives a trust
to your employees; it gives an
acceptance that ownership
cares.
HOW TO REACH: A&L Motor Sales, (412) 373-6071 or www.almotors.com