Keep information flowing
The hardest pill to swallow for the employees at Jackson’s Saturn dealer was the fact that Saturn was a moneymaker for Jackson’s company. The cars were selling and the brand was still popular. When viewed from the store level, there was no reason to believe the dealers should ever be in danger of closing.
But car dealers are caught in the middle, between the purchasing habits of consumers and the top-level decisions of the automakers that supply the product. If one or the other stops supporting the dealer, the business is in jeopardy.
In any business situation, you have to realize what you can and can’t control. You can’t control market fluctuations, but you can control how your business prepares for and reacts to the fluctuations.
At Jackson Automotive Management, Jackson and his leadership team couldn’t control what was happening at GM headquarters, but they could control the flow of information.
“When we were going through all of this with Saturn, what we did was share information on an almost daily basis,” Jackson says. “We were getting information almost daily, when Penske was going to buy Saturn and then all of that blew up after we thought it was a done deal. When GM first announced it was going to close Saturn, there was some question as to whether they were really going to do it.”
With many questions bouncing around the shop and showroom floor and with few answers evident, Jackson kept in contact with the general managers of his Saturn dealers, making sure they had the latest and most comprehensive information available to disseminate to employees.
“Almost daily, the general managers were walking around their stores, fielding questions from employees,” Jackson says. “It was not unusual for the general manager to walk through the service department and a couple of technicians would come up and ask about something they had heard floating around. Before you knew it, five or six technicians would be up there talking to the general manager.
“The general manager would say, ‘I have this e-mail. Here is the latest word I’ve heard; you know as much as I know.’ The employees were appreciative of that. They took all the information in, and then they’d go and tell the rest of the people in that department, so everyone was up to date. There was nothing for us to hide.”
It is difficult to be frank and deliver the unvarnished truth when the news could hurt your collective morale and possibly your bottom line. But if you don’t fill the need for information, your people will. The rumor mill will pick up steam as employees take bits and pieces of news and try to form conclusions. The end result is usually destructive.
“The reality is, we’re human beings, your workers are human beings and we’re emotional,” Jackson says. “They are affected by everything from talking to their neighbor over the back fence, to talking with the lady ahead of them in the grocery line, to talking with their buddy at the bar. All of these people are giving them different stories. So you want to stop the effects of that immediately.
“You might try to create a few distractions to keep people’s minds focused on something besides the bad news. We had an event where we took all employees to see a Red Wings hockey game. We had a big ‘Sex and the City’ movie premiere night. It was just trying to have a few fun things to reduce the outside distractions and keep people loyal to the business.”
An outing at a sporting event or a staff movie night can be beneficial for taking employees’ minds off of the problems that the business is facing. But if the time comes to deliver bad news, such as layoffs or cutbacks, Jackson says you should remember that all good communication is rooted in honesty. The bad news you deliver is still miles better than the bad news you don’t deliver or try to sugarcoat.
“I’d say you have to handle it delicately but directly,” he says. “Again, the worst thing you can do is to not be completely honest with people about what is going on. The news media, the rumor mill, it’s always going to be alive and active, and the worst thing you can do is to be less than honest and allow people to carry rumors with them. You lose a lot of faith and people are emotionally distraught. You don’t want them to do something unhealthy for them or for the business in a highly emotional time.”
