Fixed Ops Journal - December 2019 - F19

FIXED OPS JOURNAL

DIVERSITY
continued from previous page

Other dealerships have had similar success stories. Yet there is no largescale, national push aimed at recruiting women to be dealership techs.
Instead, DeVere says, Women in Automotive is working with the Tech
Force Foundation and other groups to recruit women on a local, personal level.
Adam Robinson is CEO of Hireology, which provides hiring software
to more than 3,000 dealerships. He notes that most of today's work force
is under the age of 40, and that many younger employees want and expect to work in a diverse environment.
"What we see in today's employees, particularly Generation Z, is that
they are much more likely to be interested in working for and staying
with an employer who has a formal diversity, equity and inclusion program in place," Robinson says.
Yet only a minority of dealerships have a defined policy on gender balance and related values, and even fewer have formal programs to
achieve these goals, Robinson notes.
When Sherry Schultz joined Walser Automotive Group in Minneapolis last year as chief human resource officer, she found that fewer than 20
percent of the company's employees were women and that turnover
was higher among women than men.
To create a more female-friendly culture, Schultz started Women of
Walser, a resource and networking group that has spread throughout
the company's 16 dealerships in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and nine
in Wichita, Kan. The group developed a mentorship program to help
newly hired employees settle into their jobs. Both initiatives include
service employees.
"The automotive industry has historically been plagued with poor
representation of women and higher turnover," Schultz says. "To attract
and retain the best women in the organization, we needed to ensure
there was a resource network to help women grow not only competence
but confidence."
Women now account for 23 percent of Walser's employees, up from 20
percent a year ago, and turnover is down, Schultz says. A smaller share
- 13 percent - of service advisers at Walser dealerships are women.
The company did not provide a number for service techs. "While our
numbers do show an increase in the percentage of female technicians,
it's small and probably not worth highlighting at this point," says Dayna
Landgrebe, Walser's corporate communications manager.

more women in customer-facing roles, such as advisers.
"People want to shop where they see people like themselves, and they
also want to work in an environment where they see that happening,"
DeVere says.
Putting women in visible positions also signals to other women that they
are welcome not only as customers but as potential employees, she adds.
"The unconscious message is, 'Wow, there are women working here.
Maybe I can work at a dealership.' But if you see only men, that would
never occur to you," she says.

Woman to woman
Roger Conant, a blogger who has worked as a customer experience and
retention manager at dealerships in the Houston area, says he has urged
dealers for more than 20 years to adopt female-friendly practices in fixed operations. He says it was obvious to him that many women felt more comfortable talking to another woman when they brought a car in for service.
"Eighty percent of them came in with a look of fear on their face,"
Conant says. "They were walking into a man cave."
Female advisers are often better listeners, he says, and tend to focus
more on building long-term customer relationships than maximizing
revenue from individual service transactions.
"In service, you're going to see those people over and over," Conant
says. "The main thing you hire for is communication skill. [An adviser]
will learn the technical part.
"A lot of times, you don't want people who have been steeped in this industry," he adds. "It's refreshing to have someone come in from a different
industry that was really geared to relationships and to repeat business." 

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Burden of history
Hireology's Robinson says the difficulty of recruiting female technicians is more of a societal issue than an industry one. For decades, he
says, high school students - especially women - have been steered toward college instead of vocational jobs.
"Vocational roles are some of the best career opportunities for people
who opt not to go to college," Robinson says. "It's a problem that more
girls and young women aren't as interested in these roles.
"That impacts the auto industry in a huge way," he says. "I hesitate to
say that's an issue that dealers themselves can address. We as an industry can plant a flag and say, 'Hey, look, this is a real opportunity for people who have a vocational aptitude or interest in developing one. You
should check us out.' "
Service technicians typically need years of training and experience to
become productive master techs. Service advisers are easier to find and
train, and they don't need a mechanical background or thousands of
dollars' worth of tools to get started. Because service customers are just
as likely to be female as male, DeVere says, it is good business to have

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DECEMBER 2019

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Fixed Ops Journal - December 2019

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