NADA logo

Help for new-car dealership families displaced by flooding

As you have heard, thousands of dealership employees and their families have suffered devastating losses in the recent Louisiana floods. The need for financial assistance is great and will last for many weeks, if not months. The NADA Foundation’s Emergency Relief Fund helps dealership families after natural disasters, and NADA has announced that the Foundation will seek to raise $2 million for new-car dealership families displaced by the flooding in Louisiana.  Initial estimates indicate that more than 1,500 dealership families from new car dealerships in Baton Rouge and surrounding areas have been flooded out of their homes and desperately need financial assistance.  As you may have heard from Peter Welch (NADA), he spent a good part of last week in Baton Rouge with Will Green (LA), taking stock of the flood damage.  Because of the severity of the flooding and lack of insurance (affected areas were not in flood zones), the vast number of relief applicants will qualify for a $1,500 check from the Foundation.  To fill the expected gap between what’s needed and what’s on hand, a nationwide fundraising campaign has been initiated.

Please visit NADA’s website at www.nada.org/emergencyrelief for more information.

To make a tax-deductible contribution to the Emergency Relief Fund, you can donate online or send a check, payable to NADCF Emergency Fund, to NADCF, 8400 Westpark Drive, Tysons, VA, 22102.

MADA logo

Driving Michigan’s Economy

Michigan’s new car dealers make a significant contribution to our economy through employment, taxes paid and community involvement.  Consider these numbers…

  • Michigan has about 600 new car dealerships, with an average of 60 employees per dealership.
  • When indirect and induced jobs are added in, that increases to 73,362 total jobs created by Michigan dealerships!
  • $682 MILLION is paid in income taxes (includes income taxes paid for direct, indirect and induced jobs).
  • Michigan dealerships have a $2.0 BILLION payroll.
  • With $25.7 BILLION in total sales, Michigan dealerships account for 21.4% of the state’s total retail sales.

These numbers reflect annual economic activity from 2015.  Read more about the annual contribution of dealerships at www.nada.org/statedata.

Details from DrivingSales’ Most Valuable Insight Competition

Hireology was fortunate to speak and present at the DrivingSales Presidents Club 2016 event as a finalist for the Most Valuable Insight Awards. As a way to present our “most valuable insight,” Hireology presented the findings from an in-house study on how effective employment branding drives quality hires and improved store performance at dealerships.

Our study found something to be true across all retail automotive dealerships: employment branding matters. We want to tailor our career sites or “employment brand” to best show the culture, history, community involvement and benefits of working with our organization. Top employees will seek out companies with strong employment brands. The best way to create a strong employment brand is through a career specific website designed specifically for applicants.

Here’s a concise look at the results of the study:

Be sure to visit our site for a full look at the study.

Our insight: Strong employment branding, when combined with a data-driven evaluation process, is one of the best investments a dealership can make. When dealerships build a strong employment brand and utilize process to manage the recruiting and hiring effort, the results are staggering.

What we found.  Our survey exposed numerous challenges facing the automotive industry when it comes to finding and hiring employees. There is a clear difference between utilizing job boards and a company career site when it comes to recruiting talent.

Applicant conversion by source.  We analyzed the rate at which inbound page traffic to this dealership group’s career page converted into candidate applications, and found that conversion rates from organic traffic delivered as a result of a branded career site substantially over-performed the conversion rates generated from paid job board traffic:

  • 2% conversion rate from job boards
  • 5% conversion rate from organic traffic

Organic traffic is defined by visitors who are coming to your site after finding you in a search engine like Google. They could be searching for your brand or openings at your company because of your established career site and content tailored to employees.

Candidates by source.  We define “candidate” as someone who has applied for an open position via the career site, and who has been deemed qualified first review such that a next step (like an interview) is warranted. Nearly 94% of candidates who applied for an open job were attributable to a paid job board, versus organic traffic attributable to a career site.

Hires by source.  While job boards control a majority of candidate traffic, our data showed 77% of all hires made resulted from organic traffic generated by the dealer’s career site, versus job boards.  Even though organic traffic attributable to a dealer career site generated just 6% of all candidate traffic, this cohort produced a whopping 77% of all hires made.

In other words, 6% of traffic generated 77% of hires.

Turnover Percentage by Source. Most importantly, the results show that turnover rates diverge substantially based on cohort. The new variable ops hires that originated from an candidate attributable to a branded career site turned over at a rate that’s two-thirds less than than the industry average.

  • 25% from Control Group A
  • 72% industry average

Key Takeaways.  So, what’s the value in having a branded career site for your dealership?

Here are four things to consider:

  1. Organic applicant traffic and process is over 5x more cost-effective
    1. Organic cost per-hire: $245
    2. Third party sources cost per-hire: $1,700
  2. Organic applicant traffic and process yields the majority of hires
    1. 20% of the traffic yields 80% of the hires
  3. Hires sourced this way are 2.5x more likely to be an A or B player
  4. Hires sources this way have higher retention rates
    1. 27% versus 67% industry average

 

What Dealers Must Do: Retail automotive dealers that want to build better teams and reduce turnover should invest in employment branding, and should integrate a data-driven hiring process.

The financial benefits of such an approach far surpass nearly all potential operational improvements through which dealers can generate a return on investment.

Assuming that a dealer has 55 employees (the average) and that their turnover is 67% per year, turnover is costing them nearly $600,000 per year, every year:

55 Employees

37 turns (67% x 55)

@ $16,000 cost-per-turnover ea.

 = $592,000

Now let’s assume that this dealership gets its act together, implements a branded career site and a structured hiring process, and produces a turnover rate similar to the cases studies discussed previously (25%). That same dealership turnover calculation now looks like the following:

55 Employees

 14 turns (25% x 55)

@ $16,000 cost-per-turnover ea.

 = $224,000

That’s a profit add-back of $368,000 per store per year.

The bottom line is that dealers must take charge of the hiring challenge by taking control of the hiring process. Strong employment branding, when combined with a data-driven evaluation process, is one of the best investments a dealership can make.

If you’re not already taking this approach, it might be time to reconsider the way your dealership hires employees, because your employment brand most definitely matters.

 

 

By: Kevin Baumgart, VP Business Development, Hireology

Michigan Auto Dealers Self Insured Fund (MADSIF) logo

MIOSHA Inspections Are On the Rise!

Since January 1, 2016 OSHA & MIOSHA have completed Safety Inspections in almost 130 dealerships nationwide. Michigan dealerships have accounted for nearly 25% or 30 inspections during 2016. Over $53,000 in fines were issued to those Michigan Dealerships.
In 2016, workers’ compensation claims in Michigan Dealerships have averaged $2500 per claim.

MIOSHA may show up at your door when you least expect it. Your dealership is subjected to numerous inspection/audits and the more prepared you are the less costly and time consuming these inspections/audits will be. Is your dealership prepared to welcome a MIOSHA inspector? If you’re not, or you’re not sure, please send your managers to this upcoming workshop. (Dates and registration information.)

The workshop will prepare your managers and dealership for a MIOSHA inspection by providing the following information:

  1. Who is MIOSHA (history and legality of their conduct)?
  2. Why was my dealership picked for an inspection?
  3. What will happen during a MIOSHA inspection, and what can you do during and prior to the inspection to be prepared?
  4. How providing a hazard free work place will reduce Workers Compensation costs and also comply with MIOSHA Regulations.
  5. Updated information on the requirements of the Right to Know Law and the Globally Harmonized System (GHS)

By attending this workshop your managers will know what to expect when MIOSHA arrives.

They will learn proper record keeping and how to correctly report injuries. The instructors will discuss what safety training is mandatory, and how it must be documented. They will learn how a walk-through inspection will be conducted including what MIOSHA will focus on. Finally, we will explain the potential cost of penalties, what appeal rights the dealership has, what is a Penalty Reduction Agreement (PRA) and whether you should accept it or not?

Workshop dates and registration information.

CAPTRUST logo

CAPTRUST Named #1 Advisory Firm in U.S.

MADA has worked with CAPTRUST Financial Advisors for more than 25 years.  It’s the 401k provider we choose for our own staff, and the company almost 100 other MADA dealers work with.

In its July 2016 issue, Financial Advisor magazine ranked CAPTRUST number one among registered investment advisors (RIAs) with assets in excess of $1 billion. The magazine’s annual survey analyzes several metrics, including assets under advisement, asset growth over the trailing year, assets per client, and a number of other indicators of business success.

Authors Evan Simonff and Eric Rasmussen cite recent challenges for the investment advisory industry, such as the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule, lackluster and volatile capital markets, advisor succession, and the challenges of investing in the technology and infrastructure necessary to grow. In fact, of the 612 RIAs that participated in the survey, “more than one-third, 219, said they saw assets under management shrink last year,” according to the article.

Despite industry headwinds, CAPTRUST’s client assets and number of clients grew by 15.3% and 9.5%, respectively, during 2015. Last year was a record year for CAPTRUST on several fronts. Client assets under advisement grew from $147.7 billion to $169.1 billion.

Learn more about MADA’s endorsed 401k provider!  Call us at (800) 292-1923.