As a leader, you know that employee engagement begins with your dealership’s top professionals and then continues throughout the workforce, ensuring that everyone has a voice and feels like a part of the collaborative team you are building.

When starting out, this can seem like an overwhelming process, simply because the thought of getting every employee on board the same train to anywhere seems impossible. However, by investing yourself in the important task of employee engagement, you are creating not just a way of acting or a way of behaving at work, you are creating and defining an entire culture for the dealership. And a culture isn’t something you can type on a piece of paper, hand out to employees, and expect them to implement the very next day. Culture takes time, patience, and vision—which is exactly why you are the person for the job!

What Is Culture?

Dealership culture revolves around the values and actions its employees share, all of which contribute to the overall environment of the business. When work values and expectations are clearly defined for team members and when everyone is working toward a unified goal, a dealership’s culture begins to emerge. Culture is defined by the community that has been created in the dealership, the way employees conduct business and interact, and the collaboration between professionals that results in business habits and expectations.

Time Commitment

The paperwork and organizational processes that are carried out behind the scenes of your dealership take a considerable amount of time, but they are necessary in order to keep things running smoothly. The process of building a dealership’s culture is similar in that it is time consuming and requires much of your attention. However, when building a culture, you’ll enjoy exciting intervals of employee interaction (like dealership events, coffee with coworkers, and more!), and you’ll soon start to see employees who are participating, contributing, and even helping you plan.

Have Patience

The well-known proverb states that “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” And so it is with a dealership’s employee engagement program. You know how busy your employees are and that their jobs require them to be in different places throughout the dealership, so it’s going to take a little bit of creative thinking and planning in order to get everyone participating and interacting. Enthusiasm, however, is contagious—and when your employees start to see others getting involved and engaged at work, it won’t be long before everyone wants to join in.

Envision the Outcome

Have a vision for what you want the dealership to look like with your new employee engagement platform in place. Plan for it, because it’s going to happen! Engaged employees are the secret behind truly successful businesses, because those are the employees who will eagerly provide over-the-top customer service and entice shoppers to come back. When you envision a culture that involves every professional on your staff contributing to the overall good of the dealership, you will be better able to plan specific details and lay the groundwork for an amazing dealership culture.

Dealerships that have a strong culture and an engaged workforce are riding a wave of success that cannot be duplicated by taking shortcuts. By putting in the work and challenging yourself and your employees to rise to the occasion of being a part of the great new culture that is forming, your dealership will enjoy increased savings, less employee absences, and happier customers. Who doesn’t want to be part of that? Check out the tips below for creating a great dealership culture that is both doable and exciting for employees:

• Identify your leaders. This will be your core engagement team, so ensure you have their buy-in by explaining exactly what’s going on, how it’s going to benefit individuals and the dealership, and what they can do to help.
• Plan your course of action. Just as if you were taking a trip, you need to plan according to strategic points on the map. Make a list of specific action items and the cultural benefit to your dealership that will result when those actions are taken.
• Communicate. And then communicate some more. It’s not enough to state your purpose once, twice, or even three times. Your plan and your course of action need to be clear and continuously top-of-mind with employees in order to keep everyone as enthusiastic as you are. Help employees adapt to change and embrace new opportunities by setting an example for them to follow.
• Include everyone. It’s easy to see the employees who naturally stand out as willing participants in the new company culture, but it may not be so easy to notice those in positions that are not as visible. Remember to plan events and meetings that are inclusive of everyone in the dealership.
• Make it meaningful. Everyone has to go to work; the lucky ones get to do what they love. At your dealership, this can be everyone when you focus on leadership and coaching, encouraging every employee to strive toward his or her professional goals within your organization. Offer mentoring, training, and coaching to help employees achieve the career goals they are seeking. Engaged employees who love what they do and take pride in their jobs contribute to the positive dealership culture you are creating.
• Celebrate successes. The team at your dealership is working hard to come together to create a culture of engagement that will benefit both the business and individual employees. Don’t get too busy to celebrate the successes along the way. Have a great community event? Meet a specific goal as a team? Enjoy the wins along the way, and your culture will bloom.
• Maintain the enthusiasm. A new and exciting platform is one thing, but in order to keep everyone excited about employee engagement after you’ve initiated your plan, you will need to focus on maintaining and building. Continue with the programs you’ve started, and build in new ideas to keep employees interested. Was the spring picnic a hit? If so, consider planning a fall festival. Keep the good ideas coming, and your employees will do the same.

The culture that defines your dealership will be seen and felt by employees, family, and potential customers, so it’s important to get it right. You can contribute to creating a culture employees value by continuously finding new ways to engage them, providing meaningful work that utilizes their abilities, and offering new ways for them to collaborate, communicate, and interact with peers. In exchange, your employees will contribute to the overall process and work together with you to build the dealership culture. The culture of a business can determine its future success, and by focusing on key elements like employee engagement, retention, interaction, and collaboration, you will be moving the entire dealership in the right direction.