When someone talks about workplace harassment, many of us automatically think of sexual harassment, especially in the wake of the #MeToo movement. While sexual harassment is a very serious concern and in need of continued attention, it's important that you don't focus all of your anti-harassment efforts on sexual harassment, and inadvertently overlook other types of harassment in your dealership.

In fact, the number of harassment claims based on sex ranks fourth—behind race, disabilities and retaliation. By far the most prevalent form of harassment is retaliation, which occurs when someone—usually a manager—retaliates against an employee who has filed a complaint or discrimination charge, participated in an investigation or lawsuit, or who has opposed an employment practice they believe discriminates against individuals.

Harassment of any type is intolerable, and for dealers it's critical to not only build strong policies, but to enforce them and hold both employees and managers accountable. A culture of tolerance must be clearly defined and rigorously defended.

With that said, what exactly is harassment?

Harassment is defined as unwelcome conduct based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age, disability or other genetic information.

Offensive conduct may include, but is not limited to offensive jokes, slurs, name calling, physical assaults or threats, intimidation, ridicule, insults, offensive objects or pictures and anything that interferes with work performance. Practices like hazing new salespeople or making race- or sex-based jokes can easily fall into this category.

Offensive conduct does not include petty slights, annoying behavior or even the occasional isolated incident, unless it's extremely serious. The key phrase in determining whether a behavior is harassment is understanding how the conduct would impact a "reasonable person."

Some employees are hyper-sensitive and as such, their accusations may not be justified. After all, it's still not against the law to be a jerk, as long as that's your consistent behavior and you're a jerk to everyone. I wouldn't recommend that you promote such behavior, but from a purely legal standpoint, it would pass.

A harasser does not have to be the victim's supervisor; it can be a supervisor in another area, a co-worker or even a customer. The victim doesn't have to be the person who is being harassed; it can be any observer who is offended by behavior that they witness.

The most important thing to remember is that the acceptable behaviors in your dealership are not defined by the policies in your handbook. They are defined by the behaviors that you choose to tolerate every day.

In the event of a lawsuit, what's written in your handbook will not protect you if the policies are not enforced and senior management turns a blind eye to what's going on in the dealership.

Preventing Harassment

Preventing harassment takes a coordinated effort by principals and senior management. It's not something that can be accomplished by updating policies in a handbook, and showing employees generic training videos.

To prevent workplace harassment, you must continually communicate your core values and operating standards to all employees. During onboarding, be sure to train employees on your workplace anti-harassment policies. This is something that many dealers don't do, but absolutely should.

Preventing workplace harassment also means that you must be willing to hold all offenders accountable, even if they are your best performers, family members or friends.

Provide separate and more intensive training for managers so they know what their responsibilities are when an employee comes forward, and also what constitutes retaliation.

It's also important to provide multiple avenues for victims to report harassment. If your policy states that all complaints should be directed to your manager, but your manager is the one doing the harassing, your policy is ineffective. Give employees several options other than their direct supervisor, and if the victim chooses another, ensure that the supervisor does not retaliate against the employee.

When it comes to harassment, you don’t need a formal complaint. If you become aware of potentially harassing behavior, it's best to immediately investigate it. If a lawsuit occurs, your best defense is to prove that you exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct any harassing behavior; and that the victim unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the employer to avoid harm.

These days, ignoring the problem, saying things like "Don’t let that offend you, that's just Harvey being Harvey," or sticking your head in the sand is not an option.

On the other hand, you don’t want to overreact to an accusation. If someone is accused, investigate immediately but don't jump to conclusions about what happened or fire the accused on the spot.

Many companies have gone so far as to implement zero-tolerance policies in the wake of the #MeToo movement that make it clear that you will be terminated due to a single incident of harassing behavior. Often times, victims of harassment just want the behavior to stop, they don’t necessarily want someone to lose their job over a single isolated incident. As a result, strong zero-tolerance policies can actually discourage victims from filing a complaint.

As a business owner, you have a legal responsibility to ensure your dealership is free from harassment every day. So, don't just update your handbook policy and think you're covered; stay vigilant and monitor your employees' and managers' behavior every day.

Somewhere out there is the perfect candidate for your job opening, but finding that person can be a challenge. How much thought and time do you put into your hiring process? Many dealers still have a "give 'em a shot for 90 days" mentality, believing that if a new hire doesn't work out, they're no worse off.

Nothing could be further from the truth. According to the latest NADA Workforce Study, the average turnover rate for sales professionals in dealerships is 80 percent. High turnover affects morale, gross and customer retention.

Many factors contribute to turnover, and the lack of a good hiring process is just one of them. Fine tuning this process might not solve all your problems, but it's a good place to start.

1) Prepare for Interviews

I've talked to many hiring managers who admit the first time they ever looked at a candidate's resume was when they sat down for the interview. If you can't take the time to prepare for an interview, you have only yourself to blame when you make a bad hire!

Review a candidate's resume in advance. It's important to look for discrepancies such as gaps in employment or a job description that doesn't match the job title, so you can ask the candidate about it during the job interview. For example, if a candidate says she left one company for a better job opportunity somewhere else, but there's a three-month employment gap in her resume between those two jobs, that's a red flag you want to ask about.

Another reason to prepare in advance is so that during the interview, you can observe the job candidate's behaviors. If you are nose down in a resume the whole time you may miss important body language cues that can suggest whether a candidate is lying to you.

Remember that a job interview is a two-way process. The candidate is trying to sell his or her skills to you, but this is also your opportunity to sell your dealership. After all, your perfect candidate is probably not sitting at home, unemployed and desperate for a job. Your perfect job candidate is probably employed elsewhere, looking for a better opportunity. So be prepared to explain why it's better to work for your dealership than any other dealership.

2) Use Structured Interview Scripts

Before the interview, write down the questions you plan to ask. First, make a list of the skills, abilities and character traits required to successfully do the job. Then create questions designed to discover whether the candidate has that trait or skill. For example, one skill required for salespeople is persistence. Ask a question such as "How many times do you think it's appropriate to call and email someone who has submitted a lead on our website?"

You also want to ask a mix of behavioral questions and situational questions designed to reveal the skills and traits you are looking for. Make sure your questions are open-ended so the candidate has to give a detailed answer, rather than a "yes" or "no" response.

Behavioral questions are designed to encourage the candidate to share stories from their past experience that reveal a behavior you're looking for. Examples include: Describe a time you disagreed with a supervisor; describe a time that you showed initiative; tell me about a time when you had to act in a leadership capacity. If candidates have a hard time coming up with an answer, or skirt your question, don’t let them off the hook!

Situational questions present a "what if" scenario to the job candidate, and are designed to reveal how the candidate will react in different situations. Examples include: What would you do if a customer is being difficult; what would you do if you heard a coworker lying to a customer?

Last but not least, you want to ask questions to find out whether the candidate is a good cultural fit. One of my favorites is "I want you to think back to a time when you were successful in a position. Tell me about that company and environment. What did you like about it? Why were you successful there?" Let's say the candidate says his favorite thing about his previous job was that he had a flexible work schedule. If your dealership does not offer flexible work schedules, then you probably don't want to hire that candidate because they won’t fit into your culture.

3) Interview and Hire by Committee

I always recommend having more than one hiring manager in an interview. My senior software development manager likes to sit in while I interview software developers. It gives him a chance to observe the candidate's behavior in a way that he can't while he is doing the interviewing himself. Occasionally he'll throw in some follow-up questions, but we jokingly refer to this as our Penn and Teller routine.

If you're hiring a service writer, have the general manager sit in on the service manager's interviews. If there's a hiring manager in your dealership who is a great judge of character, have them sit in on as many interviews as possible, even if the job opening is not in their department.

In addition to interviewing by committee, I recommend hiring by committee. At Auto/Mate our job candidates go through several interviews with several hiring managers from different departments. We require a unanimous decision on all hires, which means that even if three out of four managers like a candidate but one manager does not, we won't hire that person. It may sound harsh but we rarely hire someone who is not a good cultural fit.

A formal hiring process allows you to identify and hire the best job candidates, which helps to reduce employee turnover. Of course, a hiring process is just one part of an equation that includes ramping up your recruiting efforts and focusing on workplace culture so you can keep your employees happy.

The movement to address gender pay equity has gained tremendous traction in the last year. It has been 50 years since the U.S. Equal Pay Act was passed, yet, women still make 80 cents on the dollar compared to men. If this fact hasn’t affected your hiring practices yet, it’s just a matter of time before it will.

Some may view this as a challenge for an automotive industry that has typically been dominated by men. I view this pivotal time as an opportunity for dealers to spearhead change, modernize their practices, and attract women away from industries that have fallen behind the times.

According to the NADA 2017 Dealership Workforce Study, only 19.4 percent of active employees on new-car dealership payrolls are women, and that number drops to 11 percent when looking specifically at the role of a sales consultant. As dealers continue to struggle to find talent, a focus on attracting women into roles in your dealerships represents a largely untapped labor pool.

Many studies show that women are the primary decision makers or influencers in the majority of car purchases in the U.S. and that women prefer to buy vehicles from other women. Dealerships who have been at the forefront of recruiting women into sales roles have realized a significant increase in sales.

If you are not compelled to make changes because of the positive impact on sales, consider the legal impact. In 2018 alone, 38 states introduced gender pay equity bills. In 2017, the White House squashed plans to collect pay-data along with EEO-1 information that would have forced employers to report W2 wage information categorized by race, ethnicity and sex. New bills are being floated through the House and Senate. The time for car dealers to evaluate your pay practices in preparation for the coming wave of change is now.

Effective January 1, 2019 in the states of New York, California, Oregon, Delaware, Vermont and Massachusetts it will be against the law to ask a candidate “What is your current salary?” during a job interview. Even if this question isn’t illegal in your state yet, you might want to stop asking it. Here’s why.

During a job interview, the questions “How much are you making?” or “How much did you make in your last position?” provide you with a benchmark that is often used to decide how you will compensate that candidate. Since women have historically been paid less than men, this practice can inadvertently perpetuate a discriminatory pay scale for women as they move from job to job.

Instead, compensation for your open positions should be based on the market rate for the job you are looking to fill, and where your overall compensation strategy lands you in comparison to the market.

Dealers can still ask candidates about their salary expectations or the amount of money they would like to make in their new role, they just can’t ask about past compensation history.

There are mixed opinions as to whether or not these new laws will actually help to address the pay gap, or make it worse. It will be years before anyone knows for sure.

Most gender equity laws do allow the employer to ask the candidate about salary after they are hired. This data is allowed to be used internally to set pay scales, and it’s easy to verify.

As a dealer, it’s important to know that it’s still okay to pay more to an employee with better skills, more experience, more education and better overall job performance. But if all else is equal and you’re paying a man more than a woman in the same position, you better start thinking about how to make their salaries more equitable.

Recently the Paycheck Fairness Act was introduced to both the House and Senate. If passed, this new act is designed to close the gender pay gap by making wages more transparent, requiring that employers prove that wage discrepancies are tied to legitimate business qualifications and not gender, and prohibiting companies from taking retaliatory action against employees who raise concerns about gender-based wage discrimination. It would also make it easier for employees to pursue class action claims against their employers for violations of the law. 

But you don’t have to wait until this act and other state laws are passed in order to make your dealership an equitable workplace for women.

First, take the time now to identify whether pay discrepancies exist in your dealership by conducting a payroll audit. Run payroll reports and compare the data between men and women to see if you have a problem. 

Overhaul your standard interview questions for both new hires and for internal promotions. Research your questions to make sure that you are only asking questions that are job related, consistent with business necessity, and legal. Train hiring managers how to conduct proper interviews. Ensure they understand the impact of gender bias in their decision making and develop a consistent interview scoring criteria that help to eliminates bias.

Above all, focus on building a dealership culture that welcomes women. With 96 percent turnover in female sales consultant roles, there is plenty of room for improvement. Dealers must set the tone for what they consider to be appropriate behaviors in the dealership and then ensure that employees are held accountable for meeting those standards.

Dealers must also consider stable pay plans, reasonable hours, and flexible schedules. If you can retain female employees by showing them they have the same career path opportunities as their male counterparts, they will stay long enough to become eligible for promotions into leadership roles with higher compensation. That will attract even more women into your dealership and will help to close the pay gap.

In the U.S., women comprise 47 percent of the workforce but in auto dealerships, less than 20 percent of employees are women. In this economy, dealerships can’t afford to alienate any available talent, let alone nearly half the workforce. It’s time to create an environment that’s attractive to women and to your primary customers. Make these changes now because it makes good business sense. Either way, you’ll be forced into it eventually.

Employee engagement is the strength of the mental and emotional connection that employees feel toward their workplace. It affects every part of your business, including revenues, customer experience, turnover, talent acquisition and brand awareness.

Studies show that companies with high levels of employee engagement also have high levels of customer retention, attract top talent easily, have stellar reputations and are more profitable.

Creating a workplace focused on employee engagement isn't difficult, but it does take some time and effort. As a business owner, whatever you decide to invest in engagement will deliver a healthy ROI in the following ways:

1) Attract and Retain Top Talent

Employee turnover rates in dealerships are higher than average, and turnover is expensive. The labor market is pretty tight right now. To attract the best talent you need to differentiate your organization. It's not just about offering the best pay or benefits; you need to offer a complete package. People want to work at a company that offers them a sense of purpose and belonging, a career path, a strong culture and they want to be recognized and genuinely appreciated for their efforts.

2) Better Employee Performance/Productivity

Engaged employees have a 37 percent lower absenteeism rate than industry averages. Employees who love their jobs are far more productive and take care of your customers.

Another advantage of creating a workplace with engaged employees is that it helps you have those difficult conversations with employees who are underperforming. If you are micromanaging and constantly berating your employees over minor issues, they won’t take you seriously and they will work just hard enough not to get fired. If you are acting in a coaching capacity, and you show you are invested in your employees, they will be responsive to your feedback. They will work hard for you because they want to, not because they have to.

3) Increases Customer Loyalty

Think about how you feel when you walk into your favorite restaurant or retail store. There's a buzz in the air. Employees are enthusiastic, energetic and they take great care of you. The entire atmosphere just feels good. Isn't that how you want your customers to feel when they walk into your store? Customer experience is more about emotion than process. Make your customers feel good and they will keep coming back.

4) Increases Company Revenue and Profitability

According to Quantum Workplace's 2016 Employee Engagement Trends Report, companies with engaged employees realize:

• 22 percent higher profitability
• 26 percent greater stock price growth
• 16 percent greater revenue growth

If you want higher profits and long-term growth, developing a workplace culture that employees love is the most surefire way to make this happen.

How to Improve Employee Engagement

The first step to improving employee engagement is to measure where you are. For many dealers this requires an open mind. You may believe your workplace culture is fine and that the majority of your employees are happy. Be prepared to find out otherwise and don’t take the criticism to heart.

Collect

The best way to measure engagement is to conduct annual surveys with your employees. One of the easiest and most reliable ways to do this is to enter your dealership into a “Top Workplaces” or “Best Places to Work” program in your community. Typically, these are sponsored by local business journals and newspapers. Automotive News also runs an annual “Best Dealerships to Work For” contest.

Employees feel comfortable with these surveys because they are anonymous and administered by a third party. However, as the business owner, you do get to see the results (anonymous, of course). Honest feedback from employees is essential to understanding your current workplace culture.

Analyze

Identify weak areas and strong areas. Benchmark where you are compared to other dealerships and also to other businesses and industries in your region. Remember, you’re not just competing against other dealerships for employees. You’re competing against every other business in your community.

Commit

The hardest part is commitment. You must act on the results. The worst thing you can do is to ask your employees how you can improve, and then not make any improvements. This might require fundamental changes to the way you manage and operate. Not everybody will be happy, but culture change has to come from the top down. You have to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

Employee engagement is real, tangible and can be measured. As a dealer, it's one of the most worthwhile investments you can make in your business. If you or your managers don't have the time to devote to this endeavor, hire someone for that purpose or work with a consulting firm. The savings from the reduction in employee turnover will more than pay for this effort.

In my upcoming Driving Sales Executive Summit presentation, "Squash Sales Turnover by Focusing on Workplace Culture," I'll be addressing the high turnover rates that plague many dealerships. High turnover occurs for several reasons, including poor recruitment and hiring processes, pay plans that don't appeal to young workers and workplace cultures that kill morale.

If you want to attract and retain the best talent, you've got to offer a workplace environment that's better than your competition's. I'll share some of the secrets of what Auto/Mate and some of the most highly decorated dealerships have done to achieve a "Best Place to Work" distinction.  

Another important aspect of talent retention is your recruiting and hiring process. Does your dealership even have an official process for hiring sales professionals? Many times, there is a "give 'em a shot for 90 days" mentality, versus a true process that will screen out the liars, fakers and poor culture fits.

It's critically important to hire people who are a good cultural fit with your organization. You can hire the best salesperson in the world, but if they aren't a good cultural fit, they can have a damaging impact on the morale and productivity of your dealership that can take a long time to recover from.

An effective recruiting process involves more than just posting a boring job advertisement in your local paper or on a job board, then waiting for candidates to filter in. If you want to get serious about finding the right employees for your dealership, I recommend implementing the following recruiting process:

1) Perform a job analysis and create a detailed job description for each position. Go deeper than listing the job responsibilities. What are the KPIs used to measure whether an employee performs well? Think of someone who performed that job well in the past. What unique skills did they possess that made them stand apart from others?

Then, think of the people who were not successful. Did they possess similar skills or did they come from similar backgrounds? Have you had more success with people who came from a service industry as opposed to a dealership background? Analyze these trends and use them to develop your ideal candidate profile.

2) Define personality traits necessary for a good fit. How would you describe your dealership's company culture? Is it fast-paced or slow moving? Is it family and community oriented, or is it all about performance? Would you describe the most successful salespeople on your team as "sharks" that will do just about anything to close a deal, or are they customer-centered and focused on building long-term relationships? Are you focused on volume of sales or creating a unique experience for your customers? If you want to make good hiring decisions, it's critical that you define both your culture and your values—then make sure your candidates fit that mold.

3) Develop an exciting job advertisement. In your job postings, do you simply list the job responsibilities? Or do you paint a picture for a potential candidate about how awesome your dealership is to work for? You wouldn't sell a car by just listing the specs. You spend money to create exciting ads for your dealership and inventory. Spend a little time to create exciting ads for your job opportunities.  In my session, I will discuss why you should liken your job ads to online dating profiles.

4) Develop a marketing plan. Market your jobs the same way you market your inventory. Use digital ads, your customer newsletter and social media, and promote your openings in your showroom and in your service lane. Spruce up your dealership's career center, post your job openings on multiple job boards and networking sites and make sure your application process is Millennial friendly.

5) Source candidates. Your marketing plan outlines all the external-facing activities designed to bring in great candidates. But don't sit back and wait for candidates to apply: go out and find them yourself! The very best candidates are most often sourced from employee referrals and other internal efforts. Ask your employees and customers for referrals, and tap into your network of professional contacts. Use social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to generate excitement and interact with potential applicants.

Once you have enough resumes, it's time to select a few candidates for interviews. In my Executive Summit presentation I'll share tips for creating a hiring process so you'll never regret another hire. I'll also talk about compensation plans and the secrets of workplace cultures that attract and retain the best talent. See you in Las Vegas!