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A New Perspective on Multi-Culturalism
Multi-culturalism is not just about people and culture. It's also about organisations and how their traditions and attitudes affect the people who interact with them. David Williams talks to senior management at Enterprise Rent-A-Car about how its culture affects the way it treats both its employees and its customers.
A new perspective
Enterprise is an American company, recently arrived in the UK, and as such it has brought with it a different attitude to diversity than you might find in home-grown organisations. First of all, it comes from a different legislative environment: American diversity laws can be a lot more interventionist than their UK counterparts. However, for Donna Miller, Director of HR, Europe, at Enterprise the difference is more cultural than it is legal.
"The US does have a different attitude to diversity issues," she says. "I look around me here and I can see the mess some UK companies get themselves into when they fail to recognise that some employees want to take religious holidays other than those the Christian celebrations almost all UK employers recognise. I think we understand these issues better because, regardless of any legal coercion, our values have always been the same. One of our eight core values is that what we call an open-door policy, for employees, customers and suppliers."
"For example, we try and work with as wide a range of service providers as possible: from the accountants we use to the firms who clean our offices. If we go out to bid and put out a request for proposal, all other things being equal, we will always opt to use businesses that are run by women or ethnic minorities. We go out of our way to do this because we want to nurture a business environment that is supportive of everyone."
"At Enterprise we have always believed that if you put your employees and customers first, then business results will inevitably follow, and our attitude to diversity has grown out of this. We don't view it as a legal requirement, but as the right way to do business"Brice Adamson
Managing Director, UK and Ireland
Enterprise Rent-A-Car
Driving success
This attitude may be one factor in the company ís success. Enterprise has grown from being a small family-run operation based in the US city of St Louis to being one of the biggest car-rental companies in the world. Despite its growth, the company is still a family business and retains the community-orientated and entrepreneurial spirit of its founder. Almost all of its management comes up through the ranks, while salary at management level is almost entirely dependent on profitability.
Brice Adamson is Managing Director of Enterprise in the UK and Ireland, and he puts the company ís success down to its implementation of a very simple strategy. At Enterprise we have always believed that if you put your employees and customers first, then business results will inevitably follow, and our attitude to diversity has grown out of this. We don't view it as a legal requirement, but as the right way to do business.
Promote from within
Enterprise is a "promote-from-within" company, which means that almost everyone working for us at management level hasn't been hired in from outside, but has come up through the company. This means that it is vital for us to find ways to keep our employees happy, because, if we don't, we lose from the company all the skills, experience and commitment that have been built up over years of service. One of the things we instituted to keep staff in the company was a diversity focus group. People from every level in every region in the UK would come together to talk about policy and business practice and whether there were any barriers to success that could be identified.
It was by this mechanism that the company came up with the idea of Choice Time. This allows employees to take anything from a quarter day to a whole day off at short notice (up to a total of five days a year). This was the means by which the company solved the problem of allowing its employees to observe whatever customs they felt were important to them.
"Choice Time gives people the opportunity to take holidays on their terms for the things that matter to them," continues Brice, "whether that by a particular religious holiday or an unexpected family event. Traditionally, sick days had been used for this, but this involved people telling untruths and nobody ever felt comfortable with it. So now we have Choice Time and people can take time off when it really matters."
Another example of the company ís open door policy is the way that it makes a point of hiring people who represent the community surrounding its branches.
"We think of ourselves as being in the people business, not the car business," explains Susan Lombardo, Vehicle Acquisition Director for Enterprise Europe. "The automotive industry does have a reputation for being less diverse than other workplaces. So, at Enterprise, we aim to mirror in our workforce the communities in which we do business. The UK is increasingly inter-cultural and we believe that businesses should represent this fact."
Customers too
Having a locally representative workforce and using locally sourced suppliers also puts customers at their ease, and Enterprise is well aware that an open-door attitude to customers is one of the keys to its success.
"Our customers come from all walks of life," continues Donna, "and people like to do business with people that they like. To us, everybody living in the UK is a potential customer and, if we are doing the right thing, all our customers from whatever their background should be able to walk into their local Enterprise branch and speak with someone with whom they feel comfortable. This isn't just sound business sense; to us it is common sense."
Equality of promotion
Perhaps the final aspect of Enterprise culture that promotes equality of opportunity is the way that promotion is dependent on transparent measurements of performance rather than on any other factor such as an ability to network.
"It is very simple," says Donna. "There are written criteria in every branch that detail what you need to do to be eligible for promotion. It's numbers driven and you have to be at the Enterprise average or above to qualify. It's in your hands. It's not who you know that decides your future, it's what you do"
