Announcements
Putting equality into practice
"The car industry has never been seen as the most diverse
of working environments. However, companies such as
Enterprise Rent-A-Car are at the forefront of changing the working
culture. David Williams talks to senior management at the company
about how its diversity initiatives are making a difference.
"We think of ourselves as being in the people business, not the car business," says Susan Lombardo, Vehicle Acquisition Director for Enterprise Europe. "But we do operate within the automotive industry and it does have a reputation for being less diverse than other workplaces. For example, car dealerships and body shops can sometimes be very macho places, and, right from the start, we as a company had to come to terms with how we dealt with putting female employees into that environment."
"The way we dealt with it was to see it as an issue which, at heart, was about staff well-being, and our first principle was that no Enterprise employee should ever be asked to feel uncomfortable. But having said that, one of the first things we decided was that it wasn’t just an issue of pulling our people out of difficult situations. This would have put our female sales staff at a disadvantage over their male colleagues, because they wouldn’t have an equal chance of winning that business."
Putting people first
"In the end, what we went for was this: we
decided to work with the customer to improve
the situation. We reasoned that, if our female
employees felt uncomfortable in some
situations, then so too would some of the
potential customers of the dealership or body
shop that we were tying to do business with.
We therefore tried to find ways to work with them
towards improving their welcome to visitors;
for example, by suggesting that meetings should
be held in the reception area rather than the back
office. In short, just because there was money
to be made, it didn’t mean that anything was OK.
The bottom line was that we were willing to
accept that we would lose business rather than
make our staff feel uncomfortable."
Number of graduates to be recruited by Enterprise this year
Staff and customers first
The policy of putting staff and customers first
has brought the company worldwide 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’s 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," he says. "We don’t view it
as a legal requirement, but as the right way to
do business. We know that our staff and our
customers want to feel comfortable when they
are with us, so wherever we operate we always
hire people from the local community and
purchase our cars from local dealerships.
This isn’t just sound business sense; to us it
is common sense."
"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
Promote from within
"We are 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."
"One thing that came out of this was the idea of
Choice Time. People realised that they wanted
a short-notice holiday for things that cropped
up unexpectedly in their lives. 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 anything from a quarter day
to a full day off at short notice."
Salary of a General Manager at Enterprise Rent-A-Car
Work/life balance
"We realise that people have other things going
on in their lives apart from work, and another
way we keep our staff retention rate up is to give
people an opportunity to adjust the contribution
they make to the company according to their
circumstances."
"For example, ambitious people often put in a lot of hours when they are in their twenties, but, just as they are moving into management, find that they can often have family commitments drawing on their time as well. We don’t want to lose their experience or their ambition, so we try very hard to make alternate work arrangements which respect the different priorities in their lives."
Susan Lombardo has had direct experience
of this. She started working for Enterprise as
a receptionist in the company’s hometown of
St Louis straight after graduation, and only
intended to use the job as a way of saving up
for a postgraduate degree. However, she found
the opportunities too good to turn down, and
gradually worked her way up through the
organisation. Eighteen years later she is Vehicle
Acquisition Director for Europe, responsible
for negotiating with car manufacturers on the
purchase of 40,000 cars annually in Europe.
The right fit for your life
"Between me and the company, we always
managed to find the right employment
opportunity," she says. "When I was ready for
the challenge of working in a new area and
developing my responsibilities, there was an
opportunity in California. Then, when I had
a young family and wanted to see more of my
extended family, I was able to arrange a move
back to St Louis; then again, with the company
expanding and my own career at a crossroads,
the opportunity came up to be a pioneer in the
UK. A lot of effort is made to find the right fit
for each period of your life and finding where
best your contribution can be made."
