Zeigler Auto Group’s work-life balance focuses on growth, customer satisfaction

A desire to attend his children’s activities during the workday led Zeigler Auto Group CEO Aaron Zeigler to extend the same courtesy to his employees.

“I would kind of bounce out to [an event] and come back,” Zeigler told Automotive News.

He concluded if he could do so and lead a company, the rest of the staff should be allowed to take such temporary absences as well.

This decision about 15 years ago, when his eldest son was about 5, was the start of Zeigler Auto’s regard for work-life balance. It has helped foster both employee retention and customer satisfaction, according to Zeigler, who added that he thought it helped improve productivity as well.

Customer satisfaction improved once the company started to accommodate work-life balance, Zeigler said. Now, those consumer scores are so consistently good Zeigler Auto doesn’t even watch that variable closely, he said.

“It became something we didn’t have to focus on,” he said. “It was just kind of there.”

In terms of retention, Zeigler Auto’s average company leader at the sales and service manager level or higher today has been with the company for14 years, according to Zeigler.

“It seems like business got better … turnover went down, and then we were able to start growing the organization,” Zeigler said.

It’s helped the company expand to $2.5 billion today from $1 billion in sales in 2016, he said.

“I felt like the only way that you can really grow an organization is to be really stable with your team and have a team that’s happy,” said Zeigler, who leads a 2,700-employee company.

Zeigler Auto, of Kalamazoo, Mich., ranks No. 44 on Automotive News’ list of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S., with retail sales of 20,698 new vehicles in 2021. It sold 29,604 used vehicles that year. Zeigler estimated the 35-location group was on pace to sell about 20,000 new and 30,000 used models in 2022.

Zeigler Auto was the sixth best company for work-life balance in the nation according to a Glassdoor Economic Research review of businesses with more than 1,000 employees and 50 work-life balance reviews on the platform. Zeigler held a 4.74 out of 5 for work-life balance at the time of the study; the No. 1 business scored 4.83.

Seventy-one percent of U.S. employees call work-life balance an important consideration when searching for a job, a September Glassdoor survey found.

“It’s part of our culture,” Zeigler said.

The group has long held the goal of having “world-class culture” and accomplishing this means “really happy employees,” he said.

Employees with an obligation such as a child’s sporting match or recital let Zeigler Auto know in advance. Managers are encouraged to figure out how to make the temporary absence work.

The brief departure can be treated as time off, or the employee can shift work hours to both attend the event and complete their necessary work, he said. Zeigler said this practice created “better productivity and stability.”

Zeigler said this policy is also conveyed to new employees whenever Zeigler Auto buys a new dealership.

“That gets them excited about working for us,” he said.

Another work-life balance accommodation has involved giving employees greater flexibility to work from home, Zeigler said.

He gave the example of a single parent who needs to pick up a child after school. The employee could work at the dealership during the day, collect their child and then continue to work from home after that. The dealership would work with each employee to tailor something to their individual need, he said.

Under this arrangement, a partner at the dealership would handle a customer who had scheduled an appointment with the employee while they were working from home. The two employees would split any commission.

A similar partnering and commission split would arise if the customer had an appointment scheduled with a salesperson off temporarily at a family event, he said.

Zeigler said employees accept this format. He called it a matter of hiring “the right people upfront,” and the company also explains the rationale behind it to staff.

“We have zero issues with anybody fighting over commissions, or anything like that,” he said. “It works really well.”

Zeigler Auto takes other steps as well.

Realizing that growth increased the difficulty of conveying a message to the work force, Zeigler Auto started an internal “The Future of ZAG” podcast led by COO Sam D’Arc. Zeigler described it as an evolution of what once had been lunchtime dealership visits and monthly video messages. The initiative has since spawned the public-facing “Driving Vision” podcast, which has hosted celebrities such as Bill Nye and Michigan State University men’s basketball coach Tom Izzo.

The group’s perks include trips to NASCAR races and a wellness program, Zeigler said. He said Zeigler Auto also offers significant recognition opportunities for employees.

Zeigler advised other dealerships who wish to foster work-life balance to start by asking employees what’s important to them. Different things matter to different people, he said.

He noted that Zeigler lets salespeople averaging 20 vehicles a month set their own schedules.

“There’s just a lot of kind of unique things like that that I think go into people’s overall happiness,” he said.