Industry First: Free College for Dealership Employees

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ industry-first plan to offer a free college education to dealership employees is only in the pilot phase, but dealers are predicting the program will help them attract and retain quality employees.  

The Strayer University Degrees@Work program is being launched in FCA’s southeast region that comprises 356 Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram and Fiat dealerships in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee.

It will enable employees of participating dealerships – from porters to top managers with at least 30 days on the job – to earn an associate’s, bachelor’s or master’s degrees at no cost. Courses are available online or at any of Strayer’s 80 campuses in 24 states.

This fall, the program is expected to roll out nationwide to FCA’s 2,600 dealerships, which employ 118,000 people. 

“Many of our dealers have expressed concern over the availability of talent to fill open positions due to business growth and turnover in their stores, especially in metro markets,” Al Gardner, head of dealer network development and president and CEO of the Chrysler brand, says in a statement.

“Our goal is to position our dealer network as the ‘employers of choice.’ Our collaboration with Strayer demonstrates our focus on building our dealers’ hardworking employees’ skillsets to help them perform at an optimal level, while also investing in their long-term success.”

Founded in 1892 as Strayer’s Business College, Strayer University specializes in serving working adults. It offers degrees in business and finance, information technology and health-services administration, as well as the Jack Welch MBA program, which is based on the leadership and management principles of the iconic former General Electric CEO.

“In our dealer council meetings, we talk about the challenges in our network and how to grow performance,” says John Fox, FCA’s head of dealer training. “We always talk about how to attract better people, how to improve their performance and how to build our retention, because employee turnover can range from 15% to 40%. That’s a huge cost not only in training dollars, but also the customer experience.”

Dealers felt good about it, FCA’s Fox says.

Fox says initial discussions about offering a no-cost college degree program were held in early 2014 at FCA headquarters in Auburn Hills, MI. The concept was taken to the dealer council later that year.

“Their feedback was to go out and talk to dealers to ensure that we had a program that was going to be simple, relevant, cost-efficient and one that would generate a lot of interest,” he says. “We took the final program to them in March 2015 and they felt really good about it.”

“We understood (Chrysler’s) need – to change their game in the war for talent – but nibbling at the margins around educational benefits wasn’t likely to be a game changer,” says Karl McConnell, CEO of Strayer Education in Herndon, VA, explaining how the program became so ambitious.

“The joint Strayer-Chrysler team challenged itself to envision something much bigger and bolder, and that’s where Degrees@Work came from,” he says. 

The initial reaction to the proposal was ‘How is this even possible?’ he says. “The second question was ‘What’s the catch?’ Once everybody understood the plan’s simplicity, they were very much in favor. FCA’s decision to move forward was based very heavily on strong dealer feedback.”  

FCA dealers contribute from approximately $300 to $1,000 per month, depending on their size, which allows an unlimited number of employees to participate. FCA also contributes to the program, but did not disclose the total cost. At about $1,400 per course for non-FCA students, a 40-course bachelor’s degree from Strayer can cost more than $50,000, excluding books.

FCA dealerships are ranked in size from “A” (up to 150 unit sales per year) to “E” (1,200 to more than 6,000 unit sales per year). Last month, about 20% of dealership enrollments in the Southeast region had been “A” and “B” size stores in rural areas.

Dealers: A Way to Attract Talent, Show Opportunity

Jim Arrigo, president and owner of Arrigo Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep in West Palm Beach, Florida and chairman of the FCA National Dealer Council, believes Degrees@Work will give the company’s dealers a competitive advantage.

 “This is a very long-term play for our company, a selling point,” he says. “It’s a whole new way to let people know that working at an FCA dealership offers them something they can’t get with any other OEM in the industry.

“We want people to wake up in the morning, go to school, and know there’s an opportunity in this industry that they never realized,” he adds. “Look at e-commerce. It’s a very important part of an automobile dealership and it requires a very skilled, educated person. Unless you have gone to school and personally understand the digital world as it applies to automotive, you just can’t do it.”

Arrigo employs 500 people at three Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram dealerships and two Fiat stores in south Florida.

“We are a family-owned company and we want people to get better and move up,” he says. “I’ve got guys in the back end of this company who started with me. I watched them grow, get married, have children. In the 25 years we’ve been here, we’ve become like family with a lot of the people. This gives me a great opportunity not only for them, but to maybe bring some of their kids into the company and get them a college education that they may not be able to afford any other way.”

“The initial reaction: ‘How is this even possible?’” Strayer’s McConnell says.

Arrigo will assign a dedicated person in the dealership’s human resources department to manage Strayer enrollments. “That department will know everything they’ll need to know about it and be able to help our employees make the right choices,” he says. “Everyone knows when it’s time for your kids to go to college, you sit with them for the whole process. I want to make sure we’re doing the same thing for our employees as if we were doing it for our family.” 

Craig Cappy’s Mall of Georgia Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram in Buford, GA, sold 1,200 new cars and 1,150 used vehicles in 2014 and was one of several dozen dealerships that Strayer University visited before the program was launched.

Cappy employs 110 people. About 70% don’t have college degrees. Yet.

“How can you not be excited about this program?” he says. “I’ve been in this business for over 25 years, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this. It’s going to put us ahead of the rest of the pack.

“Strayer was involved with certifying sales and tech employees. FCA was excited about the relationship they had with Strayer and wanted to take the relationship to the next level. They had a good understanding of what Strayer could do for Chrysler and what Chrysler could do for them.”  

Cappy sees an immediate business benefit: attracting and keeping quality employees.

“I’ve had meetings with my staff and there’s a lot of excitement to get our cashiers, techs, and counter guys involved,” he says. “I think our sales people will feel better about themselves when they take advanced marketing classes that help them become better managers. We need to have someone on the staff that understands the importance of social media and how it ties in with marketing.

“Hopefully with better-trained and more motivated employees, it will help me increase my business. Happy and well-trained employees are motivated to do whatever they can to keep customers happy, which increases the number of people coming into your store who want to buy cars.”

Cappy plans to promote the program on his website to attract job candidates. FCA is including Degrees@Work logos in starter kits dealers can use in their advertising.

With a staff of 147, Mike Brillanti sells around 4,700 new and used vehicles a year at the three Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep-Ram franchises and one Fiat studio he owns in the Atlanta area.

“We’ve been in business for 33 years at our primary store,” he says. “The store is running well, but our challenge is finding good people and I don’t have another 33 years (to do that). A program like this is really exciting to me, because I’m hoping it gives us a better candidate up front, somebody who has more drive and determination to further their career and is willing to take the extra steps vs. someone who just comes in because they’re looking for a job.”

Brillanti says the education program particularly will help in getting his Fiat franchise up to speed. “Fiat is the hardest one to recruit employees for, because it’s a brand that’s just starting out. We’re still working to get the Fiat brand to the volume where we want it.”

He says he’s at somewhat of a disadvantage against the big dealer groups, because they have corporate training programs to foster employee growth.

“We just don’t have the resources that the big groups have to do that,” he says. “This is definitely going to help us, without a huge investment. The fees are very reasonable and we can enroll as many people in the program as we want. It’s a great tool for private (capital) dealers.”

FCA does not require dealership employees to continue working at their stores after they have received a Strayer degree.

“That was discussed during our meetings and Chrysler’s feeling was it didn’t want to incarcerate their employees,” Cappy says. “If they don’t want to stay at the store they don’t have to.”

Is that a concern? “Maybe it is, but the bottom line is that’s what makes this such a groundbreaking project,” he says.

Dealer Council Chairman Arrigo defends the “free to leave” policy by recalling the philosophy of a former boss.

“His concept was: I want you to grow, to learn and to work as hard as you possibly can, and if someday you’ve figured it all out and there’s another opportunity for you outside of my company where you can make more money and better yourself and your family, I’ll be the first one to support your decision.

“It’s always stuck with me because after 10 years with him, I left and started my first dealership in 1989.

“Ultimately, I’m not worried about that, because there’s not much more in my world that would make me feel better than to have somebody really excel.”