Best-One of Indy always strives to be better

INDIANAPOLIS — Rich Elliott readily admits Best-One of Indy is not perfect, or even the best, but the company absolutely is doing enough right to be named a Best Places to Work finalist.

The dealership, with 11 retail locations in the Indianapolis area, is being recognized by Tire Business as one of the Best Places to Work 2020.

"One of our four core values is commitment to the pursuit of perfection. Perfection is nothing anyone can obtain. But it's our commitment to pursuing it is how we became the best one," Mr. Elliott, Best-One of Indy president, said.

This article appears in the Nov. 23 print edition of Tire Business.

Best-One of Indy — part of the multi-statewide Best-One Tire network — was attracted to the annual Best Places competition due to the company's deep interest in employee engagement.

"For a long, long time I have been extremely interested in employee engagement. It's a very difficult thing to measure, never mind achieve," Mr. Elliott said.

As such, Mr. Elliott saw participating in the competition, where companies must open themselves up for examination of their practices, as a way to understand better what employees think of working there.

Combine that with a personal interest in mentoring others, and it made perfect sense to take part in the program.

"It's kind of a passion of mine. I wouldn't say kind of, it is. Helping people grow. Helping people develop into being better people, and into being better sons, daughters, wives, brothers, sisters, friends, co-workers, has just always been the core of who I am," Mr. Elliott said.

"As we look at employee engagement, OK, how are we going to measure that? And how are we going to measure how well we are doing?"

Best-One of Indy is not interested in the typical employer-employee relationship, but instead strives to go beyond the transactional work-for-pay dynamic.

"It just makes sense to me. It just makes sense to me that the better we treat our people, the better they treat each other and the better they treat the customer, who is the ultimate spender of money and the person who takes care of our business. It just makes too much logical sense," he said.

"I think there are too many people out there who work for companies that do not care for them. And, so, we're not the best. We're not perfect. But we are striving for better every day," Mr. Elliott said.

When he talks about the approach Best-One of Indy takes, it reminds one of a concept called enlightened self-interest. That view holds that the better you treat others and consider their interests, the better off your own self-interest will be in the long run.

Best-One Indy has about 135 employees spread out around the company's 11 locations.

"We think we're a pretty good place to work," Mr. Elliott said. "We think that because our people tell us that. Again, we're not perfect. There is no perfect place. We want people to be proud of where they work and the work they do, the company they represent.

"It just flows naturally toward achieving our mission statement, which is 'Creating raving fans.' So we are constantly working to create raving fans internally of our people so that they can then in turn create raving fans externally of the paying customer," Mr. Elliott said.