McMahon's Best-One fosters ‘family' environment

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — McMahon's Best-One Tire & Auto Care is proud of the family environment at its four stores in the Fort Wayne market. So when an employee leaves the company, President Kim McMahon said, tongue-in-cheek, she takes it personally.

Fortunately, that doesn't happen too often. It's that family environment that propelled McMahon's Best-One Tire to be a finalist in the Tire Business Best Places to Work competition.

The 52-year-old tire dealership, with four retail/commercial locations and a fifth under construction, has nearly 100 employees.

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

"Family is really what we're all about," said Ms. McMahon, who owns the dealership with her husband, Patrick "Bubba" McMahon III, and Randy Geyer.

"We take care of each other. We worry about each other, and I don't mean just me and my husband, I mean at every level.

"If someone is having a baby, or someone's parent dies, we're very involved with each other. That's an important part of any company. We encourage that feeling to our customers as well. … I think it's an important part of what has kept us around this long.

"I just can't say enough about our employees. They're my favorite people,"she said, "which makes it really difficult to hire people because you do look at how are they going to fit in. And it also makes it difficult when people leave you. You kind of take it personally," she laughed.

The company offers employees health care benefits, flex time, a 401k retirement plan, mentoring and training, along with awards and recognitions.

Ms. McMahon said the most popular benefit is the new 401K match. The dealership has offered a 401K retirement plan for years, but this year it started offering a 3% match to employee contributions, boosting participation to 90% from about 65%.

Her biggest challenge is finding new employees, especially since the dealership will be opening a new store soon.

"Finding good people is really difficult. We've actually taken the stance of, depending on the position, we don't go for experience; we really go for somebody who is interested in our company and our culture and being a part of our family. That way we're all about training. … They'll learn our way of doing things. We find greater success that way than trying to take someone from a competitor," Ms. McMahon said.

The dealership offers new employees training through its vendors and the Best-One Tire & Service network, while all employees participate in Tire Industry Association (TIA) training.

Oftentimes job candidates are referred by the dealership's employees. Sometimes the candidates are relatives of employees.

"We've had three generations working here at the same time," she said.

"We try to do a lot of different things to keep our employees engaged, not just at our individual stores but as a company as a whole," she said.

The pandemic has curtailed annual events this year, but usually the company hosts a Christmas party for all employees and their spouses; a summer party for employees and their families; and cookouts and lunches at the stores. The store gatherings allow office staff and service employees to mingle and get to know each other better, she said.

The large New Haven, Ind., store has a room with a table tennis table, basketball hoop and pool table where employees hang out after work or during slow periods.

Ms. McMahon admitted the pandemic has made it difficult to keep up employee morale.

In late March, when the state issued stay-at-home orders, the dealership had to furlough 15 employees and cut back hours for the rest. The company continued to pay for health insurance for furloughed employees and helped employees with reduced hours secure state income assistance.

In May, sales started to pick up and now business is back to normal and all the furloughed employees have returned, she said.

"It's hard to keep everybody distant and still keep everybody together," she said. In lieu of a corporate holiday party this year, each store is hosting its own themed party.

The pandemic also threw a monkey wrench into the dealership's new employee excellence program that began at the start of the year.

The program encourages employees to participate in a number of activities, such as training, community service and mentoring. The idea was to have employees working together, but social distancing makes it difficult this year.

Employees sign up for the program and are encouraged to complete all the segments of the program, which this year included CPR training, TIA training, mentoring, community service with Wreaths Across America, and qualifying for the "best health" rate on the company health insurance plan.

The dealership raised $20,000 through fundraisers for the Wreaths Across America, an organization that lays wreaths on the graves of fallen soldiers. On the weekend before Christmas, dealership employees plan to help the organization lay wreaths at a cemetery.

Under the mentoring program, each employee can choose a company executive to be his/her mentor. The mentor and employee meet once a quarter. Ms. McMahon said this enables management to get to know individual employees better.

Throughout the program, the company offers prizes as employees work toward completion of the program.

Employees who complete all segments of the program are eligible to be invited to baseball games, dinners and other events the dealership traditionally hosts for its customers and are not normally open to employees.

Ms. McMahon said the company expected about 30 employees would finish the program, but 52 actually did.

The dealership also inaugurated the annual McMahon Award two years ago to honor its founder and Ms. McMahon's father-in-law, Patrick McMahon Jr. The award is presented to an employee who "exemplifies and encourages our culture," she said.

The McMahons and previous winners select the next recipient, who receives a plaque and a photo with the elder Mr. McMahon.

If the dealership is passed on to a third generation, it will most likely be run by the McMahon's "adopted" family.

The McMahons have two sons who pursued other careers. "But we do have several employees here who would be happy to step in and be our kids," Ms. McMahon laughed.

"They are very involved and very capable, and they are like family to us. I have complete confidence that the business will continue in good hands."