Fleet Auto News’ Caroline Falls talks with Megan McKenzie, president of the newly formed Diverse Auto Network Inc., or DANI, about its foundation and the work being done to encourage women in the industry. McKenzie is also group human resources manager at Frizelle Sunshine Automotive.
FAN: The idea of the group DANI – Diverse Auto Network Inc was introduced to me at a Women in Automotive breakfast in Sydney earlier this year. Can you tell us where the idea came from?
MM: The Workplace Gender Equality Agency requires any business with greater than 100 employees to report on gender. Larger dealerships generally have more than 100 employees including ours. In 2018, one of our executives Rebecca Frizelle attended a Women in Auto breakfast and heard about changes Audi were implementing to try and attract more women. Bec came back and said she’d like to invite several businesses, other dealerships and OEMs, to a discussion day, where we talked about what it is like to work in a dealership as a woman. From there we started to develop relationships with other suppliers and founded DANI.
FAN: What is your role with DANI?
MM: I’m the president and my role is to bring together our cohort to continue the dialogue and to set our strategy.
FAN: What has been set up to date? And what’s yet to be done before it is officially launched?
MM: So far the business has been registered, and we have started building relationships with OEMs and others in the automotive industry. We are working on a website for members to be able to access info at their fingertips. We’re also developing an event calendar, and other resources for our members and sponsors to get ball rolling in their own businesses and to benchmark against.
FAN: I see from your LinkedIn profile that you started your HR career in the automotive sector some 10 or so years ago with Toyota. What do you like about working in the auto sector?
MM: It’s so dynamic, it’s quite fast paced with all the applied technology. It’s such an opportunity for a career progression for women, all those young people coming out of high school and university that are studying stem [acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics]. They’ll be able to apply their knowledge to our industry.
FAN: Do you think there may be any overt or unconscious bias affecting women in the auto industry?
MM: I actually do. We have so many men in our industry, it’s not even on the radar to consider that we have to be thinking differently. We have group think going on. At Frizelle, moving forward, we are going to be making sure that for every vacancy we will have at least one female candidate and one female panellist. That will actually change the trajectory of our business because that diversity will start to come into play, and remove some of those biases around what the norm is.
