Jed Milstein
CHRO
Asbury Automotive Group
Episode 341
Unlocking Automotive Excellence: Employee Well-being as the Ultimate Differentiator.
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleJanuary 20, 2025 · 12:32
Thesis
“Exceptional customer service and business differentiation in the automotive industry directly stem from a profound commitment to internal employee well-being, fostering transparency, and meticulously integrating cultures during acquisitions to ensure continuity and drive productivity.”
Show notes
Every car dealership sells the same cars. What separates one from another is the quality of service — and that service lives or dies on the strength of the people delivering it. Jed Milstein, CHRO at Asbury Automotive Group, has built his entire HR strategy around that premise: invest deeply in the employee experience, and the customer experience follows. He made that case while scaling Asbury from 6,500 to 15,000 employees through acquisitions — a pressure test that forced every assumption about culture, communication, and integration to prove itself under real conditions.
Jed's M&A philosophy starts with due diligence that most acquirers skip: culture. Before the deal closes, HR needs to understand what it's inheriting — the compensation structures, the benefits philosophy, the communication norms, the informal power dynamics that don't appear in any data room. Integration failures are almost never financial. They're cultural. And they announce themselves early, in the retention numbers of the leadership team you most needed to keep.
His communication principle is deceptively simple: 95% of integration problems can be solved with proactive, transparent, responsive communication. It's not a strategy that requires a big budget — but it does require consistent follow-through, open channels all the way to the CEO's cell phone, and the organizational discipline to actually answer when someone calls.
- HR's role in M&A cultural due diligence — what to assess before the deal closes and why it determines whether integration succeeds
- Scaling from 6,500 to 15,000 employees — the systems, onboarding, and technology infrastructure required for rapid growth
- Communication as integration strategy — why transparency and responsiveness solve 95% of acquisition friction
- Open channels from frontline to CEO — the structural moves that signal genuine employee access and build trust at scale
- Measuring M&A success through people metrics — leadership retention and productivity per employee as the real scorecard for integration quality
This episode is sponsored by Previ, helping employees save on the household expenses that matter most.
What you'll take away
- 1Prioritize employee well-being and engagement as the fundamental driver for superior customer service and competitive business differentiation.
- 2During M&A, HR must lead cultural due diligence, ensuring minimal disruption through consistent, transparent communication, and careful integration of benefits and compensation plans.
- 3Scaling HR (e.g., from 6,500 to 15,000 employees) requires robust HR technology systems and comprehensive training, especially when onboarding private organizations into a public company environment.
- 4Cultivate operational efficiency and high employee engagement by establishing direct communication channels between frontline employees and executive leadership, complemented by structured onboarding, functional training, and clear career pathways.
- 5Measure HR's impact post-acquisition by tracking key performance indicators such as leadership retention and productivity per employee, which serve as strong indicators of successful integration and overall business success.
What most organizations get wrong
In Jed's words
“The only thing that differentiates one car dealership from another in our business is the level of service... What will get you connected and have you coming back to that dealership for service, future purchases, referring your friends is a level of service. So the guest experience is what we're focused on.”
This quote highlights the core philosophy linking internal operations to external customer satisfaction.
“Communication is a theme that you'll hear a lot in our conversation, but really communicating consistently in a transparent manner, town halls with the CEO, executive team members, myself, being very open and soliciting input, feedback...”
Emphasizes the critical role of transparent and consistent communication, especially from leadership, during significant business changes.
“Some of the issues can be around systems, just purely systems, because when the business becomes of scale, you rely more and more on technology as well... And it's not often that all the systems are the same, that when the— with the acquired company, that they're just an easy move over to our platform. So that is a real challenge.”
Identifies a significant operational pain point in HR technology integration during rapid company scaling through acquisitions.
“We all publish, every member of the executive team here, we publish our cell phone numbers and contact numbers. And it is not unusual for me to walk into our CEO's office and he's on the phone with a technician in a service bay working on a car who's got a question or a concern or something he'd like to voice.”
Illustrates a tangible example of radical transparency and accessibility of executive leadership to frontline employees.
“One of the things we track very carefully is our retention of leadership, general managers in stores, service managers in stores, controllers, accounting leadership. Et cetera. So that's very important to us. And we look at the productivity per employee in these organizations as well.”
Details specific, measurable KPIs HR uses to gauge the success of acquisitions and overall growth strategies.
“95% of issues can be solved with good proactive communication, responsive communication, the what channels are open. And when someone pings you in one of those channels, being very responsive and answering the call.”
A concise summary of his core advice, emphasizing the transformative power of simple, effective communication.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Ensuring seamless integration of diverse employee cultures and benefit structures during mergers and acquisitions, especially when incorporating private entities into a public company's operational framework.
- •Overcoming challenges in HR technology system integration and maintaining data integrity when scaling rapidly through acquisitions, particularly when disparate systems need to converge.
- •Sustaining consistent operational efficiency and high employee engagement across a geographically dispersed and rapidly growing organization, especially within a commission-based sales environment.
- •Accurately measuring HR's tangible impact on key business outcomes like the success of acquisitions, employee retention rates, and overall workforce productivity.
- •Developing and implementing continuous, relevant training programs for a frontline workforce, including specialized 'guest experience' training, to drive both internal development and external customer satisfaction.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
Dave Zirin shares a little bit about his career journey
Career Paths
HR helps ensure seamless integration of employees and cultures during acquisitions
How Automotive Dealerships Are Being Acquired
What specific challenges arise when scaling from 6,500 to 15,000 employees
Growing From 6,500 to 15,000 Employees
What role does HR play in maintaining operational efficiency and employee engagement in automotive organization
Jeff, What Role Does HR Play at Asbury?
Jed, how do you measure HR's impact on the success of acquisitions
Importance of HR in Automotive Retail
Jed: 95% of issues can be solved with good proactive communication
Jed Burkett on Communication
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
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