When Wendy Rummler joined Credit Acceptance more than 20 years ago, it was a smaller auto finance company whose customer service employees were required to come into an office in metro Detroit. Rummler never dreamed she'd one day be teaching a master class in how to get remote-only employees to be just as effective as those who were required to be in the office.
But now, as the chief people officer of a $2 billion company, Ms. Rummler is doing just that after her decision to allow 2,200 employees to work from home during the pandemic. Other chief people officers could learn from how she adjusts talent under such an arrangement, especially considering that it's a 180-degree shift from how Credit Acceptance operated just four years ago.
“We were a really in-person company,” Rummler says of pre-pandemic times, “and when COVID hit, we didn't even have company-issued computers. We owe so much of the success of our culture to being together every day, so we were very resistant to a remote model.”
“But then COVID hit and we all had to go home, and we quickly found that our team members really enjoyed working remotely,” she told StrategicCHRO360. “And through a lot of the measurements that we did, we found that there was absolutely no impact on productivity. Our operations people said that everything that we measured was just as productive. All of our support functions were… [proved] You can be just as productive as you would be in a remote environment, and in some cases even more productive.”
And so his fate was sealed. Originally from a small town in Michigan, Rummler earned an accounting degree from Central Michigan University and worked as an accountant at Arthur Andersen in Detroit for two years before joining Credit Acceptance, but at the time he didn't know he'd be part of a talent revolution. “I wanted to work in finance, but I wanted to serve one company rather than serve several as a consultant,” he said.
Rummler joined Credit Acceptance in the accounting department when the company had just 600 employees and was providing financing solutions to consumers with bad credit through car dealerships. He moved to finance in 2003 and was promoted to vice president of finance in 2005, treasurer in 2008, vice president of finance in 2010 and senior vice president of finance in 2013.
During her tenure in finance, Rummler led various finance and human resources teams before assuming the role of senior vice president of human resources in May 2021 and chief human resources officer in September 2022. Under her, the company has consistently been externally recognized as a top place to work in the industry, most recently ranking sixth. Computer World's “Best Places to Work in IT in 2024”
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Rummler had led Credit Acceptance's talent management team for several years, but when she moved into human resources, the onset of the pandemic in the spring of 2020 proved to be a career-defining event. After furloughing most employees from its Southfield, Michigan, and Henderson, Nevada, offices and providing them with company computers, Credit Acceptance's brain trust, led by then-CEO Brett Roberts, had a decision to make: The transition was going better than expected, and employees wanted to work remotely.
“In December 2020, we quickly committed to staying fully engaged and working remotely,” Rummler recalled. “One of the things that helped us succeed in this endeavor was that we were totally committed to saying, 'This is how we're going to move forward.'”
“I believed that if we all worked together, it would work out in the long run. That's one of the reasons [Roberts, who retired in 2021] He didn't equivocate or tread carefully in the waters. He said, “This is what we're doing,” and the leaders were all on the same page.
She said leadership's biggest concern was “figuring out how to stay connected.” One of Credit Acceptance's primary goals is “to create a great work environment,” Rummler said. “When you combine those two goals — the commitment and the sense of responsibility to keep the culture and the environment great — you become very intentional about building a remote environment.”
Here are some ways Rummler and her leadership colleagues are ensuring the new working model continues to be successful.
Event management. Virtual happy hours “just aren't good enough anymore,” Rummler said, so Credit Acceptance is hosting “a lot of larger events throughout the year” that require different groups to come together physically.
For example, the annual “Sales Leadership Meet” brings about 650 of the company's 2,200 employees to headquarters and features “several training and business update elements.” In the fall, a “Support and Business Alignment Retreat” is held, bringing together 400 leaders and featuring “business training and collaboration elements.” And once a quarter, regional roundtables are held in locations across the U.S. where Credit Acceptance's remote employees tend to congregate (Atlanta, Tampa, Texas, Michigan) with senior leaders visiting.
“They're holding in-person meetings to combine updates and feedback and foster camaraderie and fun,” Rummler reports. “We provide leaders with a budget for on-site meetings to bring their teams together.” Rummler hosts her own regional roundtables and “is very intentional about creating connections and getting people to know each other,” she says.
Open the lens. Most of the time when credit approval personnel aren't together, online meeting leaders try to create a “friendly atmosphere,” Rummler says. “Camera is on. Especially when you're talking or it's a small meeting, you're expected to have your camera on. Sometimes when you're listening to a presentation, you don't need 40 people in the meeting to have their camera on.”
Leaders have a playbook to encourage teams to engage virtually in different ways: for large meetings, for example, they ask staff to communicate through chat functions; surveys are meant to ensure “people are attending and engaged” in large meetings.
But Credit Acceptance encourages leaders to “be mindful of how many people you invite” to virtual meetings, Rummler says. “You don't want to have a lot of big meetings where you're just sitting around. Make sure you have the right audience in the meeting and don't let it grow from 10 to 50 people easily.”
Shared values. Credit Acceptance's company values are succinctly expressed by the acronym PRIDE: Positivity, Respect, Insight, Openness, and Integrity. “They define the type of talent we want to attract and retain,” says Rummler. “95% of our team members can recite these values fluently. They were written by our key stakeholders.”
Instilling these values starts with the company's onboarding process, which takes a year. “It's about ingraining people into the culture,” Rummler says. “As the year goes on, there will be less interaction, but there's a roadmap of items you can follow while you're working. It starts with learning more about the core of the business. There are meetings with your team, leaders, and core customers where you discuss PRIDE values and have to interact with them on a regular basis.”
New hires are hired in a given month and “become peers” and “talk to each other about challenges and learn how things are done.” Throughout the year, “there are checkpoints to make sure you understand all the rules of being a team member at Credit Acceptance,” she says.
Promotion emphasis. New hires can apply for other positions within six months, and Credit Acceptance overall offers a “promotional culture within the company,” Rummler says. “We proactively explain how you can look for further transfers or roles within the company.” [And] Now that we're working remotely, I think we're actually doing a better job of giving our team members the opportunity to lead meetings, give presentations, and showcase their skills. And they have to be able to do that in remote work.”
Given this approach, company executives “don't feel pressured to return to the office on a regular basis,” Rummler said. “After four years, it feels normal, and I think doing things in a hybrid format is actually more difficult.” [peers]They're wrestling with people who feel like they can talk face-to-face and people who don't. We don't have that at all. “We have a different challenge, but it's not the challenge of inequity that many of my colleagues have.”
