You are here: Home: Employer insights: Enterprise Rent-A-Car (ERAC): About the organisation
Enterprise Rent-A-Car is a global vehicle leasing company with 375 offices across the UK. The business originally started in the USA in 1957, when it was known as ‘Executive Leasing’ but was later renamed ‘Enterprise’ after the aircraft that founder Jack Taylor flew during the Second World War. Enterprise Rent-A-Car is now owned by Enterprise Holdings, the result of a merger in 2009 with Vanguard Car Rental.
The company has a fleet of over one million vehicles worldwide, and over 7,600 offices. It employs around 3,400 people in the UK. Instead of operating from a few central offices, it has made the decision to divide itself into thousands of smaller ‘local’ offices with the aim of delivering accessible customer service.
As well as individuals, clients include insurance companies, repair shops and general corporate businesses.
As well as car rentals, other lines of work include fleet management, car sales and truck rentals.
The company has 250 on-site airport branches around the world but also aims to attract other important clients. These include:
The company tends to simply describe its graduate starting salary as ‘competitive’. However, it’s rumoured to be in the region of £16,000 to £19,000, depending on location.
On top of their base salary, those at assistant manager level or above are awarded a percentage of the profits that their branch makes. See the training and development section under the ‘Careers and training navigation’ for details of how and when graduates reach management assistant level.
Staff are rewarded for high levels of performance by being invited to what it terms the ‘elite club’. This is a day out with senior managers to celebrate the company’s top employees.
The company believes its biggest asset is its reputation for customer service, and expects its staff to focus on this, for example being willing to work late in order to close a sale.
Trainees work an average of 50 hours per week, so graduates should expect long days. The company does not hide the fact. Lianne Cook, now a management assistant, says: 'The staff I met during my interview were completely honest and even showed me their time-sheets to give me a realistic idea of the kind of hours I would be working.’
The atmosphere within the company is very competitive and staff at all levels get ranked on their performance, with the aim of driving improvement. Ashley Hever, European talent acquisition manager for Enterprise UK explains: 'If you can see that someone in Scotland has got a high customer service score you can pick up the phone and say "Ok, tell me what you’re doing to achieve these results"'.
The atmosphere within the company is very competitive and staff at all levels get ranked on their performance.
The company encourages branch managers to run their offices as if they were their own businesses. Its reasoning is that this motivates managers to use their own creativity and business acumen to meet targets and increase profits.
Enterprise Rent-A-Car stresses that is has a 'work hard, reward hard' culture and regularly puts on staff socials and events.
In 2007 the company set up its 'environmental platform', which outlined five areas to improve in: conservation, fuel efficiency, alternative technologies, research and development, and carbon offset. One example of its initiatives is the '50 million trees' programme, which sees the company aiming to plant 50 million trees within the next 50 years. Enterprise is also working on a project it calls '20/20' vision, which aims to see the company reduce energy costs and usage by 20% in the next five years.
Certain types of employee will like the competitive atmosphere. Warren White, a management assistant for Enterprise UK, explains: 'You get internal e-mail bulletins telling you about peers who have been promoted, so you can see that the rewards are there. If you work hard you could be managing a team of eight people within 18 months of starting. You get out of the company what you put in.' Lianne Cook, also a management assistant for Enterprise UK, agrees: 'Money motivates me and gives me the incentive to get promoted. Enterprise is a company that rewards performance quickly.'
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