In 1948 the Honda Motor Co. was incorporated and started as a bicycle auxiliary engine manufacturer in a small factory in Hamamatsu. From the very beginning the Honda founders, Soichiro Honda and Takeo Fujisawa, knew the type of company they wanted Honda to be. In 1956 they created the Honda Philosophy and even to this day their message remains relevant.
The Honda Philosophy consists of three pillars, the first pillar being ‘Respect for the Individual’, the second is ‘The Three Joys’, and the third pillar is Honda’s management policy which is based on five principles, and intended as guidance to staff when carrying out their responsibilities.
For Ms Carolyn McMahon, who has worked for Honda for nearly three decades and was recently appointed the Vice President of Honda Australia and Director of Honda New Zealand, this Philosophy is what hooked her on Honda and she carries a copy of the Philosophy with her at all times.
“The two main things that stand out to me [about the Honda Philosophy] are Respect for the Individual and The Three Joys. Respect for the individual is all about the notion that we’re all born with uniqueness and free and we can think, reason and create, but we also all have the ability to dream and the philosophy calls on the organisation to nurture those dreams. And when I was little, I had a dream that I wanted to run a company, so I’m very, very grateful for that respect,” Ms McMahon told Driven Women Magazine.
The Three Joys are the Joy of Buying, which is achieved through providing products and services that exceed the needs and expectations of each customer. The Joy of Selling that occurs when those who are engaged in selling and servicing Honda products develop relationships with a customer based on mutual trust. And the Joy of Creating that occurs when quality products exceed expectations and Honda employees experience pride in a job well done.
In the spirit of ‘The Three Joys’ philosophy Honda Australia introduced a national drive away price for every vehicle in the Honda range in 2021, under the ‘One Price Promise’. Honda Australia’s One Price Promise also includes five years of premium roadside assistance, as well as an industry-leading low-price service for the first five standard scheduled service intervals.
“The Honda One Price Promise really takes away that the stress of haggling and the angst that women feel sometimes in a very male dominated environment. About 40% of our customers are female buyers and there’s a lot of female interest in Honda cars thanks to the safety and reliability they offer.
Our NPS [Net Promoter Score, which measures the loyalty of a company’s customer base with a score from -100 to +100] for the purchase experience is like 86 or 87. So the customers just absolutely love it [the One Price Promise] and it’s going well,” shared Ms McMahon about how the Honda Philosophy is making the buying experience better for customers.
Ms McMahon has had an incredible 29-year history at Honda Australia across various senior leadership roles and continues to pioneer women’s advocacy and leadership programs. Ms McMahon started with Honda in 1995 as the personal assistant to the Japanese Managing Director. She lived in Japan for about three years where she gained some knowledge of Japanese culture and language. But Ms McMahon wasn’t initially selected for the job, she was actually the number two choice.
“They thought I was a bit too ambitious and that they wouldn’t be able to keep me and were concerned I’d move on too quickly, but I managed to talk them into giving me a go and in August this year, I’ll celebrate almost 30 years with Honda,” said Ms McMahon.
Over those decades, Ms McMahon has worked through most areas of the Honda business from HR to Admin, General Affairs and then into Sales and Marketing where she oversaw the South Western region of Australia. Then it was back into Business Services where she looked after Finance and Legal before, in 2017, Ms McMahon became Honda Australia’s first female Director, and now holds the first-ever title of Vice President of Honda Australia and Director Honda New Zealand.
Being the first female director, the first vice president, the first Australian to be on the board of another Honda subsidiary are some of the career highlights for Ms McMahon as her achievement show the future generations that there are pathways and opportunities within Honda. As she gets a bit older Ms McMahon also takes great joy from nurturing the next generation of leaders’ particular women where she can.
Within Honda there are many opportunities for the ongoing development for all associates, but in a very male dominated industry it’s important to take away any unconscious bias and build the confidence of women in the organisation so that they know they can do anything in this industry. As such, for nearly five years now Honda has been running an emerging women’s program giving them a framework and a key support network to explore opportunities.
“That’s been very successful and in the last 12 months, we’ve seen of all our promotions that 60% were of women. Building that pipeline of women and making sure we’ve got quality in the pipeline is very important, as is creating those networks.
Increasing the confidence of women is also important with a lot of the participants saying that the program has given them more confidence as well an understanding that they are not the only women having those feelings,” explained Ms McMahon.
Honda Australia also has a formal mentorship program where senior leaders are engaged with more junior leaders offering a framework where the senior leaders commit to the development of younger people and supporting them throughout their career. During COVID Ms McMahon felt that women who were working within Honda were also carrying a very large burden at home so she founded an informal network called ‘Women of Honda’ or WOH.
“Every couple of months we have a guest speaker or we just talk and support each other. It’s brilliant!” said Ms McMahon.
This positive assessment of how Honda Australia is supporting women is not just Ms McMahon’s personal opinion either. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) data published earlier this year, showed that Honda Australia has the best median remuneration gender pay gap of all companies in the automotive sector at -2.1%, meaning it is in favour of women, who make up 36% of Honda Australia’s workface.
This result is attributed both to the formal and informal activities that Honda Australia have done such as the emerging women’s program, diversity inclusion training, the female networking groups, and the mentorship opportunities.
“I also think it’s the result of someone in a senior leadership role, such as myself with a passion to drive change within the organisation. The pay parity for example, has been worked on for a number of years and it started off as a passion project of mine. But now it’s a company commitment so I think my personal passion has helped push the organisation towards this,” said Ms McMahon.
Everyone goes through challenges and on reflection, those challenging times are when we actually grow the most and this was certainly the case for Ms McMahon. It’s been hard for her when going through challenges, but they have led to greater resilience. The “growth nuggets” and learning from experiences are the crucial points according to Ms McMahon.
“We [the automotive industry] are seen as a non-traditional place for women or very male dominated industry. But with support and some structure in place, we encourage job rotation and the opportunity to work in different areas of the business. Giving women the opportunity to work in roles they wouldn’t normally feel confident in doing.
Going and working in the regions, looking after dealers, in areas that are traditionally being fulfilled by men has a double effect. Because when the dealership owners and senior management see Honda Australia are employing women in those areas, there’s then a flow on effect that again, their bias starts to come down and they start to think a bit more broadly about who can fulfill those roles,” concluded Ms McMahon.
Driven by its dreams and reflecting its values, Honda Australia will continue taking on challenges to share joys and excitement with customers and communities and with women like Carolyn McMahon at the helm it’s sure to be a continued success for many decades to come.
Photographs by Honda Australia and Driven Women Magazine.