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Leighton Smith Email
Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) . GreatAmerica Leasing Corporation
Cedar Rapids, IA
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Current Roles
Employees:
800Revenue:
$235.2MAbout
To maintain its competitive edge, GreatAmerica puts very serious effort into employee training and education. Dollars committed to training are significant and compare favorably to companies many times its size. The GreatAmerica Leasing Institute is regarded as their "Center for Excellence." There are continuous classes three times per day for everybody including non-employees. The Institute's alumni include a number of GreatAmerica dealers as well as community loan officers of one of its banks. The Institute offers 38 continuing education classes ranging from a number of classes in credit and accounting to bankruptcy laws and interpersonal skills. In addition to continuing education, the Institute runs the 90-day new employee training program. "I believe at GreatAmerica we have the best-trained employees in the small-ticket industry", remarks Jennifer Haycraft, GreatAmerica's Vice President for Corporate Excellence, who runs the Institute. "But we're not resting on our success. The Institute is continuously upgrading the quality and content of its offerings." The Institute also plays a key role in GreatAmerica's "Pay for Mastery" program, which enables GreatAmerica's employees to earn several thousand dollars in extra income per annum by acquiring other than their own skills through a system of on-the-job and classroom training. They gain competency in basic credit decision-making, documentation and other skills and then are given authorization to do these tasks in addition to their own. Cross-training is mandatory and this greatly benefits the dealer/customers. GreatAmerica employees can respond to any customer matter with confidence and without fear. They often can approve transactions on the spot. This is in contrast to many competitors that tend to be very structured, with decisions going up the chain of command. GreatAmerica also has created a Senior Leadership Training Program for leaders of the future. The 3-5 year training program combines academic training with honing leadership skills through frequent assignment rotations. Golobic takes pride in the fact that GreatAmerica is willing to take its best people out of production and turn them into "real tigers," who will create great "bench strength" for GreatAmerica's senior leadership of the future. "One of them will have a real shot at taking my job," says Golobic. It is no accident that GreatAmerica has one of the lowest delinquency rates in the small-ticket leasing industry. "In our line of business we work on fast response times with limited credit information", observes Lonnie Powers, GreatAmerica's Senior Vice President of Operations, "because of this, some transactions that should be declined get approved and others that should be approved are declined. We have put together a system that substantially narrows this error ratio." This gets back to training, as well as experience. For example, GreatAmerica extensively uses credit scoring, but this does not eliminate the human factor. Extra care is taken to look at the score, and trained staff validates decisions to decline or approve every credit.GreatAmerica Leasing Corporation Address
625 First St. SECedar Rapids, IA
United States