TOWNER
Valvoline Inc. employs roughly 13,000 people across its network of approximately 2,300 Valvoline Instant Oil Change locations with a goal of reaching 3,500 service centers.
When a company sets out to nearly double its footprint, the biggest challenge often isn’t real estate, capital or demand — it’s people.
That reality is front and center for Valvoline Inc., a Lexington-based company with roughly 13,000 employees across its network of approximately 2,300 Valvoline Instant Oil Change locations and an ambitious goal of reaching 3,500 service centers, according to Jon Caldwell, Valvoline’s chief people officer. Hitting that target will require far more than adding locations. It will demand systems that allow the company to recruit at scale, develop talent quickly and retain institutional knowledge as the organization grows.
For Valvoline, that growth trajectory has made workforce development not a support function, but a core business strategy.
A company reshaped for scale
With roots that go back 160 years, Valvoline built its name as a pioneer in automotive lubricants. Then, beginning in 1986, it became widely known for its Valvoline Instant Oil Change service centers. The company’s structure has again changed significantly over the past decade.
In 2016, Valvoline separated from Ashland Oil and became a publicly traded company. A more dramatic shift followed in 2023, when Valvoline sold its global products division — including motor oils, coolants and other lubricants — to Aramco, based in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Jon Caldwell
That move transformed Valvoline Inc. into a services-focused company centered on fast, standardized automotive maintenance.
“That was a big deal for us,” Caldwell said. “We were a $3.5 billion revenue organization, with revenue and earnings divided pretty evenly between the two business segments. We emerged from that sale as a high-growth, pure-play retail service organization.”
Valvoline still uses the product lines it sold to Aramco in its shops.
“We share the Valvoline brand. Aramco uses it from a products perspective. We use it from a services perspective,” Caldwell said.
Today, Valvoline’s approximately 2,300 service centers are split between company-owned and franchised locations across the United States and Canada, where it operates as Great Canadian Oil Change. Growth is coming through a mix of new store builds and acquisitions, including a recent deal to acquire more than 150 Breeze Auto Care locations, which have primarily been operating under the name Oil Changers. Caldwell says Valvoline is evaluating whether to change the acquired units into Valvoline Instant Oil Change stores over time.
“There is still so much market share we can capture,” he said.
But expansion at that pace creates pressure well beyond operations.
Valvoline hires roughly 11,000 employees each year, Caldwell said, primarily into hourly technician roles. From the outset, however, the company treats those positions as entry points into a broader leadership pipeline.
“We are proud of our focus on development,” Caldwell said. “We have an apprenticeship model. … Not only are we hiring them into hourly technician roles, [we’re also] putting them in the pipeline to become future managers.”
Caldwell notes that more than 95 percent of Valvoline’s store managers, area managers, market managers and directors — including the company’s two vice presidents of operations — began their careers as hourly technicians. The company actively evaluates new hires not only for current job fit, but for leadership potential.
“We ask ourselves, ‘Can they be a future leader in our organization?’” Caldwell said.
That philosophy reflects a deliberate effort to institutionalize knowledge and preserve culture as the company scales. With thousands of locations and a high-volume retail model, consistency depends on having leaders who understand the business from the ground up.
Erik Von Fischer
Valvoline Inc. dedicated its new $35 million,162,400-square-foot world headquarters in 2017. Approximately 650 employees work at Valvoline World Headquarters on Valvoline Way in Lexington.
Systems that standardize development
Central to Valvoline’s approach and consistency across its retail locations is a proprietary process known as Super Pro. Valvoline trains its store teams on the step-by-step Super Pro process, including classroom and online instruction.
Rather than a one-time onboarding program, Valvoline also prioritizes continuous personal development across all levels of the organization. Employees are consistently trained, evaluated and recertified as they move into more advanced roles.
“Within 60 days of training, a new employee moves from being a technician to a certified technician,” Caldwell said. “Then, typically around their one-year employment mark, they take on a senior technician position, which is a keyholder role for us.”
From there, employees can progress to assistant manager, store manager, area manager, market manager and beyond.
Valvoline currently operates about 1,000 company-owned stores, each requiring leadership capable of maintaining operational standards while managing people.
The emphasis on process is intentional. As the company grows, standardized systems help ensure that safety, customer experience and operational discipline don’t erode with scale. It also creates a well-defined pathway to promote from within and create company bench strength, while offering employees opportunities to grow and advance in their careers.
Culture as a growth tool
Alongside formal systems, Valvoline places heavy emphasis on cultural alignment. Caldwell points to The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni as influential in shaping how the company evaluates and develops talent, emphasizing humility, drive and emotional intelligence.
Caldwell, who has spent 26 years in human resources, acknowledges that competition for talent remains intense. But he believes Valvoline’s internal focus gives it an edge.
“We have been told that we are more of a leadership development factory disguised as an automotive maintenance company,” he said.
As Valvoline works toward its growth target, the company’s experience underscores a lesson relevant to many expanding organizations: growth at scale is less about adding locations and more about building repeatable systems that allow people — and culture — to grow with the business.