PLANO, Texas — About 400 Toyota Financial Services employees are still making the move to the manufacturer’s new Texas headquarters from Torrance, Calif., with July and August serving as the “biggest moving months,” Julia Wada, TFS group vice president of HR and real estate, told Auto Finance News.
About 500 employees — new hires and relocated staff combined — are in a transition space in Dallas. However, the move into the headquarters from the transition space is official underway, as the TFS buildings in the new space opened on Monday.
Many TFS team members moved into the new 2.1 million-square-foot campus on Monday and the remaining members will make the move on July 24, Wada said.
“The way we decided to move is each business unit put together a transition plan looking at what it would take to transition their operations in a way that we would have the right business continuity,” she said.
Employees have gradually made the move in phases to Texas. About two-thirds of TFS’ 900 Torrance team members opted to relocate, and 300 were hired locally.
Toyota Motor North America Inc. celebrated the grand opening of its new centralized headquarters in Plano last week, after three years of planning and building. The campus is still under construction and is expected to be completed by October.
To date, Toyota has invested more than $1 billion in the new campus. The OEM has hired 800 new employees across all departments; it has plans to hire 200 more, TMNA Chief Executive Jim Lentz said during a roundtable panel at the grand opening.