Investing in our people

Investing in
our people

We recognise that our people
are fundamental to our success.
Our ambition is to make sure that
everyone has the time and
opportunity for development.
We pride ourselves on having a
community focused on development
where everyone can be successful.

Investing in and supporting our talent

Our ambition is to make sure that everyone has the time
and opportunity for development at Auto Trader. We support
this through personal development plans and opportunities,
coaching and mentoring, structured programmes and self-learning.

We underpin this through our cultural and inclusive initiatives,
including values-based training, inclusive leadership and an
inclusive talent development programme.

Our learning academy is the platform that provides a range of learning opportunities for all employees (including part-time and contractors). We provide sponsorship for professional qualifications and access to continuing professional development for our people. Mandatory training covers our compliance essentials to ensure compliance with our legislative and regulatory requirements. Our non-mandatory training covers a broad range of learning and development that provide role-specific technical skills and soft skills that support being successful at Auto Trader. Our mentoring and coaching programmes are available to all employees and we continue to build internal coaching, mentoring and sponsorship capability.

Engaging our employees

We welcome open and honest feedback from our employees and surveys are conducted on a regular basis. We aim to understand
job satisfaction, measure opinion and find where changes may
be necessary.

97%
Employee engagement

Gender and ethnicity pay gap

We released our fourth combined Gender and Ethnicity Pay Gap Report 2023 (published in December 2023, reporting the pay gap as at 5 April 2023). We have joined forces with other FTSE 100 companies to encourage more companies to report and to campaign to make ethnicity pay gap reporting mandatory in the same way that it is for gender.

We continue to make progress in reducing our gender pay gap. Our mean gender pay gap decreased by 2.3% (2022: 0.3% decrease), and our median pay gap decreased by 3.3% (2022: 0.4% increase). During the reporting period, we performed well in retaining women in our upper quartiles (30% women leavers compared to 63% for men). Our overall gender split when looking at people who left Auto Trader during the reporting period was also more favourable to women; they accounted for 30% of leavers compared to 70% for men. Of the new hires included in the report, 46% were women (2022: 43% women). Our goal is to get to a 50/50 gender split across all our recruitment campaigns. We have also continued with our focus on hiring early career roles, with 31% of total hires joining an early career programme.

Of the technology based roles, 64% of them went to women as part of our continued strategy to increase the number of women in technology by hiring at entry level and progressing them through their careers. Between April 2022 and March 2023, we were pleased to see that women accounted for 41% of all promotions, and we continue to strive to increase this further.

During the reporting period, the mean and median ethnicity pay gaps have decreased by 1.2% and 5.5% respectively (2022: decreased by 0.8% and 1.2% respectively). We have also increased ethnically diverse representation across all quartiles, with the upper middle quartiles showing the largest increase at 3.4%.

During the reporting period, 27.5% of our hires were ethnically diverse – nearly 10% more than our actual representation at the time of reporting (18%). We can see the positive impact of this with the representation of ethnically diverse colleagues increasing across all quartiles which has been successful due to our continued efforts to hire diverse talent across all levels of the business.

Download our 2023 report

Degree apprenticeship programme

Being on the degree apprenticeship programme has meant I can study for a degree at the same time as working towards becoming an experienced UX designer.

Eniya Ali 
Product Design Apprentice

Wellbeing and safety of our employees

We are committed to supporting our employees in all aspects of their health and wellbeing. We provide a comprehensive range of healthcare benefits as well as access to tools and education, mental health support and supportive pathways to empower our employees to have more good days.

We provide access to tools and resources to support employees with their financial wellbeing. A Group personal pension plan is offered to all employees, under which they can contribute between 3% and 5% (or higher) of their salary and Auto Trader contributes between 5% and 7%. All employees can join the Group’s Save As You Earn scheme, with 563 of our employees participating in at least one of the current schemes.

In September 2023 we announced an all-employee share award that rewards employees with an extra 10% of their salary in shares each year, vesting over a three-year period. This builds on our already strong ownership culture and aligns our people with our shareholders.

Our principal objective is to prevent or minimise accidents, injury and ill health to staff, contractors and others, who work at or visit our premises. We have a fully compliant Health and Safety Policy and appropriate insurance for all employees. We can report that we have had no fatalities or serious injuries during the year, and there was no impact to our operations due to work-related incidents or work-related occupational disease.

Following the introduction of our Connected Working approach, we remain committed to our people’s health and wellbeing. To support our colleagues we make sure that their workstations are safe by completing a risk assessment of both office and home-based workstations and environments.

Roadmap: sharing stories
& experiences

In 2023, we launched Roadmap, a platform for people at Auto Trader and beyond to share their stories of building products and have lively conversations about what they're genuinely passionate about.

In this episode, Pete chats to Polly & David about their journey from joining Auto Trader as engineering & sales graduates in the early 2010s, all the way through to being senior product managers today.

View all episodes

Also in this section

Diversity & inclusion

We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive work community that enhances our culture and improves our business through our ability to attract, identify and develop talent.

Making a positive impact

Our Auto Trader Community shapes our culture and we are committed to making a difference and having a positive impact on the communities we operate in.