Investing in our people

Investing in
our people

We recognise that our people are
fundamental to our success. In order
to attract, retain and develop the best
people, we focus on creating a highly
collaborative culture where people feel
motivated, valued and supported to
succeed in their careers.

Investing in and supporting our talent

Our ambition is to make sure that everyone’s career
is supported by learning opportunities, including self-learning,
mentoring, coaching and formal programmes. We pride ourselves on having a community focused on development where everyone can be successful. Despite challenging times we still retain a strong level of retention and employee engagement. Our attrition rate remains low at 11% (2022: 11%) when compared to industry and national averages.

Our learning academy platform provides a range of opportunities to support careers at Auto Trader and during the year 100% of our employees (including part-time and contractors) were offered training. We also 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, including awareness, technical skills and soft skills. Our mentoring and coaching programmes are available to all employees. We currently have five colleagues qualified as coaches, with two more working towards their qualification, to build internal coaching 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.

91%
Employee engagement

Summary results are made available and feedback acted upon by management, which is then presented to the Board. In our most recent survey we were pleased that 91% (2022: 95%) of our employees agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I am proud to work for Auto Trader”, a measure which we view as a proxy for engagement.¹

1. The employee engagement score excludes employees of Autorama. Autorama currently conduct their own survey with a different question set. In their March 2023 survey, Autorama employees were asked to rate the question “How likely is it you would recommend Vanarama as a place to work?” Answers were given on a 10-point scale, 10 representing highly recommend. The survey had a 71% response rate and 62% responded 9 or above.

Gender and ethnicity pay gap

We released our fourth combined Gender and Ethnicity Pay Gap Report 2022 (published in November 2023, reporting the pay gap
as of 5 April 2023). In the year we extended our joint efforts 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 also 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), and of the new hires included in the report, 46% were women
(2022: 136 new hires, 43% women). We believe that hiring women early on in their careers and progressing them through the business, taking into consideration the
fact that women are greatly underrepresented in both the technology and automotive sectors, is the most sustainable way to reduce the pay gaps in the long term.
Between April 2022 and March 2023, we were pleased to see that women accounted for 44% of all promotions, (2022: 41%) 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). The main drivers include the retention of ethnically diverse colleagues in the upper quartiles while also hiring new talent across the business. The highest representation for ethnically diverse colleagues is still in the lower quartile pay bands, mainly driven by our early careers intake. Since April 2022, 27.5% of our hires were ethnically diverse – nearly 10% more than our actual representation at the time of reporting (18%).

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 have tools to support employees with their financial wellbeing and all employees can join the Group’s Save As You Earn Scheme, with 68% (2022: 66%) of eligible employees participating in one of the current schemes. 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%. We are committed to creating a safe space for our colleagues in the office environment.

Our principal objective is to prevent or minimise accidents, injury and ill health to staff working at our premises or remotely. This includes 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, which offers all employees greater flexibility in where and when they work, a programme of ergonomic assessments was carried out to review and ensure effective and safe homeworking environments. This approach allows people to stay connected with their team and the wider Auto Trader community and maintains our collaborative culture.

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

We have a dedicated team of colleagues from across our business who strive to have a positive impact on the communities we operate in.