Health and wellbeing: People Power
London, 2nd October : Episode 21 of the Autotrader podcast Women in the driving seat, hosted by Editorial Director, award-winning motoring journalist Erin Baker is released today. The series aims to rip up the rule book on the female-empowerment narrative by sharing personal as well as professional experiences, examining the space where both collide, and the challenges, fears and successes happen.
This episode discusses how mental health awareness needs to be taken more seriously in automotive, and the lack of consideration for marginalised groups when promoting the use of EVs.
Join Erin as she puts two humanitarians in the driving seat.
Podcast Preview
Lakshmi Moorthy
“When they asked me to become Chair, I thought ‘how am I going to do this?’ because the board was full of men who’d been in the UK and leasing sector for years, and I was new to the UK and I was new to leasing and the only female.”
“However, I could see myself doing it [becoming Chair] because I could see how she [Nina] did it, and with her style I thought ‘I could do that’.”
“Automotive leasing is full of a lot of men, and they’ve all been in the industry forever, and they’ve all known each other for the last 20, 30 years. Lots of people have similar personalities, and Nina had a very different personality. I could see myself more in that role, in that style, than perhaps the style of the other men around the table.”
“As a leasing company, I’m also in financial services, I’m owned by a bank. I probably spend as much time thinking about large fleets, dealing with consumer regulation because a third of my fleet goes to individuals like you and me.”
“In my career what I’ve found of great value is that I can make links and connect dots. I used to work in credit guards years ago, and some of the regulation that came in there, is now coming to auto finance 15 years later.”
“That awareness of different industries, different cultures and different environment helps because the world is changing so much.”
“If I think about my job four years ago when I started to today, it’s completely different.”
“Our careers are going to evolve and change more rapidly in the future, lots of these worlds are intertwining.”
“I wish I’d embraced change even more, because every change you go through A) you learn something, B) it does away with imposter syndrome because next time you think ‘I didn’t know anything about this and I did it successfully’ but what change does is build a portfolio of information and transferrable skills so that when you’re in the next new thing, it works.”
“That’s why I love my job at the BVRLA because I meet people. Not only competitors but also I meet people from slightly different dimensions, policy makers and that’s where you keep learning and you can use it in different parts of your role.”
Erin Baker
“It’s so hard to qualify the effect that any woman to come into any industry, in any sector, in any role has because there’s no hard data behind it other than the number of women who might come through afterwards.”
“It has an emotional effect, the imposter syndrome starts to go out of the window a little bit – other women coming through might choose to do it completely differently. It’s not them about modelling themselves on that person, it’s about [understanding] ‘okay it’s available to me now.’”
Hayley Pells
“The professional register is really useful. It can showcase your career in a non-partisan way, whereas a CV can be flowery or embellished, a professional register is a benchmark. It’s a standard, a quality and it has rigor. It not just something a motorist can have faith in, but also employers.
“Anybody at all can access our professional register, and see if that vehicle technician is actually qualified to work on your vehicle. As we’re moving into a space where cars are more
“If you were a vehicle technician that has been working on a modern diesel engine and the way modern injection systems work, it is so chaotic trying to get your brain wrapped around those complex systems that are all interplaying with each other. You can work on an electric vehicle.”
“We’ve got record numbers of technicians coming in and embracing electrification. But there is still work to do. We do keep a very active watch on this because it’s such an important dial.”
“We publish those results regularly on our website, so anyone can come and have a look, see where those EV trained technicians are.”
“Early doors I embraced EV technology, and I didn’t actually have enough cars to work on, so in order to continue my own CPD [Continuing Professional Development] I had to lecture in the adult education space because I didn’t have enough cars to fix.
“Although I was seeing them [EVs] regularly, I wasn’t seeing them with faults.”
Notes to editors
ABOUT ERIN BAKER
Erin Baker is an award-winning motoring journalist and Editorial Director of Auto Trader. She writes a monthly driving column for Vogue, is a World Car of the Year judge, consults for Goodwood and hosts She's Electric, a national roadshow bringing women and electric cars together. Erin is passionate about narrowing the gender gap, both in the automotive industry itself and between car brands and female consumers, through more targeted language, marketing and experiences. She is a single mother of two boys.
Beth Morley
Beth is Human Insight Lead at Cenex and has been with the company for six years. Before that she worked in public sector in behaviour change programmes for recycling and waste reduction. Beth lives in Nottingham with her three children and husband. After being car-free since Covid she has just taken the leap to get her first EV.
Rachel Clift
Rachel is CEO of the automotive industry charity, Ben. She has led the charity’s Health & Wellbeing services which provide life-changing support to those who work, or have worked, in the automotive industry and their family dependents. Rachel has been responsible for a significant programme of transformation, during a time when the charity has also experienced substantial growth in service demand and charitable impact.
Before BEN, Rachel led employability and workplace health and wellbeing programmes for two large welfare-to-work provider organisations, Ingeus and PeoplePlus.
A University of Birmingham Physiotherapy graduate, Rachel has been the onsite Physiotherapist for Peugeot at their Tile Hill plant in Coventry and has also had a successful sporting career as a former Olympian with over 140 international appearances for Great Britain & England women’s hockey teams.
ABOUT AUTOTRADER
Autotrader Group plc is the UK’s largest automotive platform. It listed on the London Stock Exchange in March 2015 and is a member of the FTSE 100 Index.
Autotrader’s purpose is Driving Change Together. Responsibly. Autotrader is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive culture, it aims to build stronger partnerships with its customers and use its voice and influence to drive more environmentally friendly vehicle choices.
With the largest number of car buyers and the largest choice of trusted stock, Autotrader’s marketplace sits at the heart of the UK car buying process. That marketplace is built on an industry-leading technology and data platform, which is increasingly used across the automotive industry. Autotrader is continuing to bring more of the car buying journey online, creating an improved buying experience, whilst enabling all its retailer partners to sell vehicles online.
Autotrader publishes a monthly used car Retail Price Index which is based on pricing analysis of circa 800,000 unique vehicles. The same data that powers the Index is used by the Office for National Statistics to make the UK’s official measures of inflation more robust, as well as the Bank of England to feed the broader UK economic indicators.
For more information, please visit: plc.autotrader.co.uk
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