Diversity & Inclusion through lockdown and beyond
The retail landscape, just like the whole world, has turned on its head over the last few months. Businesses are trying hard to navigate their way through a global crisis dealing with so much unpredictability ahead of them and very little precedent to look back on for guidance. Priorities are changing, plans are postponed but what remains as vital as ever is the importance of people; customers, employees and those in the communities we operate in. This is why at Auto Trader we have not only maintained our commitment, but we are more determined than ever, to create an inclusive culture and be a key driver of change in our industry.
A fundamental element of our people first approach has been the establishment of our Diversity & Inclusion Employee Networks for BAME, Women, LGBT+, Disability & Neurodiversity and we are in the process of introducing one for Age. These are led by and open to people from all levels of our business and it is because of them that we can focus on inclusive initiatives across a variety of diversity strands.
Since the early days of the pandemic our focus has been on ensuring our colleagues can look after their own wellbeing. Our networks who wanted to contribute to this by creating safe places that maintain a strong sense of belonging. They introduced weekly “Virtual Coffee Chats” so colleagues with similar backgrounds and experiences can get together and provide each other with helpful advice and guidance. During lockdown, options for entertainment were limited to the boundaries of our homes so they created “Movies with Meaning” where they would watch films and afterwards got together to discuss thoughts and learnings as a group.
Through the last few years we have worked with some incredible charities that face their own challenges especially when funding through events like runs and marathons have been cancelled. Our diversity & inclusion networks decided to still go ahead with alternative fundraising events and completed virtual or social distanced challenges raising thousands of pounds for charities like the National Autistic Society, the Proud Trust, Bloody Good Period and various BAME charities. Uniting for the benefit of those charities proved to be a benefit for those taking part as well by creating a sense of hope, a reason to still keep going at times that motivation was hard to find.
Our networks have not put their commitments on hold for long but kept working on their pre-existing initiatives. To name a few they have completed the refresh of the “One Auto Trader: Creating a Culture of Inclusion” workshop for all our new starters and launched our partnership with Carers UK. They are working hard to collect the diversity information of all our employees on our HR system so we can calculate our ethnicity pay gap and shape our future strategic objectives. We are getting ready for Manchester Pride month in August, to launch the Hidden Disability Sunflower Scheme in September and Black History month in October. Partnering with the UK Automotive 30% Club we are launching “Courageous Conversations” a series of six webinars starting next month focussing on inclusion beyond just gender and featuring a variety of people from across the automotive industry.
We still need to do better and we can only do it if we continue working together both within our business and with our valued industry partners. A key first step is to educate ourselves so we can challenge ourselves and hopefully inspire us to make sustainable changes. Our networks are creating dedicated pages to highlight diverse voices they want to amplify. Starting with the one “About Race” curated by our BAME Network they want to share it with our customers and partners together with an open invite to join up, share ideas and take action.
Visit our About Race page to learn more by clicking here