Peter Vardy Newsroom
The Peter Vardy Group of companies is committed to driving equality for men and women in the workplace, particularly on pay.
As a Group we are working hard to introduce women into the industry in a bid to bridge the pay gap and, to date, we have made significant progress. Currently the average representation of females in the workforce in the automotive industry is only 19%. We are pleased to be well ahead of that average with 30% of our own workforce being female however we would still like to improve upon that number.
In our business, half the members of our statutory board are women, including a female Finance Director who also represents the executive board. This is significantly more advanced than the aspirations of the 30 Per Cent Club, an initiative for FTSE 100 companies, which encourages businesses to have at least 30 per cent female representation on their Boards.
There are also a number of female leaders within our Group, including our Head of People, Head of Marketing, Head of Academy, Head of Customer Experience and Head of Operational Finance, as well as a number of female Financial Controllers throughout our dealership businesses.
In 2017, we appointed our first female Workshop Controller and have several female line managers at dealership and head office levels holding such positions as Sales Controller, Customer Manager, Host Manager, and Compliance Manager.
In addition, we are actively recruiting female Sales Advisors and Technicians (our largest group of roles), by developing specific campaigns to attract female talent to roles previously dominated by male colleagues.
Our Group has advanced plans to build robust relationships with schools and universities by providing an early introduction to the roles available in the industry and to dispel the myth that the automotive sector is an excessively male environment.
A major issue for our industry is that a disproportionate number of females are attracted into administration, hosting and customer service roles, which tend to be lower paid. As a Group, and as an industry, we need to increase the number of females in senior management positions in dealership businesses, including in the roles of sales managers and service managers, as well as in sales advisor and technician posts.
Whilst our initial gender pay gap results may look concerning: on average men earn £19.06 per hour and female colleagues earn £14.25, this is a direct result of only 30 per cent of our workforce being women. As a traditionally male-dominated industry, the automotive sector currently employs more men than women at board and senior manager levels and this has created a disparity in pay.
Despite the shortfall in the number of female colleagues within our Group we are committed to ensuring that our male and female colleagues are paid equally when operating in the same job roles. We conduct benchmarking using an external agency to ensure we are offering competitive pay for comparable roles, both within and outside the automotive sector.
Our Dealership Financial Controller team, for example, is 78 per cent female whose average hourly pay is £28.78. For male colleagues in the same role, by contrast, average hourly pay is £26.24.
In our sales team, where we are actively encouraging females into sales advisory roles, it is encouraging to see the average female sales advisor earning an average of £23.65 per hour whilst male advisors earn an average of £21.68 per hour. Our Board is actively recruiting female candidates into these roles and is committed to identifying the best candidates, irrespective of gender.
The Peter Vardy Group of companies is wholly committed to having an equal and diversified workforce.
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