James believes that gender balance is crucial to any business to ensure it performs effectively and has long-term, sustainable success. He comments on carwow’s ambition to be “one of the most diverse and inclusive places to work in the automotive industry”.
James Hind, CEO of carwow states:
At carwow, we are passionate about creating the best possible car buying and selling experience. We believe that having a diverse workforce that reflects the composition of the population at large simply enables us to be a better business. I am extremely proud to be a long-standing member of the Automotive 30% Club, influencing the strategy at carwow as we work to set new benchmarks in both tech and automotive industries.
As a digital marketplace and retail media brand, we cover two traditionally male-dominated industries: automotive and technology. One of our ambitions is to be one of the most diverse and inclusive places to work in the automotive industry, and as part of that, we are constantly looking for ways to help women break through the glass ceiling and create a more gender-balanced workforce across the board.
With online sales and discovery only set to grow – as are we – we need to continually expand our workforce. This year, we will exceed 500 people. Our aim is to be a top 10 European scale-up to work for, and to achieve this, we need to employ the best of the best. We want to grow in a sustainable and responsible way, and this includes employing quality, diverse talent from across and outside of our core industries.
We are, therefore, continually assessing our processes to make sure our roles are accessible for women, including analysing job descriptions for gender bias, completing anonymised CV screening, and using gender balanced hiring panels during the interview phase of applications. We’ve also introduced inclusive and reflective new parental policies, such as shared maternity leave and partner leave, allowing more flexibility for women to return to work.
We pride ourselves on looking after our employees. We have recently been named one of the Top Technology Employers by Hired.com in 2021, and we won’t stop there. We ask our employees to complete a satisfaction survey every six months, which includes a section on diversity and inclusion. We want our company to be a safe place for all, for everyone to have a voice and to feel they are able to be themselves at work. These surveys help us to reach our diversity and inclusion goals, as we use the feedback to assess our current employee satisfaction levels and if we need to change to reach our target.
To support female colleagues, we recently launched our first employee network, ‘WOW Women’. This group is designed to bring team members who identify as women together from across various departments to share knowledge, experience and advice to help us better collaborate and create a more inclusive environment. Since the launch of our first WOW Women networking event in the UK, we have received very positive feedback from attendees, and we look forward to launching this in Munich and Madrid in the coming months.
It is my hope that one day we will no longer need to highlight these issues around gender equality and that it will be so embedded within our industry’s culture and the way that we operate, both in the workplace and in our personal lives, that gender inequality will no longer be a problem. By working with the Automotive 30% Club, we are eager to forge gender parity in the workplace, ensuring our industry continues to thrive and is a much richer and rewarding place to work.