A spectacular fall from grace… - Anonymous employee Autotrader Employee Review

As many of the lower rated/negative reviews have stated, there has been a huge decline in work culture and general feelings of happiness and motivation levels across the business in recent years. This is not down to one single thing, it’s been a build-up of various factors, bit by bit, over the last 2-3 years that has caused this incremental decline. People have now got sick and tired of this, and it comes as no surprise that we have gotten into this situation. Some of the things I’d like to mention from my experience: - The approach and behaviours of the ALT and senior managers in the level just below ALT have been on the decline. I’m not sure if it’s power or ego driven but they’ve lost touch, empathy and understanding of the ‘working’ employees beneath them. There is very little communication and a desire to listen, understand and help create positive change for the employees beneath them. They all seem to be driven by their own agendas and a massive desire to please those directly above them for their own benefit; effectively ‘playing the game’ for the sake of their own progression. Many companies are like this – this shouldn’t be one of them. - A significant amount of cliqueness and favouritism that is hard to miss. Some people are progressed much quicker in their roles and unfortunately, it’s not solely based on ability/skills/contribution etc. I’ve seen this first hand, some people are accelerated through if they are simply more liked, social and ‘in with’ the senior managers. Please don’t forget and ignore your extremely hard-working employees that do all the heavy lifting day to day and simply just get on with things without making a fuss and shouting about it. There is also a very unfriendly and ‘fake’ nature from some senior managers. They do not make the effort to simply say hello in passing and getting to know individuals that they may not work with on a regular basis. They should equally continue building their network and getting to know all individuals from around the business on an equal basis. - Pay is significantly poor and very uneven (even for the same role and level) for an organisation of this level, and it’s getting to the point where it’s becoming quite insulting. There’s a significant amount of cross-over in salary bandings between role levels and it’s evident that this is in place to give management lots of leeway to keep employees salary as low as possible within a particular band and using the band cross over from the level above as an excuse to keep salaries lower. Annual salary reviews have also seen very little increase in pay. For a company who has used ‘a great working culture’ as way to justify lower salary, this is now no longer possible. That culture is now lost and gone. - In terms of a significant pay increase for the CEO, CFO and COO, this was justified as needing to be done as their salaries were significantly behind market rates for those roles and we couldn’t risk losing these individuals to other organisations. Despite this increase, it turns out we are losing our incredible COO, so that worked out well didn’t it!? Wishing our COO all the best in her new role, she will be an incredible asset to their business. Meanwhile… if regular employees want a higher pay they are told to look elsewhere as we are unable to match those salaries… You are and will continue to lose very good people around the business because of this. - In terms of connected working – 2 fixed days in the office and 1 flex day of our choice was the perfect balance. Now we’re being moved to 2 fixed days and 1 regular day that we have much less flexibility on – if it’s not broken, don’t try and fix it – end of. The introduction of the new HR system has now been put in place to most certainly keep an eye on us even more and track every little detail. Remember, trust is a 2-way thing. If you don’t trust your employees, they will lose trust in the business. Things are only going to get stricter and stricter, and this will have a detrimental impact on the business and the employees it manages to attract and retain. - There seems to be what has now turned into this excessive strategy of delivering value as quickly as possible in the Product & Tech space at the cost of everything else. I don’t know if it’s some form of addiction or thrill of seeing new things getting constantly delivered but it’s a problem and stems from the CTO down. Employees are getting sick and tired of hearing that they need to work faster and deliver more results. They are already running at full capacity and it’s causing a significant amount of stress, ill health and burnout; it’s not sustainable. There needs to be a balance between delivering value and creating accurate, reliable and well thought out tech systems and products. Great things cannot be rushed and require time and consideration. All our products and solutions are half complete and rushed. Calm down and let us do the job properly. We’re actually running out of ideas as a business and building new products and features just for the sake of greed and further profit. Innovation and creativity are truly on the decline because of this and it’s weakening our bond with consumers and customers. - Finally, I move onto recent structural changes in our organisation and the unfortunate redundancies that have had to come with it. Customer Market, Digital Analysts, RPA Developers, Business Analysts and many more. These processes are understandable from a business perspective and thankfully I have been fortunate not to have been impacted by any of these changes. An organisation must constantly evolve and adapt to change in order to thrive however, there is a respectable and transparent approach to these processes that hasn’t been followed. Look at any big FTSE 100 or S&P 500 company going through these processes and there is a particular way of doing things. Announce company-wide that there are redundancies taking place and let people know of the roles that will be affected. Let everyone know that those who will be affected will be contacted for a further specific announcement and then follow this up with the appropriate consultation processes etc. At Autotrader though, whenever these situations occur, it’s always very hush-hush and secretive. The people who are impacted are told not to speak about it and keep it on the downlow. There is zero transparency across the business when redundancies happen and no mention of the sort at company conferences or community days; everything is instead made out to seem happy and glorious. All employees want is transparency. We know there are ups and downs within a business, just be open and honest with us about what is happening at all times.