Five minutes with: Louise Manzano, Inchcape Retail UK's HR Director

Inchcape Retail UK’s HR Director Louise Manzano, spoke to us about the automotive retailer’s decision to enhance its employee pay and benefits package for vehicle technicians across the business...

It’s great that you’ve been collecting employee feedback to drive change - why did you decide to alter your package? 

Our technicians play a critical role in the success of our business and we wanted to reward them accordingly. We held engagement forums to gather their feedback and carried out extensive industry research to understand how to further enhance our offering. The research highlighted that our colleagues believed we already provided fantastic benefits, including excellent pensions and share save schemes, but with 950 technicians based at more than a hundred sites around the country there was an opportunity to improve consistency. We have focused on three key areas; salary, bonus and working hours.

The new package includes a highly competitive salary, with five graded bands now consistent across our sites. More than 80% ofour current technicians have already received a pay rise as a result. Working hours have been set to 40 hours per week, excluding overtime, and monthly bonuses are based on team achievements, rather than individuals.