GROW – a new motor retailing women’s network from MotoNovo Finance

PARTNER FEATURE: GROW (Generating Real Opportunities for Women) is a new network created by MotoNovo Finance to support dealer and broker partners to increase female representation at all levels across motor retailing.

GROW aims to increase understanding in areas such as unconscious bias by challenging, supporting and encouraging meaningful discussions about gender issues in motor retailing. Above all, it is about encouraging everyone to appreciate the value of providing career opportunities for women at all levels as part of a broader move to embrace diversity and inclusion.

Vacancies at a high

With vacancies at a 20-year high, recent analysis by the IMI highlighted the importance of diversity and inclusion in addressing the automotive industry skills shortage. They pointed out that a more diverse workforce is critical to turning the tide, and a lack of role models is a fundamental barrier to achieving that goal.

Focusing on gender disparity, the IMI’s work highlighted a clear issue. Just 19% of women are in senior roles compared to 39% in the non-automotive workforce. It is this type of gap that GROW aims to address, inspiring more people to choose the automotive sector as a career choice.

Leading the GROW initiative is MotoNovo MD Karl Werner, an active member of The Automotive 30% Club, whose ’30 by 30′ strategy aims to see at least 30% of key leadership positions held by talented women by 2030. It is a goal that MotoNovo exceeds already with 50/50 gender representation in its Senior Leaders Team; he notes;

“Embracing diversity and inclusion in all its guises is central to MotoNovo’s culture. We want to create a fairer society and have taken big strides to ‘raise our bar’ as an employer. Broadening this out to support and encourage people and businesses across the motor retailing sector to adopt similar change and feel the benefits we see is a natural extension.”

Support from the industry

GROW has received enthusiastic support from Automotive 30% Club founder Julia Muir, who hopes to speak at a future GROW event; she noted;

“It’s great that MotoNovo Finance is taking action and launching GROW. There’s strong evidence that women’s networks with a goal of inspiring, developing and supporting women have a significant positive impact on women’s progression.

Something special happens when women see that they are not alone. Making connections and building relationships with other attendees and speakers helps women form an understanding of their worth, and then they learn strategies to ask for promotions, seek fair pay, and even become mentors to others.

Male members learn that they’re the other half of the gender balance and that they will also benefit from changes. Involvement should be encouraged and led from the top, as Karl Werner is doing. I hope many more of our members will establish inclusion networks like GROW.”