Mercedes-Benz Truck and Van franchise partner eStar has more than 300 employees at four locations over five sites. Established in September 2020 and taking over from a failed business, it recently revamped its employee benefits offering in a bid to reward staff as well as attract more female talent to the business.
Kate Howdon, head of HR at eStar, joined the business nearly two years ago in July 2021. She manages a small team including an HR adviser, payroll adviser and HR administrator/receptionist.
Why did you recently decide to refresh your benefits offering?
We didn’t really have a lot when we took over from the business that went into administration. There wasn’t a lot to reward employees with and there wasn’t much to attract new talent either, so employee benefits was high on the agenda to review but it had to be looked at the right time.
We first needed to focus on trading, then we had a big move, and with the two new sites there were significant investments in new technology. It wasn’t a priority in terms of budget, but it was just one of those things that I knew we needed to change. I wasn’t happy to continue with the current benefits package because it to me it wasn’t good enough.
The good news is that we’ve definitely made headway, and we will continue to do so in the following years.
What benefits are currently offered to staff?
As we had very little in the way of benefits when we took over the business, I reviewed this to look at what we could offer. I’m pleased to say that we’ve got a long list now, in addition to statutory pension contributions of course.
For a start, we’ve got an employee of the month scheme offering £50, a cycle-to-work scheme, long service awards, annual leave that increases with long service, and we’ve started to pay company sick pay in line with service, whereas before it was only statutory.
We’ve introduced paid compassionate leave, which was previously only unpaid, and now offer a minimum of three days for immediate family bereavements. We’ve also recently allowed an unpaid leave day for pet bereavement since pets are often considered part of the family.
We now offer three months of full pay and two months half pay for maternity leave, where again only the statutory entitlement had been available previously. This is significant in our industry, and we believe our offering is now industry leading.
Paternity leave is currently full pay for two weeks, and we also provide baby packages when the baby’s born.
There’s a lot on offer now as we’ve done quite a big overhaul, which was needed, and we also offer free fruit at all our sites.
Because the business is quite new, we have to do things in stages. We will keep reviewing it as we go, and I’ll review it again this year. The Board is fantastic and it’s a case of as long as we can afford it then they’re all for it, which is great.
How is your organisation supporting employees with the cost-of-living crisis?
Last year, we gave employees a cost-of-living salary increase of 3% and realigned all salaries. We carried out a massive benchmarking exercise to make sure that it was all equal.
We’ve now given another 3% cost-of-living pay increase this year, as well as two winter payments of £250 each in January and March.
How often do you intend to review your benefits offering?
My plan is to do it every year so that I can keep abreast of the economy and what’s going on in the wider industry, and obviously we’ve got the general business to look at as well as the motor trade itself. We want to be industry-leading in what we offer.
Whether we change it or improve every year depends on whether we can afford to, and hopefully we’ll get to a point when it’ll just become a renewal rather than a new offering.
Have you got any new employee benefits in the pipeline?
We launched the sick pay policy in January, and the next big one will be the annual leave policy, which will be effective this month (April).
Other smaller initiatives include cycle to work and a sports and social committee that we’re going to set up so that they’ll be organising group events, team events for the business, and the social side of things. Then we’ve got a plan for the whole year, divided into quarters, highlighting what we’re launching and when.
What are your current benefits challenges?
Recruitment for us is a hot topic, especially as there’s a skills shortage across the industry with technicians, so our plan is to increase the number of apprentices that we bring in this year.
Since taking over the business that went into administration, there are many basic processes and policies that we need to put in place.
We also want to attract more women. From a diversity point of view the motor trade is a male-dominated industry, and looking at more female-orientated benefits is therefore something that I’m interested in doing and building on.
We’re still focusing on health and wellbeing and the cost of living too. We’ve got an automotive charity partner called Ben, which we’re working with in terms of wellbeing, and we’ve now got a good communications strategy to make sure employees know they’re supported in terms of financial wellbeing. For example, they provide benefits and tips on managing your money and offer over-the-phone advice as well.
What are the main benefits challenges being faced by employers in general?
The main challenges tend to be working from home and flexible working. After Covid, everyone thinks it’s fine to work from home now, but I think the human touch has been lost and the engagement piece is still important. Some people don’t benefit well from being at home on their own; it might be quite lonely, or they might not be set up in the correct way.
Our challenge in this respect is different. We have workshops, and our workforce is predominantly made up of technicians who can’t mend 44-tonne trucks on their driveways, so there’s no possibility of working from home and in that capacity for them.
Is there anything that the government could do to help?
Skills shortages could do with being addressed. From our point of view, we struggle to get women on board, so I think trying to get them involved in the industry from an early age would support us. We are starting to look at how we attract female staff, and it goes right back to school where they need to be talking about engineering and all the other jobs that are available to them as well.
Flexible working is also being looked at currently, with the government potentially changing the process and when it can be applied for.
How do you make sure that your staff are aware of the available employee benefits?
We’ve got a really good communication strategy. We share ideas collectively among the senior leaders of the business and they can make suggestions about anything that’s being reviewed or relaunched at that point. The senior leadership team will then be trained in various areas of it.
We also have digital platforms that we use for wider communications to the teams, whether that be on the HR system, through emails or toolbox talks, and managers will have one-to-one meetings with individuals every month, as well as group meetings.
We’re just about to launch a new internal magazine as well, which will be emailed to staff using a digital platform.
What are the most popular benefits you offer and why?
It’s a bit difficult to answer that at the moment because we’ve only just launched them! The main benefits we offer were highlighted in the engagement survey I did when I first started to get a flavour of what employees really want, so I think they’ll have quite a good uptake.
We’re also going to be doing some statistics gathering as the year goes on to see what uptake benefits have had, but we have designed it to be fair and equal across the business, so we hope that they’ll have quite a good uptake.
What is the best employee benefit you’ve ever had?
I’ve actually not had anything revolutionary. Some bigger businesses, like Apple and Microsoft, have these quite out-there revolutionary benefits but not all businesses can offer things like that.
I’ve had more lengthy sick pay, increased holiday entitlement, the option to buy and sell annual leave, additional company vehicles, private medical and higher levels of death in service.
They’re all what I call your core benefits and there’s nothing revolutionary about them, but maybe just the levels of them.
If you had an unlimited budget for employee benefits, what would you introduce and why?
I’d keep the core benefits and then I’d quite like to do some blue-sky thinking for ones that are a little bit more out there, a little bit more Apple. Flexible benefits would be quite good for employees so they can decide what’s most relevant to them.
People engage with different things, and so it’s not enough to just extend the days that we offer in terms of compassionate leave and annual leave. Flex for private health, or the option to flex to include an employee’s family in retail discounts, would also help.
I’d also consider things like a day off for a child’s first day at school or for getting a pet. Free food too, especially in this current climate. We’ve seen employers that have offered lunches, for example, so there’s loads of things that we could offer. The list is endless!
But it’s a hard one because it’s not one-size-fits-all, so I wouldn’t want to just name one because I want to be fair to everyone.
