Health and wellbeing: People Power
London, 2nd October : Episode 21 of the Autotrader podcast Women in the driving seat, hosted by Editorial Director, award-winning motoring journalist Erin Baker is released today. The series aims to rip up the rule book on the female-empowerment narrative by sharing personal as well as professional experiences, examining the space where both collide, and the challenges, fears and successes happen.
This episode discusses how mental health awareness needs to be taken more seriously in automotive, and the lack of consideration for marginalised groups when promoting the use of EVs.
Join Erin as she puts two humanitarians in the driving seat.
Podcast preview
Rachel Clift
“We’re about to embark upon on a new evolution of BEN – what has been and what is to come. We’re a health and wellbeing charity there to support the industry, its people and family dependents.”
“Our mission is really clear, we provide support for life, for the industry and its people. We want to work with employers to build a resilient and motivated workforce.”
“We also want to champion positive change for the industry as well.”
“Our model works on both physical and mental health – we look at wellbeing as being the thing people are most in control of.”
“How you manage yourself, your emotions, your lifestyle, your money, your home life, your network which includes your working life – are all the things that places you most in control of your physical and mental health.”
“All of our services are relying on that model, so we provide services online, we’ve got therapies, we’ve got case management, we’ve got welfare grants for people that are really struggling financially. We’ve got training projects for employers.”
“The portfolio of things we have today is very different to what we were historically.”
“I think BEN plays a massive part in supporting [those with disabilities] with their employers to come into the industry and make it seamless.”
“We do have strong supporters – Autotrader being one of them – we need more of that from the industry to help us [BEN] on our journey.”
“One of the things we do is look at how our people are maximising their benefits – where people are struggling financially, we have a welfare system and we look at how people can maximise their funds to enable them to care for their dependents.”
“Whilst we know maybe one in four or one in five people in the working age population are struggling with their mental health at any given time, in the industry, that’s about one in two, one in three.”
“Part of our agenda is to be doing more proactively, preventatively to try and stop people from getting to that point.”
“If you look at the statistics around suicide, and then you apply that to automotive, we could be saying that we’re losing two lives a week [in the UK] to suicide in the industry because awareness is a challenge for us.”
Beth Morley
“We look at getting people into EVs and how do electric cars and different new technologies fit to people’s needs and are they actually being developed in a way that will actually help people live their lives or are they just being developed because they’re interesting fun technology?”
“I’ve never been a big car person – I've often said I’m in the wrong industry! But as time goes on, there’s been a lot of things where life is so much more difficult without having a car.”
“The price of used EVs was coming down, I didn’t really want to get another car that wasn’t an electric because I do feel it’s quite important to practice what you preach and have a go at things.”
“I’m always saying to people have you tried the service? Because if you’re recommending something and you haven’t tried the service, then you’ve fundamentally got a massive data gap.”
“You’ve got an individual’s thoughts and feelings, but actually, what’s society’s impact on the person as well?”
“Up until recently, there was very little being done in any social housing or in rental properties around charge points. There has now been a change and social housing companies are now looking more about installing charge points.”
“Women are underrepresented in higher paid, more senior roles, and they are more likely to provide company cars which tend to be electric because of the benefits.”
“People do not have the agency to make the changes to their property to put in place the charging that they need.”
“I’m really intrigued to know why is it the automotive industry has such higher rates of suicide.”
“Let’s look behind the data and understand what’s going on with people, because when you look at a high-level number it doesn’t necessarily tell you the full picture.”
“Sometimes we look a little too high-level, when actually we need to dig a little bit deeper to understand what is really going on with who.”
Erin Baker
“Lifestyle change for transport solution can mean all sorts of things and it can mean now I'm disenfranchised, now I’m out of the picture because I can’t afford to go electric or I don’t have a home charging point, how am I meant to access the public charging network?”
“The industry as a whole is not used to thinking outside of its own bubble and raising its head above the parapet and looking at socioeconomic changes and pressures to say A) what might our workforce be suffering from and B) what might our customer base be suffering from and be worried about?”
“This is the biggest evolution in transport in the past 100 years since horse and cart to motorised transport.”
Notes to editors
ABOUT ERIN BAKER
Erin Baker is an award-winning motoring journalist and Editorial Director of Auto Trader. She writes a monthly driving column for Vogue, is a World Car of the Year judge, consults for Goodwood and hosts She's Electric, a national roadshow bringing women and electric cars together. Erin is passionate about narrowing the gender gap, both in the automotive industry itself and between car brands and female consumers, through more targeted language, marketing and experiences. She is a single mother of two boys.
Beth Morley
Beth is Human Insight Lead at Cenex and has been with the company for six years. Before that she worked in public sector in behaviour change programmes for recycling and waste reduction. Beth lives in Nottingham with her three children and husband. After being car-free since Covid she has just taken the leap to get her first EV.
Rachel Clift
Rachel is CEO of the automotive industry charity, Ben. She has led the charity’s Health & Wellbeing services which provide life-changing support to those who work, or have worked, in the automotive industry and their family dependents. Rachel has been responsible for a significant programme of transformation, during a time when the charity has also experienced substantial growth in service demand and charitable impact.
Before BEN, Rachel led employability and workplace health and wellbeing programmes for two large welfare-to-work provider organisations, Ingeus and PeoplePlus.
A University of Birmingham Physiotherapy graduate, Rachel has been the onsite Physiotherapist for Peugeot at their Tile Hill plant in Coventry and has also had a successful sporting career as a former Olympian with over 140 international appearances for Great Britain & England women’s hockey teams.
ABOUT AUTOTRADER
Autotrader Group plc is the UK’s largest automotive platform. It listed on the London Stock Exchange in March 2015 and is a member of the FTSE 100 Index.
Autotrader’s purpose is Driving Change Together. Responsibly. Autotrader is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive culture, it aims to build stronger partnerships with its customers and use its voice and influence to drive more environmentally friendly vehicle choices.
With the largest number of car buyers and the largest choice of trusted stock, Autotrader’s marketplace sits at the heart of the UK car buying process. That marketplace is built on an industry-leading technology and data platform, which is increasingly used across the automotive industry. Autotrader is continuing to bring more of the car buying journey online, creating an improved buying experience, whilst enabling all its retailer partners to sell vehicles online.
Autotrader publishes a monthly used car Retail Price Index which is based on pricing analysis of circa 800,000 unique vehicles. The same data that powers the Index is used by the Office for National Statistics to make the UK’s official measures of inflation more robust, as well as the Bank of England to feed the broader UK economic indicators.
For more information, please visit: plc.autotrader.co.uk
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