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Cotswold Motor Group introduces training at all stages of staff progression, helping it adapt quickly to changing consumer behaviour and unforeseen obstacles.
For Cotswold Motor Group, “investment in people is key.” The group, comprising BMW, MINI and Motorrad retail centres in Cheltenham and Hereford with 350 staff on the books, was the winner of the Skills and Development Award at the Motor Trader Industry Awards 2021.
Motor Trader spoke to Lucy Bailey, group training and compliance manager at Cotswold Motor Group to find out what strategies it has employed in training its staff through the pandemic, how it retains talent and how it approaches new challenges.
One such challenge was the need to quickly pivot to eLearning in 2020, which Bailey said was key to keeping up communication with staff.
She said: “We have been using an eLearning platform throughout the pandemic. Before COVID we didn’t have it, but it became our way of continuing to communicate with our teams, keeping them up to date with the changes happening in the business. One example of this is when the sales teams began the click and collect process with customers, which was brand new to us at the time. We had never operated like that before, so it was key for us to keep communicating with everybody involved, and with new rules and regulations changing with regularity we needed to make sure that we were doing business the right way.
“Originally it was a tool to get across the information staff needed to deal with the pandemic, but now it is a tool for refreshing knowledge and making sure training is consistent. It is now a communication and evidence tool in relation to learning.”
Although eLearning featured heavily in the pandemic, and is still a part of Cotswold’s strategy, Bailey feels that face-to-face teaching is still important. She said: “We are lucky at our sites that we do have quite large training rooms, which has allowed us to get back to face-to-face teaching with social distancing. Although eLearning has its place, the conversation and participation that face-to-face learning brings is important. I was always very keen to get back to doing as much face-to-face as soon as we could.
“I would say that we are now around 80/20, with 80% of training carried out on site. Fingers crossed we can continue that. To get to this point it was just about introducing more measures to make sure we can do it safely, especially when we are mixing different departments.”
Bailey said that whether online or in person, training needs to be concise, and looks to conduct her sessions in a way that does not have attendees stuck in a classroom for a long time.
She said: “I think a preference to online or in person learning boils down to how different people learn. I’m always a big fan of getting to the point and being clear what the agenda is, which I think works better on site. I think that focus really helps any type of learner understand what’s to be expected and therefore helps them to engage in it properly.
“I tend to run things in a two-to-three-hour session maximum when it comes to learning new content, because this will ideally not affect the business in relation to operational performance, and bear in mind people’s attention space. We want the sessions to be long enough to engage with and avoid rushing through content, but not interfering with the running of the business. It’s just getting that balance right.
“But certainly, I think when it comes to eLearning it needs to be relevant, it needs to be punchy. I think you can’t beat a classroom session when you’ve got other people’s opinions in the mix. You want people to leave that room with a different perspective or having learnt something and understood it fully.”
Keeping talent
Cotswold has placed particular emphasis on staff inductions in the hope of better retention. Before starting employment with Cotswold, every new starter completes a blended “on-boarding process” that includes a welcome video, a tailored training plan dependent on their experience and a competency framework to develop that individual to reach their full potential. It’s attrition rate is at 9.5%.
Bailey said: “It is important to start out on the right foot with any new starter coming into the business because you go to all that effort trying to recruit the right person with the right talent, and you do not want to lose them in those first couple of weeks. No matter when they start, everyone is getting the same reception and I think it shows them what to expect, giving us new starters that are excited to join us.”
Cotswold is a “big fan” of growing its own talent, and has looked to mostly take on entry level and trainee roles. It was also able to keep its apprentice scheme going in the pandemic.
Bailey said: “A lot of our recruitment last year was aimed at entry level and trainee roles. We are big fans of growing our own talent and we do find that it works well for us, provided we have the right approach and the time invested. And the training plan is something that is asked about frequently in interviews with potential candidates. They want to know what progression is available, and I think people want to know that they can develop and are going to gain some qualification or get better and be supported in their role.
“We managed to keep our apprentice scheme going through the pandemic in all areas of our business. The only issues we had was around the number of tutor visits. We are still keen to keep developing those apprentices and we have just gone through the whole recruitment process again.
“It has been nice to get back to our original recruitment process that finds the right talent by exposing them to a trial shift so that they can see how they fit with the team. This means that everybody knows what to expect and going forward. We also work with a lot of NVQ providers that have gotten good at virtual training, so overall we have not found that our apprentices have been held back during COVID.”
Giving responsibility
Being a smaller group, progression can be a concern for employees. However, Cotswold has added other opportunities for greater responsibility and development, such as its mentor programme.
On this, Bailey said: “There are pros and cons to us being a smaller group. I’ve seen that the biggest downfall sometimes is that there’s not always an immediate progression available for somebody in relation to a title or taking on more responsibility. Our mentor scheme appeals to people that want to help and experience working with different types of learners and take on more responsibility.
“Finding the right candidate is important, but we’ve also got to make sure that the support is in place so that at the end we are getting a good apprentice. It is important to make sure that all our mentors are up to a consistent standard, so that it doesn’t matter which mentor you have, you are going to get a great experience as an apprentice.
“The mentors get skilled up in lots of different modules, predominantly around how to coach or mentor, how to observe and how to provide feedback. We get a good apprentice, and it also benefits the mentor with new skills.
“I think the beauty of what we do here at Cotswold is that training is part of every stage of our staffs time with us.”
Future challenges
The uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) is something that all dealers are having to get to grips with, and staff need to know how to sell, service and provide aftersales for this growing technology. Cotswold has been able to work with its manufacturers and implement its own strategies to keep up to date.
Bailey said: “EVs are huge now, both in sales and aftersales and probably touch any customer facing role. Customers are so curious, and there’s so much to learn about it.
“As a business we are still trying to navigate our way through chargers and having enough to accommodate the vehicles. But we are fortunate that our manufacturers have an amazing suite of training from sales to service to help us navigate that too.
“The key thing for us has been investing in ‘champions’. Like our mentor scheme, this is about making sure the staff are going to be feeding that information out to their colleagues and that they are equipped to do so, but also that the managers have got the support and somewhere they can go for information. That was the priority last year, and I think it will continue to be one for quite some time.”
And EVs aren’t the only challenge. Bailey feels that the sales process is the biggest challenge facing the group, as customers’ expectations continue to change.
She said: “The biggest challenge we have got now is probably our sales process. Around five years ago, when we were creating inductions a lot of that was around your traditional customer walking in and purchasing a vehicle.
“The biggest change since COVID is that now customers want a more flexible approach. Some customers want to do a lot more digitally, but some still want the traditional approach. And more customers are now dealing with you online through emails rather than calls. It is now about trying to equip all our sales execs with the skills to deal with the customer in a variety of ways because our traditional sales process doesn’t fit anymore.
“We need to respond quickly to what customers want and I think now it’s a case of making sure that both speed and quality are there.”
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