Auto Trader staff needed convincing over Manchester move

AUTO TRADER had to convince its Newton-le-Willows-based staff that a Manchester move was right for the business – despite longer travel times – when it was sizing up space in the city.

That’s according to the firm’s infrastructure and operations director Alison Ross who was speaking about the move at an event organised by property news website Place North West yesterday.

The car advertising firm had outgrown three buildings in Newton-le-Willows, where it had 450 staff, and wanted to bring together 150 workers in other smaller offices in Chester, Warrington and Salford.

It took 60,000 sq ft at Ask Developments’ No 1 First Street earlier this year, after considering space at Carlyle’s Piccadilly Place and 3 Hardman Square in Spinningfields.

“Most of the staff were living within 10 minutes of one of our offices. There was grave unhappiness,” said Ms Ross. “90% had an increased travel time of 30 minutes.”

“We had to give the message that we believed that this is the future of digital Auto Trader, and we wanted to bring everybody with us. We had to incentivise so we offered travel costs for the first year and a disturbance allowance.”

The company was keen to move to Manchester for recruitment reasons but also wanted to bring all of its staff together with the aim of creating a more collaborative environment. Auto Trader is closely associated with the magazine of the same name but this was closed last year after circulation nosedived. The business is now only online where it sells products and services to car dealers alongside advertising.

This change has affected the size of the business – down from 4,500 staff and 39 offices 12 years ago to 900 staff and 10 offices in January – but the business is profitable after embracing digital early on. “We’ve transferred all our revenues from print to online and have actually grown them. No other media organisation has managed to do that,” said Ms Ross.

The determination to consolidate office space and move to Manchester came from new managing director Trevor Mather, who she joked had conducted a “Trevolution”. “His insight was ‘you’re really innovative but you don’t think digitally, you’re a publisher with a lot of computers’. He reopened the relocation debate. We knew we needed an office with a large floorplate but it wasn’t about driving efficiencies. If we wanted to collaborate and create a winning digital team we needed as many people next to each other as possible.”

Ms Ross said: “You can really feel the cultural change, we really feel like a different business, it’s amazing. You can meet people you previously only emailed, recruitment problems have mainly gone away, and the staff are happy, they can see it was worth it. We only lost 10 people through the move out of 600.”

She added: “Trying to get tech people to work in Newton-le-Willows was a tough job. If you want to go out to lunch an Esso garage is your best bet.”

Auto Trader is owned by the private equity group Apax Partners.