Positive work-life balance and flexible working sees carwow recognised as only automotive company in Flexa100

carwow, Europe’s leading online marketplace for buying and selling new and used cars, has been recognised by Flexa Careers as one of the most flexible places to work.

Appearing in Flexa100 2023 (#Flexa100), carwow is the only automotive business to have been recognised and has been rewarded for its remote working allowance, flexible hours and for being a dog friendly environment. Flexa assesses the flexibility options a company provides and anonymously surveys a significant proportion of its employees to ensure the firm is as flexible as they claim to be, providing them with a FlexScore.

The FlexScore assessment is based on six key elements of flexibility: location, hours, trust and autonomy, benefits, role modelling and work-life balance. carwow employees scored the company an 80% satisfaction rate for work-life balance alone, which is considerably higher than the industry average.

“At carwow, we aim to create a culture where our team can thrive no matter where or how they work,” said Interim Chief People Officer, Alice Flaye. “It’s our ambition for carwow to become the best tech scale-up to work for in Europe. There is always more to do, but being recognised by Flexa as one of the top 100 most flexible places to work is fantastic validation of what we’ve achieved so far.

“carwow offers a range of flexible working arrangements across its four locations in the UK, Germany, Spain and Portugal, from fully remote to hybrid setups, alongside being able to work from anywhere each year for up to a month.

“We offer a healthy home office budget of £500/€550 and are also open to looking at alternative working patterns to ensure our ‘carwowers’ can work in a way that best suits them, their family or lifestyle.”

A spokesperson at Flexa Careers said: “It’s such an achievement for a company as large as carwow to score so well. If you’re looking for a company that is growing rapidly, but hasn’t compromised flexibility, then you’ve come to the right place! carwow’s position as a rapidly growing scale-up and a leader in terms of flexibility means that you’ll experience the benefits of exciting career progression, without sacrificing your freedom.”

carwow prides itself on being open to part-time employees and workers on compressed hours, offering enhanced maternity and paternity leave, as well as shared parental leave and pregnancy loss leave. It also offers a ‘work from anywhere’ scheme, which enables employees to work from a place of their choice for a month each year, as well as team building days.

According to Flexa, flexible working is the number one employee demand, with 92% of people wanting to work more flexibly. Flexa reports that the average person spends up to three hours per job application searching for what flexible working options are on offer at the company.

Diversity & Inclusion

Although the carwow business sits across two historically ‘male dominated’ industries in automotive and technology, the company also operates a ‘no excuses’ philosophy to its Diversion & Inclusion strategy.

“Our vision is simple – we want to be the most diverse and inclusive company within the automotive industry, but we know we have a lot of work to do to get to where we want to be,” explained CPO, Alice Flaye.

carwow has started introducing a number of initiatives to help achieve this ambition, including: checking adverts for gender bias and implementing anonymised CV screening, rolling out diversity and inclusivity training for all employees and reviewing parental leave policies to make them more inclusive. The company also has dedicated Diversity Champions, employee networking groups, ensures all company events are as inclusive as possible and regularly gives back to the communities it works in.

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About carwow

carwow’s mission is to put everyone in the know when it comes to cars. It operates a fair and transparent marketplace that connects more than nine million UK users with trusted dealers and brands to buy or sell their vehicles.

Established in 2011, carwow is the number one marketplace for new cars in the UK, Germany, and Spain. In 2021, it launched its ‘Sell My Car’ service, meaning dealers can also buy stock directly from carwow users – allowing consumers to sell their current car and buy their next vehicle all on the same platform. From 2021 to 2022, carwow saw a 97% increase in the number of dealers using its site and almost five million bids received from dealers on used car listings.

Headquartered in London, carwow employs over 320 people in the UK, Portugal, Germany, and Spain with the backing of some of the most prestigious technology, marketplace, and automotive investors.

Having started life as a reviews aggregator, carwow has also become one of the most influential names in consumer car media, with the biggest automotive channel on YouTube (over 7.8 million subscribers, fronted by Mat Watson.

Dedicated to helping the auto industry embrace online, carwow offers a suite of data-driven tools and services, including lead generation, stock sourcing, brand building, e-commerce training, marketing, and advertising.

For more information visit https://dealers.carwow.co.uk/ or call 0333 150 0777. For the latest reviews and videos, subscribe to the carwow channel on www.youtube.com/carwow, follow carwow on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/carwow and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/carwowuk.

About Flexa
Flexa was founded in 2019 by Molly and Maurice. They discovered a severe lack of flexible jobs after Molly was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, which led to her needing more flexibility whilst she works.

Flexa was created to help people find truly flexible work and help forward-thinking companies to stand out from the crowd.