Rentalcars CEO: “Diversity Is Absolutely a Strength For Us”

Rentalcars.com is the largest car rental site in the world and is based in Manchester. The company is one of twenty newcomers to the Glassdoor Best Places To Work in the UK ranking for 2018, coming in at #16 with a rating of 4.3. We spoke to CEO Ian Brown to find out why Rentalcars "loves being different": How does it feel to be a BPTW winner for the first time? We are very proud to be a Best Places To Work winner. We have been working really hard as a business to create a great working environment for our colleagues. The transparency of Glassdoor means that our employees are telling us that we are doing something right so that’s a great feeling, especially when you see some of the other companies on the list. What is the best part about working there? I think if you asked most people around the business this question they would say that the best part about working at Rentalcars is the people and the pace. Having 1,700 people from 72 nationalities means that we get a wealth of different opinions perspectives, and even though we’ve grown to our current size we still operate at breakneck speed. It seems like Rentalcars.com is a sociable and fun environment; How do you help build a great company culture? Our culture is something we’ve worked on a lot over the last few years. We’re now spread across five offices and growing fast, so how we maintain and reinforce our culture with so many new colleagues joining around the world isPreview (opens in a new window)something that we’re having to be ever more thoughtful about. Our values are key. One of our values is ‘we love having fun’.  All of our values were chosen by our colleagues so fun is absolutely part of the way that we work. As we say in our values booklet, we spend over 50 percent of our lives at work so if you’re not having fun we’re doing something wrong. What do you look for in informed candidates? Ultimately there isn’t a company in the world that is going to be right for everybody. If candidates take the time to make an informed decision on whether the culture and environment is right for them, then it means that they are much more likely to succeed, both at interview and once they join. What skills or traits makes someone successful at your company? We are an internet business so we need people who work well with change and are constantly looking for ways to improve things. We want people who are genuinely passionate about making stuff better for our customers and our partners. If you look around our business you will find countless examples of colleagues who have grown their careers within our amazing business. The people who have gone the furthest are people who really want to make a difference. How have you improved employee engagement over the past year? What strategies have worked and which have not? We want to make sure that we are working on the things that really matter to our colleagues so our starting point is always our engagement survey. We have a 94 percent participation rate so we know that most people’s views are represented.  We’re pretty transparent with the results and also with the actions we are taking to improve things. For example, we had feedback that our colleagues wanted more communication from the Leadership Team so we implemented Workplace by Facebook and it’s been a great success. Our colleagues told us in the most recent survey that their number one current desire was for more learning and development, so this is an area that we are now making significant investments in. What hasn’t worked? I think the answer to that is that no one size fits all. Something that engages our colleagues in the customer service centres for example might not work with our tech population. So we’re constantly striving to get that balance right. What has been your biggest challenge this past year? How did your team rally to overcome or address it? One of our biggest challenges has been, and continues to be, finding enough amazing people to join us and help deliver our ambitious plans. That’s why our efforts to become an amazing place to work and this recognition on Glassdoor is so important. The market for great people is very competitive especially when, for example, you are looking for the very best engineers, product owners, analysts, and also customer service agents with great language skills like we are. We will create over another 200 new jobs in Manchester alone next year and we’re hiring in London and Barcelona. So recruiting remains a big challenge and we have to continue to differentiate ourselves as a truly amazing place to work. One of your values is: "We love being different", but what does that mean in practice? When we say “being different” it comes from a variety of perspectives. From a business perspective we believe that we are offering something genuinely different and better to our customers and our supply partners. We encourage our people to think differently and come up with solutions that are ‘anything but ordinary’. Ultimately we’re a technology business so if we’re not thinking differently, taking risks and occasionally breaking things then we’re not moving fast enough. We want our colleagues to have the freedom to be their authentic selves and “be different” at work. Some of the best feedback that we get from colleagues is when they say that it’s the first workplace where they’ve felt truly able to be themselves. Rentalcars.com seems a very diverse workplace: have you actively encouraged that or has it just happened? Part of our diversity comes from the way the company was set up. Our founders chose Manchester as a head office location because we needed a multilingual customer service centre and Manchester is a very diverse city. However, now we don’t just support diversity, we celebrate it. It was a really proud moment this year when we took part in the Manchester Pride parade for the first time. Diversity is absolutely a strength for us and it plays a huge part in the vibrant culture that we have here at Rentalcars. If you look at our Glassdoor reviews the majority of them mention our diverse workforce. With colleagues from 72 different countries in our business, it’s impossible to not enjoy the diversity of perspective that brings.