The Ceiling Is Unlimited: Why Automotive Needs to Show Women Where Their Careers Can Take Them
Steph Newbery, WSG group director, and Lisa Casey, WSG group director
The automotive industry has spent a great deal of time talking about how to attract more women. But getting someone through the door is only the beginning. The bigger question is what happens once they arrive.
Do they see opportunities to develop? Do they feel their contribution is recognised? Can they see people like themselves progressing into senior positions? And, crucially, can they imagine still being part of the organisation five or ten years from now?
These are questions every automotive employer should be asking because recruitment numbers only tell us part of the story. If we want more women to build long-term careers in automotive, we need to focus just as much on the workplaces they experience once they join us.
Great workplace cultures don’t happen by accident. They are created through deliberate decisions about leadership, flexibility, development, wellbeing and opportunity. At Warranty Solutions Group, women currently account for approximately 35% of our workforce and we are aiming to achieve gender parity within the next two years. But the percentage alone isn’t the measure that matters most to us.
We’ve deliberately tried to create a culture where opportunity is based on ability, contribution and potential rather than gender or traditional perceptions about who should perform particular automotive roles. Women are represented throughout our business, including at senior leadership and Board level.
As our colleague Hayley Bergman put it recently, female representation at WSG isn’t simply something we talk about; it is increasingly part of who we are.
Make progression something people can see
Representation at senior level matters because people need to be able to see where their careers could take them. But representation on its own isn’t enough. If somebody joins a business and sees women in leadership but cannot understand how they themselves could progress, there is still a problem. Businesses need to create the conditions that allow talent to develop at every level.
That means investing in people before a promotion becomes available. Development shouldn’t suddenly begin when somebody becomes a manager. Employees need opportunities to learn, broaden their experience, take on greater responsibility and develop the confidence and capabilities they will need for their next role.
At WSG, that includes professional qualifications, accredited learning, apprenticeships and online and classroom training. As the business has grown, we’ve also tried wherever possible to enable existing colleagues to grow with it rather than automatically looking externally every time a new opportunity arises. We can already see that happening.
Kaye Thomson joined WSG as a Business Support and Analytics Executive and within three months had progressed into the role of Business Intelligence and Insights Analyst. Donna Ovington joined as an Account Manager and within 12 months had progressed to Corporate Training Manager. These aren’t theoretical career pathways. They are examples of women already moving into new roles, developing different skills and building their careers within the business.
Donna’s own career before joining WSG demonstrates the same potential within the wider automotive sector. She progressed from salesperson to sales manager and achieved the highest national sales and profit figures for six consecutive years across a major brand with more than 60 sites. Visible progression sends a powerful message. It shows people that development isn’t simply something written into a company policy; it actually happens.
Careers have to work alongside people’s lives
Development is only one part of creating a workplace where people want to stay. Flexibility matters too. One of the outdated assumptions businesses need to challenge is the idea that career ambition and responsibilities outside work are somehow incompatible. People’s lives don’t remain static throughout a 30 or 40-year career. They may become parents, take on caring responsibilities or experience other circumstances that change what they need from their employer.
Losing talented and experienced people because a business cannot accommodate different stages of their lives makes little commercial sense. Managers therefore need to understand individual circumstances and, wherever operationally possible, provide the flexibility that enables people to continue developing their careers.
Flexibility should be part of good management rather than something employees feel uncomfortable requesting. The focus should be on contribution, capability and outcomes rather than outdated assumptions about what commitment or leadership should look like.
Listen, and then do something
Wellbeing is part of that wider employee experience too. At WSG, colleagues have access to mental-health and wellbeing support, including our Employee Assistance Programme through BEN.
But policies and programmes alone don’t create an inclusive workplace. Ultimately, culture is experienced through people. It is shaped by the everyday behaviour and decisions of managers: whether they listen, whether employees feel comfortable speaking up, whether people are encouraged to contribute ideas and whether good work is recognised.
Listening becomes particularly important as a business grows. WSG uses Great Place to Work surveys alongside employee engagement, manager conversations and direct communication with leadership to understand how colleagues experience the business. But gathering feedback isn’t enough. Employees need to see that something happens as a result.
A good example is WSG Accelerate, which we introduced in direct response to colleagues telling us they wanted more opportunities to be recognised and for great work to be celebrated consistently across the business. The programme is designed to make recognition more visible, inclusive and accessible.
That distinction matters. Employee engagement shouldn’t simply be about asking people what they think. A listening culture only has credibility when people can see that their feedback can influence what happens next.
What do the people who work here actually say?
Independent measurement has become particularly valuable to us. In 2026, WSG was recognised as one of the UK’s Best Workplaces for Women™, ranking 53rd in the Medium Business category. We are extremely proud of that recognition, particularly because it is based on confidential feedback from the people who actually work within our business.
The comments we hear from women across WSG give another perspective. Some talk about the importance of seeing women represented at Board level. Others talk about resilience, collaboration and the confidence that comes from seeing women succeed in positions that would once have been overwhelmingly occupied by men.
For younger colleagues, visible role models can be particularly powerful. Our Marketing Assistant, Millie Fortnam, has spoken about growing up watching her mum succeed in a male-dominated trade and how that showed her from an early age that women really can do anything.
Those individual experiences matter because workplace culture isn’t something senior leaders can simply declare. It has to be recognisable to the people experiencing it every day.
Retention tells us more than recruitment
For us, accreditation isn’t the end goal. Employee feedback helps us understand where we’re succeeding, but it should also identify where the employee experience can continue to improve. Creating a great workplace is never a finished project. As businesses grow, the needs and expectations of their people change too. That’s why inclusion needs to be treated as a leadership and business issue rather than simply an HR initiative.
There is an important lesson here for the wider automotive sector: don’t confuse attracting women with retaining them. Automotive businesses looking to retain more women need to look beyond headline recruitment figures and ask harder questions.
Who is developing? Who is progressing? Whose ideas are being heard? Who is being given greater responsibility? Who can see a future with the organisation? And who is leaving? Those questions tell us much more about the health of a workplace.
There is also an important distinction between giving somebody an opportunity and creating an environment in which they feel confident enough to take it. Support, visible role models and good leadership all play a part.
Sometimes the difference between losing a talented employee and seeing them become a future leader can be a manager who recognises their potential, encourages their development and gives them the confidence to take the next step.
For WSG, therefore, the real measure of inclusion isn’t simply how many women we recruit. It’s how many choose to stay, develop, progress and ultimately lead. That is the challenge facing the wider automotive industry too.
We’ve made considerable progress in attracting more women and increasing their visibility across the sector. Now we need to look beyond who is coming into automotive and pay much closer attention to what happens to their careers once they get here.
Great workplaces don’t happen by accident. They are built through everyday decisions about leadership, flexibility, development, wellbeing, recognition and opportunity.
Recruitment opens the door. Culture determines who stays long enough to become the industry’s next generation of leaders.
