AM Awards 2021 winner: Community Hero, Peter Vardy Group

Peter Vardy Group emerged as the winner from a hotly-contested Community Hero category at the AM Awards 2021 earlier this month.

Here is AM’s citation detailing why the awards’ judges deemed the AM100 car retail group a worthy recipient:

Peter Vardy Group donates 10% of its profits annually to The Peter Vardy Foundation to support children and young people across the UK and internationally without courting constant publicity.

Amid the worst of the pandemic, the group’s COVID community response project donated £500,000 to support communities in Scotland and charity partners in Uganda.

Colleagues also volunteered to support charities on the frontline, delivering food parcels and providing cars to key workers.

As part of induction, new employees are introduced to the group’s ‘Giving Back’ culture and the ‘No Planet B’ – Positive Environmental Impact project – to help reduce its carbon footprint.

Colleagues can manage their carbon footprint via an app, while also being able to contribute to the group’s reduction plan. Each site has a group chat to encourage and support staff members.

The key performance indicators (KPIs) for the project are treated in the same regard as those of sales and customer experience measures, and its objectives form part of the dealership’s KPI scorecard.

Starters are also given £100 to donate to a charity of their choice and are required to volunteer with one of the group’s charity partners.

One Child is a matched donation programme thegroup launched in 2017 – for every car sold, £10 is donated to a charity partner.

This increased to £15 in 2021 and the group encourages its customers to match the donation. Across the four years, the average matched donation is 70%.

Each site has a community champion who engages with colleagues, local charities and environmental partners. Each site is targeted to take part in a minimum of one fundraising event per quarter, to involve at least 50% of their team.

The group holds three annual activities – Back to School Packs, Children in Need and Christmas Gift Drop – to encourage staff engagement in philanthropy.

Highly commended: Swansway Garages