Meet the Yorkshire car dealership manager who gave a recovering addict a job - and helped him learn to drive

However, the boss of Leeds-based Ringways decided to break the rules in order to do something extraordinary.

Selling cars is Ringways primary aim but three years ago Mr Russell took it upon himself to help Scott Mead, a recovering addict, turn his life around.

The managing director of Ringways had come to know Andy Howarth through the Leeds United Foundation.

And when Mr Howarth said he was going to set up his own foundation focusing on helping people overcome addiction and break the cycle of homelessness through employment, Mr Russell was one of those who answered his clarion call.

In giving Mr Mead, a client of the Howarth Foundation, a job at Ringways, Mr Russell faced several challenges.

The first was communication. He had to sit his entire team down and explain his decision and get them to buy into the idea. Mr Russell also had to circumnavigate the usual rules.

“I didn’t go into that much detail because I wanted Scott to come in as a normal employee,” Mr Russell says. “I just told my senior management team that I had made this decision, I’d employed this person through this particular route and that I needed their support.”

He added: “I had to break the normal rules of HR and the normal protocols of employing people to actually give him a chance. That was tough. I’m a man of rules. I’m a man of ensuring that the job is done properly.”

In doing so, Mr Russell also realised that he couldn’t just delegate his new employee’s development to someone else.

The Ringways boss took it upon himself to regularly meet with Mr Mead. The Howarth Foundation has already done a lot of work in helping Mr Mead get into a position to help himself and Ringways provided the opportunity for steady employment as a car valet.

Mr Russell’s involvement went beyond just meeting Mr Mead regularly and ensuring that he was fine.

“I told him that if you’re ever going to get on in life you are going to need to be able to drive if you are in the motor trade,” Mr Russell says. “He couldn’t drive at that particular time.”

Ringways helped Mr Mead fund driving lessons and helped him buy a car once he had passed his test.

This may not seem like such a big deal but when you’re operating three sites, employ 155 people and have a turnover of £100m, it needs someone to have the awareness and empathy to oversee the development of an individual who has already had a tough journey in life.

Ringways, which was established as a car dealer in 1967, has probably had its most testing year as business ever.

Mr Russell said: “Up until 2020, we had been a very stable, profitable, respected operation in Leeds. We’d had ten years of growth. It had been really enjoyable to be a part of that.

“We came into the year looking forward to continued growth but very quickly we realised with the coronavirus outbreak that things were going to be very different this year.”

However, Mr Russell has found managing a business through Covid-19 personally challenging. For him it has brought into focus the need to show leadership.

“What I’ve tried to do is make sure this business and my team have had the appropriate leadership that is needed to go through a crisis like this,” he said.

Mr Russell added: “This year trading-wise we had lost a significant amount of money up until the end of May, which was a real challenge for me, having been a profitable business for quite some time.

“We sat down as a team and rebudgeted, refocused our teams. There was significant pent up demand in the market. We ensured that everybody felt safe coming back to work to start with and then on that basis we just grew slowly and slowly.

“Believe it or not, up until this second lockdown, we have actually been ahead of our performance year-on-year in relation to the months that we have been open. We’ve gone from a £900,000 loss to the end of May to actually break even to the end of September.”

The business is hoping for some stability again heading into the next year.

Mr Mead, however, will no longer be on that journey with the firm. During the first lockdown he took on part-time work as a delivery driver for Tesco.

He has since been asked to come on board full-time and recently handed in his notice at Ringways. While Mr Russell was sad to see Mr Mead go, he still had a smile on his face when he found out about his next move.

“My role was to get him to the point where he is ready in his own life to make more decisions,” Mr Russell says. “That’s what I’ve achieved with Scott - the ability for him to say my time here at Ringways is done.”

He added: “He will be Scott, who has come through the Howarth Foundation to Ringways but as he moves into his new role he is just Scott. That is wonderful.”

While Mr Mead was a success, that’s not always the case. Ringways had previously given another person a similar opportunity but it didn’t work out.

Despite this and the challenges that the business faces, Mr Russell is not perturbed. He stands ready to answer Howarth Foundation’s call once again should a suitable candidate be identified.

The biggest advantage to the business has been seeing the empathy amongst staff members.

“It sounds a bit twee in this modern world but we are a family,” Mr Russell says.

The managing director himself has two “unbelievably hard working parents”. He himself has had to work hard to get into a position of privilege. Mr Russell added: “I’ve enjoyed that privilege. I’ve been all over the world with that privilege. You can see that there are parts of society out there that haven't made it through. Not everybody had the chances or the choices that I made.”

That is his underlying motivation.

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James Mitchinson