Betfred Group

Betfred Group is privately-owned and the operating companies within that group operate high Street and multi-channel betting and gaming businesses. We operate over 1350 licenced betting shops across England, Wales, and Scotland under the Betfred brand. Through multiple channels, we have a growing online presence with an extensive digital sports betting and gaming offering.

In total we employ just under 10,000 people globally across the Betfred Group of which 8200 employees are based in the UK. In addition to approximately 7500 shop-based employees, we have over 600 employees based in our Head Offices in Birchwood, Warrington and additional UK offices in Central Manchester and Media City, Salford. Our online business headquarters are located in Gibraltar, and we have now also expanded our operations into USA and South Africa.

Our association with Croner began in June 2021 when for the first time the Company wanted to undertake an extensive benchmarking exercise across all Head Office departments following a number of TUPE transfers into Betfred from various other companies, and a number of re-organisational and structural changes within both the Retail and Digital arms of the business.

We had not undertaken a benchmarking exercise before on this scale and needed guidance on how to go about this. The situation was complicated due to the various different functions and diverse roles in each department, and in many cases we did not have job descriptions as a starting point both for new roles and some historical ones. We were initially put in touch with Croner through our connection with Peninsula, and on the advice of Croner we briefed each Department Head on the exercise we intended to commence and asked them to prepare new job descriptions, roles and responsibilities, and current salary scales each role.

When we got to a point where we had this information , we contacted Croner and had a meeting with Adam Turner who was extremely friendly , helpful and knowledgeable .We agreed a plan of action where we would submit the information by department and when each one was benchmarked , move onto the next one (and we had 17 departments in total!)

This approach worked perfectly for us as we could meet with each Department Head on receipt of the report from Adam, agree their new structure and salary levels, communicate to their teams and submit the job descriptions for the next department, then repeat the process until all departments had been benchmarked. We communicated our methodical approach clearly to all employees so everyone was kept in the loop and knew when they were going to be benchmarked and this allayed any concerns that they would be left out. This transparency undoubtedly helped retention during the exercise which due to the size of the task took over 6 months to complete. It was well worth the time and effort as this has put the Company in a good place to move forward fairly and consistently and we have really seen the value of this as we can advertise and recruit at the right salary level.

Since 2022 we have continued to maintain contact with Croner as our business has further changed and developed and new roles have been introduced. We have built up an excellent relationship with Croner and have called on Adam on a number of occasions to benchmark ‘one offs’ as new roles have been introduced and he is always happy to help.