Lyssa McGowan, chief executive of Pets At Home, is refreshingly candid about the challenges women face in top jobs. As one of the ten female bosses in the FTSE 250, McGowan says that, when she was younger, ego-driven men would talk over her in meetings – adding that it happens even now.
‘Every woman everywhere in the whole world has experienced that, right? It doesn’t stop just because you become a senior leader, she says. ‘In my early career I would have railed against it and wanted to prove myself.’
But she admits, with time, she has realised ‘there’s a different power in being a woman’ – namely that empathy can earn respect.
‘You can lead as a woman and tap into all of what that means. A lot of people can identify with the fact that I’m a mother of three children and a pet owner,’ she says. ‘I think you can connect with people in a different way.’
We meet at a Pets At Home store in New Malden, South-West London, where the 47-year-old has spent the morning working on the tills, selling bags of pet food and products such as calming spray for anxious pups.
Customers being served by McGowan have little idea of the concerns she must deal with as head of a business with 450 stores. Top of the list for the retail sector is the National Insurance and minimum wage increases announced in the Autumn Budget by Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
Animal lover: Lyssa McGowan with her two-year-old labrador Barney on the shop floor of a Pets At Home store in South London
The employer National Insurance contribution rises alone will cost the retail trade £25 billion and Pets At Home faces an £18 million hit, which has been a big factor in the 33 per cent fall in the company’s share price over the past six months.
McGowan says: ‘This came as a big surprise to business. If they had consulted more widely they might have realised the impact on young, flexible workers as well as part-time workers and women.’
Because the National Insurance contribution threshold for firms has been lowered from £9,100 to £5,000 a year per employee, employers are paying much more for people doing just a few hours a week.
McGowan says: ‘It’s more expensive now to have two part-time employees than to have one full-time employee doing the same job. But it’s done. It is what it is.’
The Budget blow comes as the veterinary sector is undergoing an official investigation.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is looking at allegations of rip-off veterinary charges, a matter of concern for Pets At Home, which runs 447 vet practices, mostly under a joint venture model.
Under its Vets 4 Pets arm, which the group acquired in 2013, clinicians pay a management fee to the company to open and run their own practice.
This unit of the business is driving profits at the company as it opens more practices in stores. In contrast, the retail side has been hit with subdued consumer confidence in recent months.
The RSPCA has previously sounded the alarm over concerns that higher vet fees, insurance and other essentials, such as food, was prompting families to abandon their pets. And there’s no doubt that the expense of care is a major worry for the estimated 16 million households across the UK that have a pet. There were 22,503 abandonments last year, a 7 per cent increase on 2023, according to the RSPCA.
Part of the problem and the reason vet bills are so high is the sharp drop in independent practices. More than half of UK practices are now owned by just six large corporations: CVS, Independent Vetcare, Linnaeus, Medivet, VetPartners – and Pets At Home. This is compared to one in ten in 2013.
McGowan acknowledges that Pets At Home is at the centre of a battle for trust, with the CMA set to conclude its investigation this summer. But, unsurprisingly, McGowan defends the vet sector.
An owner of two labradors, ten- year-old-Fred and two-year-old Barney, McGowan says she is fully aware of the pressures faced by pet owners.
She says: ‘In the UK, people don’t understand how much health care costs because of the NHS.
‘If you go to the US, people are much more au fait with how much an MRI, for example, costs, or an operation. Here, it can quite often come as a shock.’
She continues: ‘Our vets will make sure that they’re delivering the best care for your pet that you can afford. They’re not pushing any particular treatment. They’re trying to find the right one.’
The investigation comes as older members of the Gen Z group – those born from 1997 to 2012 – are buying pets in place of homes, and delaying having children for their ‘fur babies’.
‘Twenty years ago, if your cat was diabetic, it would probably be euthanasia, whereas now they’re on injections,’ she mulls. ‘The humanisation of how we treat our pets is ongoing.’
Despite battling on so many fronts, McGowan’s enthusiasm for her job remains unalloyed. She hails the retail sector as one of a few where you can start out on the shop floor and end up in the boardroom.
But although she worked in a supermarket and toy shop as a teenager growing up in Buckinghamshire, she had an unconventional route to the top.
Her CV includes a 12-year stint at Sky, where she was chief consumer officer. She describes herself as a ‘massive extrovert’, rattling off a list of hobbies ranging from yoga, dog walking to scuba-diving: ‘You can’t look at your daily sales numbers, so it is so relaxing. I absolutely love it.’
Her appetite for socialising means she is not a fan of remote working, saying: ‘I just really love bouncing off people, and so I just don’t enjoy working from home.
‘I don’t think video calls for me are as effective as being face-to-face. There’s a lot you lose with the non-verbal kind of cues.’
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