Creating a lasting culture of equity, diversity and inclusion is about building collective knowledge and confidence, measuring diversity with solid data, inspiring leadership and strong governance and ensuring our processes and policies are fair and impartial.
Our Overall Colleague of the Year Gill Patrick-Heyworth, is also our Depot Colleague of the Year, take a look at her film to see why she won.
In the last 12 months Gill has acted as the backbone of the shift’s morale and heartbeat, she is not only incredibly committed and great at her job she is also a real bridge between management and the pulse of the site. She is kind and consistently demonstrates great behaviours, supporting managers and colleagues alike. Gill's biggest achievement this year was to lead the Skelmersdale contingent over to Larne and act as the de-facto manager. Gill flew to Larne to support the team during the P&O ferry crisis.
She supports the LGBTQ+ community and also leads on the local Colleague Voice representative group. She also worked to transform unused space into a wellbeing room and supporting her fellow colleagues.
Inclusion at Asda
To support us on our inclusive and diverse workplace journey we have launched a new course called ‘Inclusion Matters’ which helps colleagues build an inclusive work environment.
We are also continuing to work with external diversity partners including Diversity in Retail, Lead Network, Inclusive Employers and Menopause Friendly which offer additional programmes for our colleagues to enhance their leadership skills and share diversity and inclusion best practice within the retail sector.
Our five colleague-led inclusion networks (DisAbility, Race and Ethnicity, Gender, LGBTQIA+ and Wellbeing) continue to raise awareness and dialogue in the workplace. We’ve also added inclusion working groups across our main business departments with each group chaired by a senior director or vice president.
Colleagues could also access support through closed connection groups, including baby loss, carers fertility, menopause, trans, nonbinary and gender fluid.
Female representation
We aim to increase the proportion of female store managers to 30% by 2025. Whilst our percentage has remained stable since we set our ambition, we have been working to establish the programmes to deliver this, including our Retail Female Representation Working Group, which is tasked with looking at the barriers to increasing female store leadership. Our new Female Intentional Allyship programme ran in 2022 all of whom graduated and 25% have since been promoted.
Intentional Allyship Programme
Following on from this programme, in 2023 we launched our Intentional Allyship Programme; a six-month course for 290 colleagues across the business. The programme was created to help us drive representation and build an inclusive workplace where anyone can succeed, this programme was aimed at female and ethnically diverse colleagues and involved mentoring circles, live learning sessions, and sponsorship by senior leaders. This programme has seen participating colleagues progressing in their careers and has received very positive feedback.
Gender Pay Report
While equal remuneration and development opportunities apply to all our employees, like many businesses, an imbalance of men and women exists in certain roles.
Our 2022 report confirms a year-on-year reduction in both mean and median pay gaps.
Maintaining open conversations on mental health is vital to breaking the stigmas. That’s why we’ve partnered with Rethink, a leading mental health charity. To date, we’ve trained 1062 colleagues on our Rethink Mental Illness training session, equipping them to be Rethink ambassadors in their store/site. Our Rethink Mental Health training is designed to support colleagues in creating an environment where people can speak openly about the mental health. The session also aims to increase awareness on spotting the signs when someone is struggling, and how to best support colleagues through open & honest conversations, whilst breaking down the stigma surrounding mental health.
Providing practical support to our colleagues
Mental wellbeing is incredibly important, and we should all look after our mental health, just like our physical health. That’s why here at Asda we work with Unum who provide an award-winning health and wellbeing app. This app offers everyday assistance provided by experts, for you and your eligible family members. This service provides unlimited remote GP appointments, unlimited mental health consultations and bereavement support, medical second opinions, and physiotherapy appointments just to name a few of the services.
This service also provides a free helpline 24/7 for colleagues in crisis.
ED&I Events Summary
At Asda we are very fortunate to be able to offer colleagues live events with guest speakers, on important topics relevant to the ED&I space. For example, in 2023 during Mental Health Awareness Week we held an event which sought to break down barriers and stigma surrounding mental health, to remind all our colleagues that it is important to talk, and access support where needed. For this event we were joined by Jonny Benjamin MBE and Neil Laybourn, who shared their inspirational story, Stranger on the bridge, which shares the same name as the acclaimed Channel 4 production, documenting Jonny’s journey with his own mental health and suicide attempt in 2008 and how a timely intervention by Neil on that day would inspire Jonny years later.
Other guest speakers have included the likes of Keegan Hirst, the first British Rugby League player to come out as gay. Keegan shared his story with our colleagues to celebrate Pride month, to continue the conversation on allyship and speak about how through the support of his colleagues, he was able to be authentically himself. These events are a key part of the ED&I space and help act as a platform for colleagues to start conversations, and ensure they know they’re being listened to and supported.
Flexible working
Having consulted extensively with colleague’s post-pandemic about future ways of working, we introduced hybrid working for Asda Head Office colleagues. Where appropriate, colleagues are offered a 'work where it works' model.
Anti-racism
At Asda we will not tolerate racism of any kind. We are committed to upskilling our colleagues around Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and introduced our Asda Allyship programme in 2022. Unconscious Bias Awareness training (introduced in our business in 2018) is now compulsory learning for all new managers.
