Working with the V500
We are proud to announce that the Aunt Bessie's business has begun to accelerate disability inclusion by joining the Valuable 500. A global movement putting disability on the business agenda to help unlock the potential of the 1.3bm people living with disabilities around the world.
Find out more on www.thevaluable500.com/the-valuable-500
In support of our disability inclusion programme we will:
- Deliver a programme of internal disability education and awareness events – including educating all leaders and line managers on conscious inclusion.
- Sign up to the Disability Confident scheme and begin the journey towards being a more inclusive employer, where all talent can thrive.
- Further develop accessible and inclusive physical workspaces where everyone can thrive together.
- Invest in authentic and inclusive advertising featuring real life stories and actors with disabilities, initially with our Aunt Bessie’s “caring is the hardest things we do” campaign.
- Collaborate with charitable organisations to increase understanding on how we can serve consumers and shoppers with disabilities more effectively (e.g. pack design and technology).
Our colleagues are integral to everything we do.
Knowing that purpose starts from within and with over 4300 employees in 17 different countries we believe that great people make the difference, which is why we make sure they have an active voice through the ‘Our Voice’ employee survey. That's also why it’s important they understand and live our values every day.
We think it's vital that we create a great workplace.
Diversity & Inclusion
We’re lucky enough to serve a diverse consumer base and we want to represent this internally through our colleagues. This is an area where we are doing more. For example, we encourage women to apply for leadership positions and open up opportunities for international career moves.
In 2017, we began working on our first ever company-wide ‘Diversity and Inclusion Policy’, which was launched across the company in spring 2018. It includes a company-wide framework, unconscious bias training, sharing of best practices, focused forums, as well as training and mentoring opportunities. We have already put in place a Women in Nomad Network in our Head Office and will be rolling this out internationally.
For all HR policies and practices, including internal training, we have a great online platform ‘Nomad & Me’. Other key learning and development initiatives include our group-wide leadership and management programmes.
Employee Health & Safety
We take great care to ensure our employees are safe at work. We always strive to get better, which is why we’re working to update our current Occupational Health and Safety Policy following the recruitment of our new Group Health and Safety Manager. Our ambition is to establish a common Safety Management System to outline a clear process for reporting and escalating incidents and injuries.
Health & Wellbeing in the workplace
Our purpose as a brand is to help families eat a little more goodness every day – and we believe that this mentality starts at our workplace. We see wellbeing as a holistic offering which is why we’ve launched “Our Well Way” – our very own Health and Wellness programme.
It will help our colleagues bring their best selves to work by supporting them to improve their physical, mental, and financial wellbeing. We see this leading to improved workplace health, productivity, and engagement. It’s run by our local “Well Way Champions” together with Occupational Health and local HR.
Working with local communities
We actively work to engage with and add value to the broader communities we operate in, whilst contributing to our wider sustainability agenda.
We avoid top-down, ‘one-size-fits-all’ initiatives in favour of an approach where local teams decide how to best support the social causes in their region. After all, locals know best.
These are just a couple of examples of how we reach out to local communities:
- Tackling Food Waste: Teams in the UK, Sweden, Austria, and The Netherlands are working closely with local food banks or charities to reduce the amount of food that would otherwise be wasted, to be used in a safe way for less fortunate people. In the UK, our biggest partner is FareShare who redistributes surplus food to charities who then turn it into meals.
- Responsible Society: The team in the Netherlands has created a ‘Responsible Society’ strategy with the key focus on education about obesity issues. Their commitment ranges from healthy cooking workshops for children in areas of social deprivation to taking part in sponsored runs for charities.