DE&I Allyship Update

Change isn’t just a buzzword for us, we’re driven to act in the right way to build a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) positive workplace for all of our employees. This year, we’re taking measures to ensure that our employees feel that they’re part of something bigger and that we value their contributions to our wider workforce.

The Launch of our Allyship

You may know that we recently launched our dedicated DE&I allyship to increase the feeling of support and community for colleagues within our workplace. Consisting of forward-thinking colleagues, our allyship members will regularly come together to support specific communities that need championing. Our allyship aims to offer resources, education, and opportunities for all individuals to engage actively in nurturing an inclusive culture.

Before the launch of our allyship, we received feedback from over 700 colleagues to compile their thoughts, experiences, and suggestions regarding DE&I here at Dee Set.

We can now officially reveal the findings of our colleague feedback…

Key findings:

• 80% feel their opinions and ideas are valued.
• 85% feel a sense of belonging.
• 71% believe that Dee Set recognises and celebrates their strengths and experiences.
• 94% feel comfortable being their authentic self.
• 92% feel satisfied with a wide range of opportunities.
• 85% feel that Dee Set strongly supports their wellbeing.
• 81% feel that Dee Set supports their personal growth.

Commenting on the positive results of the survey, our People and Retail Director, Antony Lee states: “It’s great to see that a high percentage of our teams feel valued. Our initial focus within the allyship will be to gain a better understanding of what we need to do differently to improve our engagement further. We have worked really hard over the last two years on our well-being journey and acknowledge that we still have some work to do - Through the allyship we will explore not only opportunities but what changes we can make. The changes may not be instant, however our commitment to our colleagues is that we will take on board their feedback and through the allyship thrive to make positive changes.”

Areas for improvement

The results of the survey further supports our commitment to ensuring that we honour the opinions and experiences of our workforce. The survey was also successful in highlighting certain measures and procedures that we now need to put in place in order for our colleagues to feel heard and supported. This includes anonymous whistleblowing, creating more job opportunities and increasing the level of communication across the board.

The key findings of our survey also highlight that we’re making great progress in advancing our DE&I commitments across the Dee Set Group. Through joining the Learning Lab sessions held by Grocery Aid and its partners and also collaborating with other clients including Sainsbury's, Tesco, Asda & Co-op, we’re well underway to continuing our mission to support grocery industry colleagues nationwide.

Now that we’ve held our first official allyship meeting as a Group, the next phases of our D&I agenda will look at bringing on more allies within our business to discuss and spark internal change and education on areas such areas: Gender Identity and Expression, Unconscious Bias, Micro-Aggressions, Mental Health, Accessibility, Culture and much more.

The Maturity Model

As a Major Partner in the GroceryAid’s D&I Programme, we have access to their 12-month programme which enabled us to start taking the next steps in furthering our own D&I commitments, offering a unique opportunity to network and collaborate with partners of all sizes and sectors of the grocery world.

On the back of this, GroceryAid developed their D&I Grocery Maturity Model which annually measures the maturity of the grocery industry across retailers and suppliers. It successfully helps to identify key focus areas for the industry and individual partners so that we can drive change and tangibly track progress.

This year, the Dee Set group scored a maturity rate of 3.1, just slightly below the average industry maturity score of 3.9. Overall, we seemed to excel in several areas including recruitment and feedback and support for colleagues, however, it’s clear that there is room for improvement in other areas such as developing our employee resource groups, data capture analysis and our senior and middle management commitments.

We still have a journey ahead of us, but we’re driven to improve and succeed and we’re confident that we’ll meet and surpass the industry maturity score average in due course.

Recognition for our achievements

Recently, we were honoured for our work on behalf of Grocery Aid by winning a Silver Award at this year's GroceryAid awards. The awards themselves are based on each company’s contribution to three critical pillars: Awareness, Fundraising & Volunteering. To be awarded Silver, organisations were required to have provided support across two of the three critical pillars and participated in five fundraising/volunteering activities. Looking ahead, we look forward to maintaining our partnership with GroceryAid in the future and advancing our D&I commitments.

Visit GroceryAid for more information about the great work that they do to support and protect colleagues across the Grocery industry.