Equality and diversity
'Respect for the Individual' is one of Sainsbury's core values. We are committed to putting that into practice, creating a working environment where everyone has the opportunity to contribute, is valued and respected.
Our Equality and diversity policy is intended to support this mission. Our policy prohibits discrimination on any grounds.
Women at Sainsbury's
In 2004/05 we had two female directors on the Operating Board and two Group Non-Executive Directors were women. We shared the joint number one ranking in the Cranfield School of Management 2004 Female FTSE index. Today, two-fifths of our divisional directors are women.
We have tried to encourage more women to apply for management positions by introducing policies on flexible working arrangements which make the job less disruptive to people's home lives. But women continue to be under-represented in some areas of our business and in certain management positions, eg Store Managers. We intend to focus more effort on identifying the reasons for this and on developing potential solutions.
Women at Sainsbury's
Attracting and retaining colleagues of all ages
We value older colleagues and during 2005/06 we will specifically recruit older people. We want to attract 10,000 new colleagues over the age of 50, as we believe this age group can offer a diverse range of skills valued by our customers.
We have always prided ourselves on doing all we can to attract and retain great people. For example, we were one of the first large organisations to introduce a flexible pension scheme.
We will continue to monitor the ages of the colleagues we employ. Currently, 17% of colleagues are over 50, while 39% are under 25. These figures were the same for the previous year.
Age of colleagues
Diversity at Sainsbury's
During 2004/05 we introduced a diversity management website on our intranet. The site includes a guide to managing faith and belief, a disability management guide, and guidance on local community recruitment. The site is intended to help all colleagues gain more awareness of other people's needs.
We communicate our equality and diversity policy at induction to all colleagues and provide written guidance to managers on equal opportunities, including recruitment of disabled colleagues.
This year we will be using 'Disability Confident', which is a new learning resource to help colleagues in our stores move beyond disability awareness to become confident in dealing with disability.
Colleagues can report discrimination or harassment through our Fair Treatment and Complaints procedure, which includes an appeals process.
In 2004/05, 14% of our colleagues came from ethnic minorities (13% in 2003/4). The proportion who were store managers remained at 3%, while those in middle or senior management rose from 3% to 4%.
Ethnic minorities at Sainsbury's
