Tesco is open to all
Tesco is a leading retailer with over 400,000 colleagues globally, and we serve millions of customers every week in our stores and online. We are committed to offering great value to customers across every part of our business, to support our local communities, and to work with a broad range of health, charity and environmental partners to help make a difference to the issues that matter most to our customers and colleagues.
We offer our colleagues flexibility, skills and reward, and the opportunities to get ahead. Equality and diversity and inclusion are an important part of our business. We actively celebrate our colleagues’ different abilities, sexual orientation, ethnicity, faith and gender. Our diversity and inclusion strategy clearly recognises that individuals can identify with more than one group/characteristic; intersectionality is a key focus for us and is leading how we implement this strategy.
Diversity is always considered across our talent planning, for example, by positioning unconscious bias when we discuss performance and potential, and at senior level to ensure we actively champion LGBTQ+ talent in our talent pools.
Constantly challenging ourselves to use a range of methods to actively attract and recruit people from diverse backgrounds, we recently launched our Business Diversity Internship to help bring young, diverse talent to Tesco.
We also work hard to ensure that everyone has equal opportunities for career progression, and that all colleague touchpoints are inclusive, which supports a diverse workforce.
Tesco has five colleague networks, helping to educate staff as well as to inform our wider business how to make Tesco a truly inclusive place to work, by developing self-aware, collaborative behaviours and understanding more about other cultures.
Our networks support Tesco to become a place where everyone is welcome by:
Providing a safe space for colleagues to share their thoughts and experiences
Raising awareness of important diversity and inclusion issues and events, as well as supporting and mentoring our colleagues
Representing our diverse workforce and accelerating our progress in various diversity characteristics
Playing an active role in holding our executive leadership team to account and bringing the diversity and inclusion agenda to the forefront
As we move forward and put inclusion at the heart of everything we do, our LGBTQ+ at Tesco network challenges us to make positive changes for our colleagues — resulting in updates to colleague name badges to show preferred pronouns and the option to choose male- or femalestyled uniform based on preference, and regardless of gender.
Following feedback from our network colleagues, we were made aware that our greetings card range was not as inclusive as it could be. Working with external suppliers, we launched a new card collection with options for the LGBTQ+ community, including non-binary customers, same-sex partners who adopt, and also to celebrate Pride.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have donated to six LGBTQ+ charities to help support the great work they do throughout the year, and to ensure it can continue in the future.
Our colleagues continue to show an interest in diversity and inclusion at all levels and we have launched inclusion training for managers across our UK business. This focuses on their role in building an inclusive culture, understanding bias and how they can overcome barriers to inclusion. Built in partnership with our colleague networks, the training has specific examples highlighting LGBTQ+ equality issues and intersectionality.
Diversity and inclusion will continue to remain a priority at Tesco. Everyone is welcome, and supported in their development, at all stages in their journey with us.