Wickes Group Plc

Ben Jackson

At Wickes, we have a very clear vision and a very relatable mantra for ED&I, in that we want Wickes to be a place where anyone, no matter who they are or where they're from, can feel at home.

We believe that striving to make your business more inclusive and diverse isn’t just a good thing to do; it's vital for commercial success. It opens a business up to broader perspectives, a difference of ideas, and a wider talent pool, providing strategic advantage and ultimately better results. 

For those who don't know Wickes, we are one of the UK's leading home improvement retailers. Up until two years ago, we were part of a larger builders merchant business, so we come from a traditionally male-dominated industry, which is perhaps why people are always surprised at how forward-thinking and sector-leading Wickes is when it comes to ED&I. 

We started our journey several years ago, and from the very beginning, it has always been designed, developed, and driven by our colleagues. Too many ED&I policies start from the top down and, therefore, often struggle to engage with the wider business. Our bottom-up approach has driven much higher engagement levels and helps reinforce how serious we are about driving real and lasting change for all of our colleagues. We’ve reached the point where we’ve now got real momentum in the business and are focused on turning this momentum into a company-wide movement.

Grass Roots Fed

We have six colleague-led networks that really help us shape our plans in this space and are well-established in our business. We pride ourselves on giving the networks complete freedom whilst also providing them each with an executive sponsor to elevate and support them in their plans and ambitions. I would recommend to anyone give them a platform, a budget, and the freedom to drive their own agenda, and you'll reap the rewards.

Leader-Led

To truly embed ED&I in your business, leaders must be engaged and involved in your ambition. Their role is to create the right environment and ensure the right structures are in place to enable and encourage an inclusive and diverse workplace. As leaders, it's important to listen generously and suspend your own beliefs, get involved, have exciting and challenging conversations, and support the networks to make change happen.

Wickes Six Colleague Networks

• RAACE (Raising Awareness and Action of Cultural Ethnicity)
• Pride
• Ability
• Forward Focus
• Balance for Better
• Wellbeing

"To truly embed ED&I in your business, leaders must be engaged and involved in your ambition."

Making Change Happen

Each network has hundreds of members with its own workstream lead, committee, and budget, and over the last few years, they have delivered hundreds of initiatives that have made a huge difference to our workplace culture and business success. Here are just a few of the things that have worked for us at Wickes

Training & development - We regularly run Allyship training and mentoring programmers. Last year, our Wellbeing network helped roll out mental health first-aider training to all store managers.

Awareness and engagement - Helping people to understand and appreciate other people's cultures and challenges is critical to creating a more inclusive workplace, and our networks spend a lot of time organising events to bring these to life and start conversations. We’ve just run an anonymous anti-racism survey for all colleagues to help us gain insight into racist behaviours, levels of racial awareness and inclusion barriers, which we can then use to develop and roll out initiatives that support racial equity.

Policy making - Our networks have been instrumental in securing important policy changes, a good example of which is enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption leave policies that were introduced following a review by our Balance for Better network.

Campaigns - A very successful campaign that we ran last year was our Period Positive campaign, aimed at removing the stigma and stress around menstruation at work. As part of this, we rolled out free period products across all our stores and offices.

Partnerships - Our networks actively seek to build external relationships with experts in their fields to help us improve our own knowledge and experience.   We find that collaborating with organisations such as Stonewall, Valuable 500, and MIND, to mention just a few adds tremendous and ongoing value to our ED&I programme.

My role as head of inclusion and diversity includes developing a strategy to see us through the next 3-5 years that will include some ambitious targets.   The strategy and execution of it will be heavily led by the networks, and I truly believe we'll get the very best levels of engagement and traction with this approach. I am excited about this role, the first of its kind in Wickes, as it demonstrates how important ED&I are to us. It's given me the freedom to really get under the skin of our business and explore where our biggest opportunities lie. It also enables me to shine a light on all of the great work our networks are doing.