Each winner of the HR Excellence Awards has proven their impact on business by evidencing their award-winning strategies with metrics, KPIs, and testimonials.
Here's how Wincanton took home last year's top spot for enabling lasting change.
Look at this year's award categories here. Enter by 6pm today: Friday 23 August 2024.
Best Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2023: Wincanton
In an industry in which less than 1% of employees are women, diversity and inclusion is often seen less as an afterthought, and more as an impossibility.
Wincanton, however, has dedicated itself to changing the logistics sector, and stripping back its reputation as a traditional, men-only industry.
As one of the UK’s largest logistics firms, the team decided that it should set a new standard for the industry. First, appointing a diversity and inclusion (D&I) manager, it drew up a long-term D&I strategy that would see Wincanton set targeted D&I commitments, appoint executive sponsors for protected groups, launch a CEO-chaired diversity steering group, recruit site-based D&I champions to embed new policies, and roll out training across the company.
Recognising the sector’s massive gender imbalance, Wincanton launched a range of targeted policies to make work more convenient for female employees – and more attractive to candidates.
As well as offering support policies for people experiencing symptoms of menopause, as well as people who suffer infant loss and infertility, the firm also launched a flexible working scheme at two of its networks, covering three and seven warehousing sites respectively.
The scheme has supercharged diversity at these sites, with women making up 39% of the sites’ workers, compared with the company’s average of 21%. At the firm’s Northampton site, in 2023, 46% of staff were from ethnic minority backgrounds, compared with a local site average of 6.2%.
Such an ambitious approach to D&I can sometimes see pushback from employees. The team at Wincanton, however, has taken real care to embed its transformation at the grassroots.
Its focus on psychological safety and open discussion, spearheaded by 146 D&I champions across the business and 25 resolution ambassadors, has worked to defuse potential misunderstandings or resistance to top-down change.
A company-wide campaign, including monthly virtual meetings, a leadership education campaign, a company D&I conference, and a sector-first presence at Birmingham Pride have all served to cement the celebration of diversity as a core part of Wincanton culture.
Schemes to give people with learning or physical difficulties work experience, and to employ ex-offenders and former armed forces personnel have all helped to broaden Wincanton’s talent horizons.
The results of the company’s approach – simultaneously top-down and bottom-up – have been outstanding. Where the firm had aimed for 33% female board representation, it has achieved 50%.
Since the start of its D&I strategy, Wincanton had seen a 28% uplift in the number of women it employed in 2023, and a massive 76% increase in employees from an ethnic minority background. It even smashed its target of reaching a 5% female driver population by 2025, reaching 7% two years before deadline.
What’s more, the policies are widely supported across the business. Aiming to see an 85% internal pulse survey approval rating for D&I questions by 2025, Wincanton is already seeing a 76% satisfaction rate with diversity issues, with 82% of employees saying they feel accepted.
Wincanton’s thorough, measured approach impressed judges, with one concluding that “the focus on psychological safety is a real positive – particularly with the introduction of trained resolution ambassadors.”
To enter the HR Excellence Awards, or to continue an existing entry, click here.
