Memorandum submitted by ASDA Stores Ltd.
1. INTRODUCTION
ASDA welcomes the opportunity to submit written
evidence to the Trade and Industry Sub-Committee Inquiry into
Implementation of the report of the Women and Work Commission.
We actively support the work of the Commission and would welcome
the opportunity to provide oral evidence to the Committee.
2. BACKGROUND
ASDA currently employs around 165,000 colleagues.
Forty per cent of our management and senior management are female
and we are strong advocates for promoting quality of life through
effective work-life balance measures. We have around 20 flexible
working options, ranging from carers' leave and job sharing through
to career breaks, to suit all of our colleagues' needs. We have
the highest staff retention in retailing and we are convinced
that our innovative employment policies are why we have been voted
consistently as one of the best places to work in Britain and
Europe.
We have received the Castle Award in recognition
of our efforts to promote equal pay and opportunities in the workplace.
We are also the UK's biggest employer of the over 50s, with more
than one fifth our colleagues working in our stores, depots and
offices.
We work closely with the Work Foundation on
the development of policies around work-life balance and quality
of life.
3. ASDA AND THE
WOMEN AND
WORK COMMISSION
ASDA welcomed the establishment of the Women
and Work Commission and its focus on the factors influencing the
gender pay gap and how these can best be addressed.
We have been keen from the outset to play an
active role in the work of the Commission and one of our Retail
Managing Directors, Sally Hopson, was a member of the Commission.
Sally has worked for ASDA for 11 years, joining as a store manager
and moving through operations roles to Customer Service Director
and People Director, before returning to an operations role as
Retail Managing Director for both the North Division and the East
Division. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of Students
in Free Enterprise and the CBI Employment Policy Committee.
Clearly, employers have an integral role to
play in the implementation of the Women and Work Commission's
recommendations. ASDA is extremely well placed to help drive those
proposals forward and we are already helping to deliver the Commission's
objectives through our initiatives on developing part-time managers
and promoting careers advice. Further details of both projects
are set out below.
4. PART-TIME
FEMALE MANAGERS
Through our own internal research, we found
that we have a disproportionate male to female ratio in management.
Our ultimate objective is to ensure that the male to female ratio
matches the ratio in our overall colleague base.
The initial focus of the project is to secure
a boost in the proportion of female internal candidates seeking
to move from hourly paid work into management through our Stepping
Stones programme. However, we found that that the perception
that a manager's contract is a 45 hour per week contract is a
major stumbling block for women wishing to balance a career with
family friendly hours. Our policy has never been that you have
to work full-time to be manager so we need to create positive
role models and opportunities for women to work part-time in management.
In order to combat this obstacle, we have created
opportunities for women to job-share, thus allowing them to meet
family commitments whilst developing their careers at the same
time. We have also found that vacancies that traditionally are
difficult to fill, for example night shift positions, are particularly
suitable for some women, for example single mums, and create further
opportunities for them to move into management roles.
The Women and Work Commission report highlighted
examples of job-sharing at ASDA and they found that job sharing
has several benefits:
— individuals are more committed
and therefore more productive;
— there is a positive impact on
staff retention, with greater opportunities to progress; and
— job sharers' skills are often
complementary and two minds can be better than one.
5. CAREERS ADVICE
The overarching objective of this project is
to promote better awareness amongst young people and their parents
about the importance of good careers advice.
The project seeks to encourage young people
to make a career choice, whilst at the same time ensuring parents
are equipped to help their children make the right choices. The
aim is to ensure that children recognise that they do have choices
and do not have to be segmented into following a path that may
not offer many opportunities. The project is targeted specifically
at providing advice to school-leavers, A level students and graduates.
We recognise that not all parents are engaged
or focused on the subject of their children's careers, especially
as it can be difficult for some parents to attend school meetings
or briefings due to work commitments. We have designed a two-hour
workshop that offers guidance and advice to parents and which
employers can offer to their staff once or twice a year in an
informal setting, for example a social evening. The workshop will
help parents to encourage girls to consider options that move
away from more traditional choices.
On the basis that we have in the region of 120,000
parents within our own colleague base, we plan to pilot the initiative
within ASDA and workshops are scheduled to be held at our Bradford
and Wembley stores this autumn. We intend to roll out ASDA-specific
workshops amongst our stores in 2007.
Although the internal workshops will be tailored
specifically to ASDA, our view is that they provide a template
for other employers and we will be liaising with both Connexions
and the Careers Service on how they can be used more widely.
21 June 2006
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