Our third Inclusion & Diversity Update celebrates another positive year in further embedding the strategy’s importance across our business.

Having a dynamic, innovative and engaging I&D strategy is not a nice to have. It must be a fundamental aspect of any successful business in the modern world.

It can also not stand still. It must continually evolve, remain relevant in an organisation and, crucially, be well resourced.

It is in this context that we must continue to challenge ourselves as a business and never accept that something is ‘good enough’.

That is why I am proud as I&D sponsor with the progress that has been made in the last 12 months, driven by our Inclusion Champions and ably supported by our six Colleague Resource Groups (CRGs). I am also grateful for the continuing support the strategy has received from other colleagues in our business including at Board-level.

We have continued to mark and celebrate numerous important dates in our annual I&D calendar and our own Princes’ Inclusion & Diversity Week – the third one we have held – was, once again, a huge success and started some really relevant conversations.

A particular high point saw TV presenter Louise Minchin joining Dr Helen Kini for a live Q&A on menopause awareness in which Louise spoke openly about the difficulties and symptoms she faced as she went through the menopause and the impact that had on her at work.

A second Q&A session entitled ‘The Power of a Diverse Network’ marked Black History Month, and featured Sonia Bassey MBE, Chair of Mandela8, in conversation with Ben Osu, Senior Lead – Equity, Diversity & Inclusion for Everton Football Club.

The year ended with the thought-provoking ‘An Audience with JJ Chalmers’ in which the TV personality and former Royal Marine shared his story alongside that of our own inspiring colleague Laurie Sephton to mark International Day of the Disabled. This came after celebrations earlier in 2022 of International Women’s Day, International Men’s Day and Pride Month.

I am extremely proud of the progress we have made since launching our I&D strategy and I am grateful to all colleagues who have embraced this change and contributed in different ways to our success and evolution to date.

However, we must now harness all the achievements, and lessons learnt, to elevate our strategy to the next level.

A key step change going forward will see a broadening of responsibility beyond the efforts of the Inclusion Champions and the six CRGs with dedicated resource. In what will effectively be the roll-out of I&D 2.0, expertise will be allocated to help ensure we drive the strategy forward over the next three years.

Our renewed efforts will see Princes focus on four key areas:

Organic Inclusion: Our approach has always been, and will continue to be, culturally driven by our colleagues, so it remains authentic and encourages inclusion to live and breathe organically throughout our business.

Positive Reputation: We want to continue to build Princes positive and growing reputation as an inclusive employer both with our own colleagues and within the external candidate market to enhance our Colleague Value Proposition (CVP).

Balance Representation: We want to take positive steps to move the dial on representation levels of all minority groups, so our business is more balanced, reflective of the communities we operate in, the customers we serve, and the consumers who love our products.

Education & Understanding: It is everyone’s responsibility to create and foster a sense of belonging at Princes through our words and actions every day. We feel at the heart of this change is improving the education and understanding of all colleagues.

Princes firmly believes that a strategic and sensible investment of time, money and resources in our I&D strategy will support long-term profitability by improving colleague retention rates, customer loyalty and Princes’ wider reputation and brand value.

It also goes deeper than this, enabling the business to achieve its social responsibility goals and demonstrating good governance.

You can find out more about our approach to I&D, successes during the last 12 months and some of our future plans, in our newly published I&D update.

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