How are wholesalers tackling gender inequality?

Megan Humphrey finds out what wholesalers are doing to address gender discrimination to better support female retailers working in their symbol groups

Female retailers are calling on wholesalers to better priortiise the female-specific issues they face working in convenience. In a recent survey conducted by Women in Convenience, 1.8% said they don’t feel treated equally by their wholesaler. In addition, a recent steering group held by the initiative revealed that there is a severe under-representation of women on symbol group retailer panels or development groups, demonstrating a need for change.

Speaking of her experience, one retailer told RN: “I feel like I’m always the one stomping my feet, trying to raise awareness about the issues that I face being a female in the sector. I don’t want to feel like I’m only being included as a boxticking exercise. Instead, I want them to see that I have something valuable to contribute.

“I want them to take the bull by the horns, and approach me themselves, and see action when they show interest. As retailers, we shouldn’t be the ones pushing them to make this a priority. It needs to be a two-way conversation.”

Nisa

When asked how Nisa is prioritising gender equality, head of retail Victoria Lockie explained: “At Nisa, we know that by leading from the front on equality internally we are encouraging the same behaviours to be adopted within our retailers’ stores and within the broader sector.

“As a symbol group working with many independent retailers, it can be a challenge to achieve equal gender representation at our working groups. Independent retailers work incredibly hard and for long hours throughout the entire week.

“We know equality is important for our retailers, but we also know that time isn’t always available for them to take conversations fur- ther. Nisa retailers run successful independent businesses, and many with their own equality targets. The challenge as a symbol group is to ensure all the individual retailers, we work with recognise the importance of equality and how this can be incorporated into their own business practices.”

Discussing the ways in which Nisa is specifically working to support female retailers, Lockie said: “We regularly discuss what more we can do to support female retailers and our colleagues. Our managing director, Peter Batt, is a fabulous ally for equality and we often speak about further steps we can take to ensure all our retailers feel supported and listened to.

“We have a retailer working group that has a good level of female representation. It is vital that we hear from a wide range of retailers from various backgrounds, each with different experiences of convenience retail. We are also considering creating a series of meetings directly aimed at female retailers so I can directly hear about any issues they are experiencing within the industry in a private and safe environment.

“For the very first time this year we are planning a Nisa female retailer panel session at the Nisa Expo in October. The Expo is a fantastic opportunity to spread the message of equality to many of our retailers at the same time and I’m hoping the panel session will give several of our successful female retailers an opportunity to tell their stories and demonstrate their impact on the industry.”

Lockie stressed on a personal level, that she is an ambassador for Diversity in Wholesale (formerly Women in Wholesale). “I’m in a fortunate position whereby I know I can have an influence on promoting equality in the broader sector and that is forever on my mind when I’m engaging with Nisa retailers,” she said.

Booker

The symbol group confirmed to RN that it has increased the number of women on the Premier Development Group and Londis Development Group this year, and will be doing the same for its Budgens Group.

A spokesperson said: “It is our intention to continue to investigate and drive more representation through our customer listening groups. We would love to hear from our retailers what opportunities they would like us to help them with.”

Booker also recently launched its own colleague network, named Women in Booker, on International Women’s Day to help colleagues be at their best and be at a place where they can get on.

All employees received Inclusive training through its e-learning portal, but all retailers also have access to free Diversity & Inclusion training through its training provider, CPL.

Bestway

Director of human resources, Angela Underwood has been with Bestway for three and half years, and claimed “ever since, we have thought about how we develop our own strategy for diversity and inclusion”.

She confirmed that there is an equal gender split across most levels at Bestway, with the company prioritising development of senior leaders. Underwood explained how visibility of females in senior positions is essential in encouraging women to put themselves forward for similar roles, and ensures female retailers feel supported.

“We’ve thought a lot about how we can create a level playing field for our workforce at depot level,” said Underwood. “We have a talent development programme, and this is our way of taking people who are at all levels in the depot, and developing them through leadership and operational skills training.

“We’ve been doing this for up to six years. A lot of the time at the start it was only men putting themselves forward, and we wanted to inspire other female staff members by encouraging more women to come forward. We tend to have a cohort of 20 people. Last year, 15% were female, and this has now gone up to 35%.”

Underwood went on to praise female retailers and their staff. “A lot of the shops we run have store managers who are women, as well as deputies, assistant store managers and supervisors,” she said.

“When I go out and visit our shops with our retail director, I would say 70% or more of the general managers we meet are women, and that’s really impressive.”

Ensuring female staff feel equal, supported, and safe remains a priority for Bestway. “We have a lot of incidents of crime in our stores, and that worries me a lot, particularly when the safety of our female retailers is under threat,” said Underwood. We are doing what we can to support them and our onthe-ground staff to ensure they are looked after.

“We are very strong in pushing support. We have champions across the region to ensure that is available to them. Within human resources, we have a dedicated team for convenience retail. We are reactive when there is an incident.”

Underwood revealed plans for the wholesaler to launch a new programme, focused on supporting female staff. “We are talking about running an initiative around everyone being welcome at Bestway,” she said.

“It won’t just be for colleagues, but also for customers. We want to recognise that there is room for improvement, and we want to do something about that.”

One Stop

Head of retail operations Rhiannon Whelan confirmed One Stop has an active ‘Women at One Stop’ network, and discussed how its benefit for store owners.

“The network aims to support women by providing better access to resources surrounding a number of gender-related topics,” she said. “These include women’s health, well-being and career development among many others.”

Head of One Stop franchise John Miller added: “In all franchise operations, we seek to have representation of our female franchisees, whether in forums, meetings, internal communications or external marketing.” l