Cohesion and the marketplace case studies

ASDA is one of the largest supermarket chains in the UK with 356 stores. In 1999 the business became part of the Wal-Mart retail group. They currently employ around 170,000 people in the stores and depots nationwide.

The company has a very strong commitment to diversity both in the workplace and the supply chain.

The company has recognised the importance of having a diverse and integrated workforce and therefore actively seeks to recruit from to reflect the local community in which the store is located. The company has a number of ways ensuring that the workforce is integrated and cohesive, for example, celebrating different festivals.

ASDA has also introduced an extensive ethnic food ranges across a number of their stores. The company has achieved very significant sales growth of over 110% by identifying and working with ethnic minority suppliers to expand their supplier base. Innovatively, rather than simply buying out failing franchises, ASDA has helped small ethnic minority suppliers to expand and thrive to meet the needs of the company’s growing customer base.

The Co-operative Group is the UK’s largest mutual retailer. It is the fifth largest food retailer, the third largest retail pharmacy chain, the number one provider of funeral services and the largest independent travel business. It also has strong market positions in banking and insurance. The Group employs 123,000 people, has 3 million members and around 4,900 retail outlets.

As well as delivering on its operational and financial goals, the Co-operative Group aims to deliver on its social goals, playing an active part in supporting local communities and the wider world.

The group's funeral business has taken a pro-active approach to the diverse ethnic communities in which it operates to increase the number of funerals from non-Christian backgrounds. It did so by successfully bringing together the knowledge of the funeral business with their Black and Minority Ethnic Membership Network  so that they could effectively engage with multi-faith communities in South-East England. The measures taken included:

• Refurbishment of the Hounslow Funeralcare branch to better support the needs of their diverse client base
• Multilingual literature and website pages giving details of the services in Punjabi, Gujarati, Urdu and Hindi
• A cultural awareness staff training programme
• A suite of new products and services aimed at ethnic minority communities

Eversheds is one of the largest full service law firms in the world with nearly 5,500 colleagues globally. The workforce is very diverse, in terms of gender 64% are female and, in terms of ethnicity over 10% are non white in the UK. Additionally all of the major faiths are represented in the workforce. Being an international firm both the client base and supplier chain are also diverse. 

The business has a number of practical measures that support its commitment to diversity and in particular increasing workers understanding of different firms. A publication Belief in Diversity – A guide to different faiths in our workplace has been produced covering the main faiths. This includes details on beliefs, festivals, traditions, dress. There is also a section on answers to questions that colleagues may have e.g. Will prayer times have an impact on work arrangements? When are the main festivals? What are the ramifications for managers? In the last section there is a named contact in the business with which colleagues talk to for further information about the religion.