Attract, Retain and Engage the Best Talent

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Cultivating the Best Teams

We compete and thrive by attracting and retaining the best talent from a broad and diverse talent pool. We equip all teammates with the tools they need to understand their roles in building a fair, inclusive environment and give them access to structures and systems that consider the individual’s unique needs.

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Female Safeway employees celebrating International Women's Day.

Goals & Progress

Highlights of How We’re Making a Difference

Black Lives Matter

Learn, Listen and Take Action

We have an established Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategy which outlines a path forward for systemic change and is endorsed and monitored by the Board of Directors. We are striving to make a meaningful shift to an inclusive environment and improve diversity organizationally... Read More

To enable progress on our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategy, we have prioritized outcomes that include: strengthening our leadership capabilities through inclusive leadership development, building employee understanding and engagement through targeted actions around sensitivity awareness and bias mitigation, embedding Diversity, Equity and Inclusion into key people practices such as hiring and establishing a baseline for diversity to identify actions and measure progress.

As part of this journey, we are accelerating action plans to improve upon the systemic racial issues and inequities faced by marginalized communities that impact a fair and equitable workplace. We are listening to our teammates to better understand the barriers that they are facing, and we are building partnerships with the right people who can help us chart a thoughtful and informed path forward for real change. This will take time, but we are committed to listening, learning and ultimately making meaningful changes. Read Less

A Commitment to Change Through the BlackNorth Initiative CEO Pledge

The BlackNorth Initiative CEO Pledge is a key milestone of the BlackNorth Initiative, a movement from the Canadian Council of Business Leaders Against Anti-Black Systemic Racism, that challenges senior business leaders to commit to specific actions and targets towards ending anti-Black systemic racism. Our commitment to the BlackNorth Initiative recognizes that Black people across Canada are underrepresented in our education systems, workforces, boardrooms and governments – and we know that companies like ours have the power to create change.

Sobeys chef holding a plate of food
Black Lives Matter

Taking Action Through Five Key Commitments

We have defined five key commitments with concrete actions in the short and long-term to invigorate our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts at all levels of the business.

Our five key commitments include: .. Read More

  1. Advance on a culture of inclusion – Ensure that inclusion is core to our workplace culture. Barriers reinforcing anti-Black racism and systemic racism overall are addressed, and our organization is a trusting place for healthy ongoing dialogue on crucial topics to deepen our understanding.
  2. Attract, grow and retain diversity of teams – Tapping into the best talent, from a broad and diverse talent pool, is fundamental to building high performance teams. The Company will broaden its focus to attracting, developing and retaining diverse teams. This will apply across our workforce with focus on Black, Indigenous and marginalized communities.
  3. Accelerate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion into business outcomes, to improve equity and better serve customers – Critical to the strategy, is embed Diversity, Equity and Inclusion into business outcomes, in order to innovate and better serve customers. The Company recognizes it has an important role to play, working with our store teams and supplier partners to advance Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and will create and activate on plans to progress in this area as a first priority.
  4. Strengthen our communities and ecosystem – Sobeys plays a far-reaching role within and across 1,500 communities in Canada. We will partner with Black and other marginalized groups to help build solutions addressing pervasive social issues aligned with our purpose, including critical areas such as access to healthy and affordable food.
  5. Measure progress and impact – Diversity, Equity and Inclusion measures will be embedded into performance metrics, and progress will be monitored through quarterly scorecards to ensure transformational outcomes are achieved. We will communicate and celebrate our accomplishments.
Actions we are taking in the near and long-term:
  1. Continuing a robust Inclusive Leadership development initiative focusing on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion awareness and setting clear expectations for the safe and inclusive culture we want to create for our teammates;.
  2. Introducing a company-wide program to educate and raise awareness on DE&I and anti-racism for our teammates. This program will include keynotes on anti-racism, panel discussions and webinars.
  3. Continuing open discussions with our Black teammates and expanding our discussions to include our Indigenous teammates and leaders in the community;
  4. Encouraging a more transparent and receptive, “Speak-Up”, culture, where teammates can engage in healthy and respectful dialogue about tough topics. This will include exploring a broader structure of collaboration to engage diverse teammates across the organization and an escalation pathway through which teammates can raise issues and concerns.
  5. Expanding the definition for self identification, and collecting the diversity data we need to provide us with greater clarity in identifying actions and measuring progress towards a truly inclusive organization;
  6. Evaluating HR systems and processes to identify systemic biases that impede equity and fairness in decision-making.

We Need the Best People

To advance our leadership position within the grocery industry, we need to select the best people from a broad and diverse range of talents. To that end, we are systematically enhancing our recruiting and people development processes to ensure fairness and to broaden our talent pools, including store management training programs, leadership succession and hiring.

Sobeys chef holding a plate of food
FreshCo employee stocking produce tables with onions.

Inclusive Policies and Programs Support Meaningful Culture Change

Fostering a culture of inclusion has focused on strengthening our inclusive leadership capabilities with senior leaders and embedding Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in organizational policies and programs. Examples of this include: Flexible Work Arrangements and Flex Days policies, and enhanced benefits support for maternity and parental leaves and for employee gender transitioning... Read More

Critical to fostering an inclusive environment is employee engagement and awareness building. Organization-wide awareness and education is facilitated through key campaigns including Black History Month, International Women’s Day, PRIDE, National Indigenous History Month and Disability Employment Awareness Month.

Ongoing awareness and education is supported by key partnerships established with Catalyst, Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion, Network of Executive Women and Pride at Work. In addition to our existing partnerships, we welcome and actively seek new opportunities to engage with community and advocacy organizations at the local, regional and national levels to support our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion objectives. Read Less

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