Pets just see people, so do we.

As we welcome in the 10^th National Inclusion Week, which is dedicated to celebrating inclusion and taking action to create inclusive workplaces, it’s time again to reflect as a business on all that we’ve achieved over the last year as we continue in our strides to become more inclusive.

Our Diversity & Inclusion Lead, Gemma Parker, works with colleagues across the business to make Pets at Home as inclusive as we can be.

“Last year when we marked National Inclusion Week, we focused on awareness and engagement. This year, we are turning all that awareness and engagement into actions across the business. I’m proud of how committed our colleagues are to progress around diversity and inclusion and excited about how far we’ve come and how much more we have planned!

From a personal perspective, publishing our inclusion commitments was a fantastic moment. They perfectly capture our aspirations, expectations and values around diversity and inclusion and set the framework for everything else.”

We’ve published our Inclusion Commitments and guide, ’10 ways you can make a difference’,  alongside the launch of our new diversity and inclusion policy in April and whilst we understand having this policy-driven inclusion footprint is important, simply just officiating it in black and white doesn’t necessarily provide our colleagues with the reassurance they need to bring their whole-selves to work – that’s why, alongside this, we’ve taken further active steps contributing to an inclusive culture across our business.

In the last year alone, we have:

• Invested in 3 Pride marches in Bristol, Essex, and Manchester, which saw our LGBTQ+ colleagues and allies come together from around the country to walk in unity for equality.
• Launched a new diversity and inclusion page on our recruitment website, with the aim of reassuring potential applicants they will not be persecuted for their gender, race, or sexuality.
• Publicised our inclusion message “Pets just see people, and so do we”
• Introduced new diversity and inclusion content into our Veterinary graduate induction programme.
• Hosted Lucy Edwards, as part of our ‘Inspiring Stories’ series. Lucy spoke about becoming blind at the age of 17, the difference her guide dog made to her, and what our colleagues can do to make shopping an inclusive experience for people experiencing sight loss.
• Supported 6 of our colleagues to participate in Retail Week’s ‘Be Inspired Leadership programme’, which helps retailers build a pipeline for future inclusive leaders who are passionate about personal development and pushing for progressive change within their organisations.
• Launched the Pets at Home Springboard programme, for 20 of our female colleagues, which was developed to support female inclusion.
• Joined the ‘Digital Her’ programme from Manchester Digital, whose mission is to engage more young women across Greater Manchester to consider careers in Digital & Technology by using the power of role models in the industry to bring this to life.
• Expanded Coffee Roulette, which helps colleagues connect with peers from around the business they may not directly work with.
• Launched ‘Inclusion Ally’ e-cards on our benefits platform ‘Reward Hub’, so colleagues can recognise the inclusive actions of others.
• Introduced objectives around diversity and inclusion in our ‘Great Conversations’ progress chats with colleagues.
• Increased our colleague inclusion index score in our ‘Your Voice’ colleague engagement survey to 86%.

But we are not resting on our laurels, we know there’s so much more we can do.  Listening to and engaging with colleagues around diversity and inclusion will continue to be top priorities for us as we focus on collaborating more across our colleague networks and connecting our customers to our inclusion commitment.