Wickes partners with Flair Impact to undertake company-wide anti-racism survey
Wickes, the UK’s home improvement retailer, is partnering with Flair Impact, a racial equity technology company to undertake an anti-racism survey amongst its 8,000 Wickes colleagues.
The survey, which is anonymous and confidential, will be rolled out to all 230 stores, support and distribution centres in September 2023.
Wickes is the first retailer to partner with Flair Impact and undertake their survey. Flair Impact’s technology helps organisations measure and build racially equitable cultures, providing leaders with the tools and metrics to regularly track a number of key areas, including racist behaviours; attitudes; levels of racial awareness; inclusion barriers; performance; pay; and recruitment.
David Wood, CEO of Wickes Group Plc comments, “At Wickes we want everyone to feel at home and we’re passionate about creating an inclusive and diverse workplace. We’re excited to be working with Flair Impact to hear directly from our colleagues about their attitudes and experiences of race in the workplace and to use this insight to focus on what we need to do to improve the retention, progression and inclusion of our colleagues from ethnic minority backgrounds”
Zee Botchway, Lead Chair of Wickes RAACE D&I employee network (Raising Awareness and Action on Cultural Ethnicity) has been the driving force behind setting up this partnership and comments: “We want people from underrepresented and Minority Ethnic communities to see Wickes as a welcoming environment where they can succeed at all levels in our business. We’ve chosen to partner with Flair Impact as they provide an innovative tool which will enable us to gain additional insights from data which we’ve never collected before.
“The survey includes situational judgement tests — putting people in situations where they’re witnessing forms of racism, and seeing how they respond — as well as questions around whether their ethnicity has ever been a barrier in the workplace. We will be able to use the findings from the survey to identify racial bias, to develop and roll out initiatives across the business that support racial equity and to be able to measure the impact and effectiveness of these initiatives.”
Nii Cleland, CEO/Co-Founder of FLAIR, comments, “We believe what gets measured gets done. Racial equity is nuanced; it’s extremely challenging to find a tangible solution that will create systemic reform, let alone measure progress against it. But we believe that nothing is impossible when you have the right answers to power change. That’s why we founded FLAIR in 2020, the only analytics company in the market focused on racial equity. We show humanity in the numbers. The people behind the statistics. And the way forward to meaningful action. We are leading the new movement in data-backed action on racial equity.
“We are delighted to partner with Wickes who are leaders and forward thinkers in the retail sector. This is an industry that employs millions of people from so many different backgrounds, so it’s absolutely essential that we have a presence in the sector to ensure we can make the impact we are after. Wickes are the perfect partner for us to work with, as they are truly investing in equity and have been doing so for some time now”
