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Engagement and Wellbeing in our Workplaces and Communities

Our colleagues are our greatest asset, and their commitment to delivering great-tasting, quality food whilst living our values is central to our success.

To be a trusted partner, we support our workplaces and communities through our approach to our ESG material issues: Colleague Wellbeing, Health and Safety; Engagement, Development and Retention; Responsible Recruitment and Employment; Inclusive and Diverse Workplaces and Local Causes and Community Engagement.

Engagement and Wellbeing in our Workplaces and Communities

Colleague Wellbeing, Health and Safety

At Bakkavor, we promote a proactive safety awareness and accident prevention culture by empowering employees to do the right thing, raise risk awareness and actively support solutions to improve the Group’s performance. We consistently outperform industry figures on workplace safety and target zero serious accidents.

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Health, safety and wellbeing

Engagement, Development and Retention

At Bakkavor, we’re committed to providing a workplace environment where people are engaged, motivated to develop themselves, and feel empowered to speak up. We’re working to foster greater inclusion for our current and future colleagues and to maintain open and two-way communication channels.

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Diversity and inclusion

RESPONSIBLE RECRUITMENT AND EMPLOYMENT

Bakkavor directly employs over 18,500 colleagues, including almost 16,000 in the UK alone. We put in place policies, practices and values which foster a culture that guarantees fair labour rights and ethical employment in our own operations and minimise any risk of modern slavery – an issue we take extremely seriously.

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Recruitment, training and development

INCLUSIVE AND DIVERSE WORKPLACES

Our success relies on the skills, experience, and commitment of the diverse range of people who work for us. However, simply having a diverse workforce is not enough. We want to create an equal and inclusive workplace where colleagues feel valued, included, and inspired to perform at their best.

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Colleagues

Local Causes/Community Engagement

We pride ourselves on our strong ties to the communities in which we work, supporting causes and projects important to them and our people. Rallying our colleagues and communities around causes engages all of us with the opportunity to make a difference as well as producing positive outcomes for charitable organisations.

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Local Causes/Community Engagement
  • Colleague wellbeing, health and safety
  • Colleague wellbeing, health and safety
  • Engagement, development and retention
  • Responsible recruitment and employment
  • Inclusive and Diverse Workspaces
  • Local causes/community engagement

Colleague Wellbeing, Health and Safety

The health and safety of our colleagues is, and always will be, our biggest priority. We strive for zero harm as safety can never be taken for granted, and there are always opportunities to learn and improve.

Whilst in most manufacturing environments, accidents will occur, we consistently outperform industry averages on workplace safety. Each site reports and monitors performance against a number of health and safety metrics and measures, and these are reported to the Management Board and Group Board on a monthly basis, with detail of any significant issues reported immediately.

Our commitments

  • Continue our commitment to health and safety, targeting zero serious accidents across the Group.
  • Continue to maintain UK performance by out-performing industry average on numbers of major accidents and >7 days lost-time accidents.
  • Continue to implement our Wellbeing Strategy and pledges across sites.
  • Train Wellbeing Champions for local, on-the-ground support.
  • Make regular updates to our Wellbeing Toolkit and campaigns.
  • Commit to listen and ensure our actions are making a difference.
Read more in our 2022 ESG Report

Responsible Recruitment and Employment

Bakkavor is a major employer in the communities where we have operations, which are across four countries – the UK, USA, China and a small team in Spain.

It is imperative that we guarantee human rights and ethical employment in our own operations. Responsible Recruitment and Employment ensures we have policies, practices and values which support this and our values and culture will never be compatible with any form of modern slavery.

Our commitments

  • Drive awareness and action on the issue of modern slavery, rolling out campaigns and training so that our colleagues know the indicators and how to report them (ongoing).
  • Work with industry partners to share best knowledge and collaborate on responsible recruitment and employment practices.

Read more in our 2022 ESG Report and in our latest Modern Slavery Statement.

Engagement, Development and Retention

Providing a workplace where our colleagues feel engaged, empowered, and able to be themselves is a core business priority.

This supports our objectives of attracting and retaining the best talent and contributing to the local economic development of our communities by being an employer of choice.

Our commitments

  • Reduce our UK employee turnover and maintain below industry average.
  • Continue to empower our employees to speak up on issues important to them by promoting open channels of communication through our Site Employee Forums (“SEFs”) and the annual Group Employee Forum.
  • Continue to embed our values as the foundation of our culture, striving to create a great place to work.
  • Conduct an annual Group-wide employee engagement survey, aiming for an overall employee engagement score above industry average.

Read more in our 2022 ESG Report

Inclusive and Diverse Workspaces

Our success relies on the skills, experience, and commitment of the diverse range of people who work for us. However, simply having a diverse workforce is not enough. We want to create an equal and inclusive workplace where colleagues feel valued, included, and inspired to perform at their best.

We want to create an equal workplace through understanding colleagues’ points of view, being aware of different cultures and customs, and broadening our perspectives. Each and every one of us should be treated with respect and feel able to be ourselves.

Our commitments

  • Promote an inclusive working environment, where differences are valued, and individuals feel they can be themselves, without judgement.
  • Continue to focus on gender balance through our female mentoring programme.
  • Re-run our Employee Engagement Survey.

Read more in our 2022 ESG Report and in our latest Gender Pay Gap Report.

Local Causes/Community Engagement

Bakkavor believes in giving back to those communities in which we operate. To maximise our positive impact, we have Group charity partners, with which we work and support for a three-year period. In 2022 Bakkavor began two new, three-year Group corporate charity partnerships with GroceryAid and Natasha Allergy Research Foundation.

As a major employer in the communities in which we operate, we pride ourselves on the strong ties we create locally. Therefore, in addition to our Group charity partners we encourage and enable our sites to support local charities, schools, sports teams, vulnerable people and projects important to them.

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Our commitment:

  • Fundraise and support our key Group charities through Group donations and colleague engagement fundraising activities (ongoing).

Read more in our 2022 ESG Report