Fostering a Culture of Belonging at dunnhumby

 

Building a culture of belonging

Belonging is part of the fabric of who we are: we empower businesses to engage their customers as individuals (and this starts with empowering our own teams and colleagues as individuals). We’re really proud of our culture at dunnhumby – and culture is felt through the behaviours that are reinforced or discouraged on a day-to-day basis in our teams.

Our Belonging@dunnhumby programme launched in June 2021. We kicked off with nine regional Belonging Summits, where we came together for a global learning experience and to set the standard for what inclusive behaviour looks like. This was the start of our programme to collectively drive our culture of belonging, and we’ve now continued into the Embed phase where our people managers lead the conversations at a team level focusing on increasing psychological safety and embedding inclusive behaviours into our day-to-day working.

To underpin our belonging culture, we’ve introduced new policies and practices which enable our people to bring their whole selves to work.

 

What inclusive policies have we introduced?

Menopause and Perimenopause Guidance

Menopause is a subject which many people feel uncomfortable or unnatural to talk about with others. So, we started the conversation by creating guidance for individuals and managers, encouraging everyone to understand the different symptoms and impacts this can have on women in the workplace. As a result, we’ve had some of our own people bravely stepping forward to run seminars sharing their own experiences as well as collaborating with our shareholder Tesco Group on their Menopause Cafes.

Pregnancy Loss Policy

Pregnancy loss is devastating and is a type of bereavement where getting the right support at work is crucial. We’re committed to supporting all our people who suffer the loss of a pregnancy, whether it happens directly to them, their partner or a surrogate, regardless of the nature of their loss, and whatever their length of service. Our policy sets out the paid time off our people can take as well as explains the emotional and practical support that we can offer. We’ve also created guidance for managers or those supporting colleagues through a pregnancy loss.

IVF & Fertility Treatment Policy

While pregnancy and childbirth are highly visible and mostly celebrated, fertility challenges tend to be invisible and silent. Our IVF & Fertility policy is open to everyone at dunnhumby and allows for time off to recover or attend appointments for both the individual and their partner. While we sincerely wish no one would ever have to use these policies, having them in place enables us to have open and sensitive conversations, whilst also equipping managers and colleagues to be empathetic and understanding.

Disability Confident

We’re making progress as a disability confidence employer and have refreshed our guidance on reasonable adjustments, making individuals and managers aware of what is available to them, ensuring their work and roles are always accessible. We were delighted to start up our partnership with Evenbreak, a disability friendly jobs board, and are working with them to understand where we can improve our recruitment process to give every individual an equal opportunity to demonstrate the best version of themselves.

Shared Parental Leave Policy

At dunnhumby we’re proud to offer an enhanced Shared Parental Leave (SPL) scheme in the UK, matching our Shared Parental Leave benefit to that of our Maternity offering. Since launching in 2019 we’ve seen increasing numbers of our people taking up this option, which allows them to spend more time with their young family and enables greater gender equality.

Flexible Working Policy

Our people work in different ways, depending on where they’re based, their role and personal preferences. To support this flexibility, we offer both Blended Working; a hybrid approach to the working week based on the needs of the role, team, function and/or market, and formal Flexible Working. While both of our approaches support working in different ways, our goal remains the same; we want to offer flexibility to support our employees and our unique culture, without reducing the quality of delivery. We actively promote health and wellness and support flexible hours of operation globally to enable a healthy work/life balance for everyone.

 

Why is it important put these policies in place?

We believe the benefit is twofold; it reduces the stigma and uncertainly around some of these topics, and emphasises our commitment to our culture of belonging. Detailing our offerings in policies creates consistency but also a willingness to lean into these conversations and understand challenges faced by our people outside work. In turn this ensures were cultivating an environment where everyone can bring their true self to work.

The reaction to these policies has been really uplifting; our people have told us that, whether they need to access them or not, just knowing that support is available when you need it most is invaluable. For those who are experiencing some of these changes in their lives, they have clarity of approach and can be confident that dunnhumby is a place that leads with compassion and care.

Thank you to the teams and network groups who have brought these policies to life, as well as our dunnhumbians who embody our values everyday in their interactions with one another.