Achieving Equity and Inclusion: Supporting Black Colleagues at CCEP

Created by VERCIDA for Coca-Cola Europacific Partners

 

Richard Flandrin and Leah McClean talk about their careers, Black History Month at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) and inspiring the next generation.

 

CCEP team at the Black Talent Awards

 

What do your career paths look like?

Richard: I started out in retail as a teen, which I did for about 10 years, starting as a general sales assistant and working my way up to store management positions. Once I left retail, I went into recruitment, first with recruitment companies and then in-house. In 2019, I started with CCEP on a fixed-term contract. When Covid hit in 2020 and my contract came to its natural end, however, the business supported me in getting a recruitment role at Costa, which is part of the brand franchisor of the Coca-Cola Company. After four months, CCEP reached back out to me and I was offered a manager’s position. Now, I’m a Recruitment Manager for CCEP.

Leah: I started off as a qualified youth worker and did that for six years. Then I started working in radio – I ran a community radio station and then became a sales representative for Choice FM and Capital Radio. After I was made redundant, I spent three years raising my son. When I decided to go back to work, I joined CCEP as a field sales representative 10 years ago. My current role is within Commercial Operations as part of the wider Commercial organisation at CCEP. 

 

Richard Flandrin

 

You’ve had very different career paths. What does a typical day at work look like now?

Richard: There’s not really a typical day at work. It’s fun, the pace is extremely fast and we cover a lot of different areas when we support the business in recruitment. My team covers the whole of Great Britain with recruitment for different sites, manufacturing, distribution, customer service, logistics and field engineers. And we do a lot of project work.

Leah: No two days are the same for me either. My role is very much about supporting stakeholders who work out in the field, especially with practical things, such as making sure invoices are uploaded to the right place and in the right format so they can get paid in a timely manner.

 

Leah McClean

 

What does Black History Month mean to you?

Leah: It has always meant a lot to me. Choice FM was a Black-owned radio station, so every day was Black History Month, but it was different when I moved into the corporate world. This was a bit of a culture shock to me, but I wanted to fix this. Three years ago, a team of us put a plan together to activate Black History Month at CCEP and it has gone from strength to strength every year. People are getting more involved in the events, more allies are coming out and sharing information with their teams. We need to spread this across the whole year, rather than just a single month.

Richard: It’s a time to celebrate our history and it’s a time for businesses to recognise the importance of diversity, the importance of celebrating our differences. CCEP does a lot for Black History Month – Leah and I will be on various panels and workshops this month, we’re volunteering in the Black community, it’s extremely important to me.

 

"It’s a time to celebrate our history and it’s a time for businesses to recognise the importance of diversity,"

 

Tell us more about the events for this year’s Black History Month

Richard: We’ve got two volunteering days, one in the Brixton soup kitchen and one in the Peckham soup kitchen. This event has been expanded so the wider business can join in and we’ve got great numbers for that. At the end of the month, we’ll be going to Liverpool to visit the International Slavery Museum.

Leah: And sip-and-stroke is coming up – basically, it’s a fun way to get creative. Everyone gets a canvas, acrylic paints and different-sized brushes to create their own piece of artwork. Last year, 30 people attended and this year, we have 40 people getting involved. On the same day, there will be an educational talk on sickle cell anaemia, which affects some of our Black colleagues. A lot of people don’t know about the symptoms, so we’ll be raising awareness. Plus we’ll be doing a book club and an African-Caribbean cook-off.

 

 

What other activities does CCEP do to support Black employees?

Richard: We have various partnerships. For example, a company called Psalt supports us with projects such as workshops and training tools, or helping us find graduates and apprentices from the Black community. It is so important to support people early in their careers. And a company called Utopia helps us with training and coaching.

Leah: We ran a workshop for employees and managers that ran over six weeks. It was all about having open and honest conversations with multicultural colleagues, the sort of conversations people might not have necessarily had with their managers on a one-to-one basis. But that programme gave multicultural colleagues a voice and the confidence to speak up if something is not right. It definitely gave me confidence and now I’m a cultural ambassador for CCEP.

What does that involve?

Leah: I’m there to support my multicultural colleagues, so they have someone who looks like them that they can speak to if they have an issue. We look at the processes within the business for dealing with different issues and whether we need to escalate it or not.

 

Do you both find CCEP to be a supportive employer for Black colleagues?

Richard: Yes, the company has purposefully gone out of its way to support Black employees – they’re very equitable and they care about making sure everything is fair. For example, if a position comes up, it’s about making sure everyone has equal footing in regards to getting that role, unlike some companies that I have previously worked for, which are more about recruiting in their own image.

Leah: I’ve seen so much positive change in the past 10 years. It’s a very supportive company – that’s why I’ve been here so long. There are now more senior managers who I can relate to, who look like me. It is definitely a change for the good. The company’s philosophy is that everyone’s welcome. 

 

"I’m there to support my multicultural colleagues, so they have someone who looks like them that they can speak to if they have an issue."

 

 

What are your ambitions for the future?

Leah: Off the back of the equity programme, I have started looking at a new career path at CCEP, moving into recruitment. I’m making my way there, applying for roles and hopefully next year, I can do an apprenticeship. I’m working on my qualifications at the moment.

Richard: For me, onwards and upwards – I want to stay in the HR function ideally, to just take the next step and the step after that. My aim is to be a Director level.

Leah: Something that will always stick in my mind was the time we were assessing graduates at the recruitment centre and I asked a young person how his interview went. He said, ‘It was nice to be interviewed by someone who looks like me.’. That really touched me.

 

Find out more about working at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners

Explore current vacancies at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners