Morrisons boss: Retailers must get diversity of views around the table
Lord Stuart Rose, Debbie Hewitt and Morrison Chair Andy Higginson joined forces today at Retail Week Live to discuss the role of diversity in promoting long-term success.
On the importance of appointing women to sit on retail boards, Higginson claimed: “It’s a much wider topic than gender diversity. Sometimes by so narrowly defining diversity, you undermine it. You see boards that tick boxes for gender, ethnicity, geographical diversity, but it’s not just about statistics, it’s about different opinions and approaches. You need to ask if you are getting diversity of views around the table as well as ticking boxes. If you do, you’ll have a rich conversation as a consequence.”
Hewitt agreed with that point and Lord Rose added: “I don’t agree with quotas, people should be appointed on relevance and ability, but we should do our best to have more diverse boards because you’ll have better conversations that way.”
Elsewhere at Retail Week Live, Timpson CEO James Timpson talked about his approach to recruitment, which has resulted in ex-offenders accounting for 10% of the retailer’s workforce
“The key to our business is not what we do, it’s how amazing our colleagues are at serving customers,” he said. “It is to guide and support our colleagues who run the shops and not to tell them what to do. By empowering them, we innovate. And the more we invest in them, the better they perform, the longer they stay, and the better the business does.”
Addressing the hiring of ex-offenders, he commented: “55 of our colleagues are on day release and seven of them are running shops during the day and going back to prison at night. Yes, they failed society but, in many ways, society failed them. And I would guess that most multisite retailers employ ex-offenders – just most of them are doing it unknowingly because they have to lie on their applications forms to get a job.”
