Roisin Currie
A Chief Executive Officer’s perspective

At Greggs, 69% of our total workforce is female and I’m particularly proud that we bring the best talent through the business, regardless of gender. Gender diversity is just as prevalent in our senior leadership positions; almost half of our management teams are female and, of the eight current Board posts, five are held by women.

Our focus on gender diversity has enabled us to think more proactively about how we drive the wider Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) agenda across the business and to kickstart our approach in 2021, we provided a training session for our Main Board and Operating Board Directors.

Based on the outcomes of this session, we developed the ‘Inclusive Leadership’ and ‘Inclusive Management’ workshops that have now been delivered to over 570 of our managers. The workshops include building an individual understanding of D&I and how external and internal influences can impact an inclusive workplace.

Last year, I am proud that we achieved the National Equality Standard (NES) certification, the UK’s leading Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) standard which supports organisations in ensuring full compliance in DEI proficiency.

All of our Operating Board Directors took part in NES assessment interviews. This, along with focus groups with our wider workforce and a colleague survey assessing our cultural health, revealed that our business felt positively about our working culture and sense of inclusion, our clear policies already in place to support key diverse groups, proactivity providing workplace adjustments and accessibility for a range of requirements, having strong learning and development programmes (particularly for women), and having established colleague networks and listening groups across a range of diversity topics.

The findings also revealed some clear focus areas for our business such as, enhancing our diverse talent attraction strategy, supporting colleagues from ethnic minority backgrounds to develop their career and implementing a D&I steering group to track our progress against our D&I plans.

I look forward to continuously strengthening our D&I initiatives and working with our colleagues, our networks and our steering groups to listen to their views and ideas in this space, and I am really proud of our progress so far.

At Greggs, it is our people that make our business successful and our values of being friendly, inclusive, honest, respectful, hardworking and appreciative that enable everyone to feel valued and have the opportunity to fulfil their potential. I feel incredibly lucky to work alongside a diverse range of colleagues and friends that make Greggs the business that it is today.

February 2023