A new program at Metcash is designed to encourage confidence in, and support for, its female workforce and their ambitions. Faced with data that showed real opportunity to increase representation and engagement of women across the entire organisation including ALM, Metcash ran focus groups and surveys to understand and address challenges and opportunities to improve.
These focus groups highlighted the opportunity to increase awareness, education, connection and confidence amongst its women and, as a result, Women At Metcash (WAM) was born.
WAM is focused on driving substantial and sustainable change within the business, offering its networking, and learning initiatives to both men and women in a variety of different ways to meet the needs of its diverse workforce.
Women At Metcash advocate and ALM CEO, Chris Baddock says, "Collaboration and co-creation with our female and male team members has been critical to designing initiatives that will make the biggest impact."
The business has now established quarterly networking forums across Australia and New Zealand which are designed to be educational and inspiring. These are a combination of virtual, nationwide events and local face-to-face events, centred around key topics that women (and men) said they found challenging in the survey responses. These include themes like Balance, Developing Myself and Backing Myself. The events are an open invitation to all Metcash employees and audiences will be able to listen to the experiences of female colleagues from a variety of employment levels and backgrounds. The events will also serve as a platform for stories and experiences of men and other diverse groups to be shared.
At the first WAM event in March, Backing Myself, women in leadership positions at Metcash shared stories about the tenacity and determination they needed to develop their courage, their confidence, and their self-belief, while acknowledging that they too can still struggle from time to time.
In addition to the networking and learning sessions across the country, the business has also entered into the realm of podcasting with its Amplify podcast, sharing stories from women at all levels of employment at Metcash, with a view to helping others navigate similar experiences. The podcast's tagline is: “Real People, Real Stories” and each episode runs for around 20 minutes in an attempt to fit seamlessly into the already busy lives of its listeners.
Mr Baddock said, "These are just some of the many initiatives to be launched by the business as it strives to improve gender equity."
Metcash has just been certified by WGEA as an Employer of Choice for Gender Equality for the fourth time and strives to attract talent, accelerate careers, build leadership capabilities in its staff and to always to continue to improve its workplace culture.
Scan here to go to the Amplify podcast:
