Premier Foods Refresh Focus to Ensure Every Voice is Valued

Premier Foods is currently in the ‘Act’ stage of the WorkBuzz cycle – they have a deeper understanding of their people, and identified gaps and ways to overcome their Inclusion & Diversity (I&D) challenges going forward. They have a 2030 vision for their I&D goals and are consciously shifting their culture – beginning with raising awareness and helping leaders to better understand their I&D landscape.

• Gravitas workshops offered to staff
• Reviews of policies and procedures for working parents
• #oktobeme stories shared across the organisation

The problem

Premier Foods recently focused on a common challenge – a gender imbalance as you go up the hierarchy, with a lower representation of women in senior leadership roles. They decided to conduct a short survey in June 2020 to understand where women were underrepresented, why that may be, any barriers to progression, and what they could do to improve this. The survey focused on mid and senior management levels and invited all genders to share their views in order to understand commonalities for all genders or challenges unique to each.

The solution

WorkBuzz insights showed that there were shared challenges for employees around realising their career potential and the appetite to see more inclusive leadership. It also highlighted a need for flexible working to better enable those with caring responsibilities and more support in returning to work after periods of leave.

Moreover, the survey identified clear differences between men and women at Premier Foods whereby the women felt less confident to speak out in front of senior management and challenge their thinking. This was compounded by the lack of representation in the senior leadership roles and an underlying feeling that females were less able to be their authentic self at work.

The outcome

After learning about the challenges and inviting people to share ideas on how to overcome them in follow-up focus groups conducted by external consultants, Premier Foods rolled out several initiatives:

• Hosting speakers to share learning about how to hold the room & offering Gravitas workshops
• Reverse mentoring scheme
• Reviews of policies and procedures for working parents
• Recruitment without bias working party
• Changing career conversations: training for line managers and creating I&D referees who are responsible for calling our behaviour that isn’t inclusive
• Leveraging storytelling: #oktobeme stories shared across the organisation about bringing your authentic self to work
• Shifting ownership of I&D. Functions at Premier Foods are now driving I&D forward using diversity data, and learning more from their people about how they can further improve.

These initiatives have been positively received at Premier Foods & have demonstrated the appetite for certain skills development – such as the gravitas workshops which were fully booked within 30 minutes of release! Premier Foods continues to listen and adapt its approach in line with the needs of employees.

“We have been very pleased with WorkBuzz. The past 12 months have been massively challenging and the insights we have gained have helped to inform key business and people decisions. Most impressive is their service ethos, speed and adaptability.”

David Wilkinson
Human Resources Director.