Measuring Progress
Opportunity Now
In 2006 The Co-operative Group achieved a Gold Award from the Opportunity Now gender benchmarking survey.
Opportunity Now, which is part of Business in the Community, is a business-led campaign that works with employers to realise the economic potential and business benefits that women at all levels contribute to the workforce. By inspiring employers to challenge complacency and tackle barriers to women's progress, they encourage an inclusive culture in the workplace. Opportunity Now operate a benchmarking survey, to help organisations identify their success and areas for further improvement. Organisations are assessed on three major areas; Motivation, Action and Impact. The survey results in organisations being given an award, from Bronze through to Platinum.
In 2005 The Co-operative was given a Silver Award, scoring 79% which is one point below Gold. In 2006 in response to the work we had done, we achieved a significant improvement and gained a Gold Award, with 94%. With no survey taking place in 2007, we have recently completed the 2008 survey and we are waiting on our results.
Stonewall
In 2008 The Co-operative rose to number 29 in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index Top 100 list and we remain the only retailer in the top 100.
The Stonewall Index recognises those organisations that create the right working environment for gay, lesbian and bi-sexual employees. In 2007 we came in 77th position moving up from 94th in 2006.
This year, we came 29th overall, scoring 83% in the index, an increase of 16 points. We are positioned higher than organisations such as HBOS, J P Morgan, Aviva and the British Council who were previous winners.
We scored well on diversity training, staff engagement, having a network group, advertising and sponsorship. This is an excellent achievement, as not only have we improved our rating, we have done so against increased competition with 241 organisations taking part up from 201 last year.
Race for Opportunity
The Co-operative Group achieved a Gold Award in the 2007 Race for Opportunity (RfO) benchmark.
This report benchmarks our efforts against other organisations in with regards to our performance and progression on race and ethnicity both internally and externally.
The result showed a marked improvement, with our score increasing from 72% (a silver award) in 2006 to 84% (a gold award) in 2008. We beat the average RfO score by 8%. It is also worth mentioning that we have gone from no award at all to a gold accreditation in only four years.
The result recognised our Diversity policies and our fair treatment of employees and customers. We were also credited for our continued work for Fairtrade as well as the work we carry out within local communities.
Internally, we are working on the development of a race plan, which will look to ensure our workplace is creating the right environment for all groups of people, whilst externally we continue searching for opportunities to develop our products and services for all communities.