Tesco 2015 Annual Report Download - page 22

Our people
Our approach
The challenges our business has faced
over the last year have been incredibly
difficult for our colleagues, but despite
this, we are extremely proud of the focus
which colleagues have continued to place
on doing the right thing for customers
and delivering outstanding service.
A key principle throughout the
transformation process has been,
wherever possible, to make sure
colleagues are the first to know of any
changes within the business which will
affect them. This commitment to be open
and transparent will continue once the
transformation process is complete.
We have worked hard to do everything we
can to support colleagues and offer expert
advice as they face changes to their roles
and the organisation. We have continued
to expand our training programmes to
help colleagues grow and develop. The
importance of diversity in the broadest
sense also remains critical to our business,
and the ratio of male to female colleagues
at year end is outlined below. In addition,
the pay gap between men and women
is less than 1%.
Respecting human rights
We are determined to respect the human
rights of our customers, our colleagues
and our suppliers, within all of the
communities they work.
We are committed to upholding basic
human rights and fully support the UN
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and the International Labour Organization
Core Conventions. We are a founding
member of the Ethical Trading Initiative
and our industry-leading team of labour
standards experts support our suppliers
to work towards fully implementing its
Base Code. We always investigate
allegations of human rights infringements
and take action when needed to ensure
people’s rights are respected.
We want everybody to have their human
rights upheld and we know our customers,
colleagues and suppliers do too.
• Our customers want to buy great
products that are produced safely and
responsibly. Only by protecting human
rights can we give our customers this
confidence, as well as ensuring we are
a good neighbour wherever we operate.
• We have strong, consistent people
policies that are designed to make Tesco
a great place to work; where everyone
is welcome and feels confident to be
themselves in a safe environment.
• We are building even stronger partnerships
with trusted suppliers so we can ensure
that we deliver great, safe products that
are responsibly produced.
We know that consistently addressing
human rights risks and concerns across
a global supply chain can be complicated.
Only by being open and responsive and
having strong relationships, can we find
out about issues and work to solve them.
We must work in partnership to do this –
both with our suppliers and with experts
and non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) on the ground. It is also why we
were strong supporters of the UK
Government’s new Modern Slavery Bill
and the clause on transparency in supply
chains, and look forward to reporting
against this in future years.
Governance and monitoring
Our governance committees consider
financial and non-financial risks to our
business and the Compliance and
Corporate Responsibility Committees
in particular consider risks related to
our Human Rights Policy, which are
maintained on our company risk register.
This year we launched a new Code
of Business Conduct, supported by
a company-wide training programme
to help colleagues follow key policies;
this included a section on our approach
to human rights.
Furthermore, we now have protector
lines for both colleagues and suppliers,
so any concerns with business conduct
can be raised confidentially.
To review our full policy visit
www.tescoplc.com/humanrights.
Our diversity Male Female
Board of Directors*10 77% 323%
Senior managers
– Directors
614 76% 195 24%
Senior managers
– Directors and
managers
3,847 69% 1,732 31%
All employees 220,257 43% 297,545 57%
* Changes since year end mean that our Board is
now made up of nine men and one woman.
20 Tesco PLC Annual Report and Financial Statements 2015
Environmental and social review continued