OUR COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION 

ABOUT THE DIVERSITY BOARD 

The events of 2020 saw us come together as a Selfridges community like never before. To build on this momentum and help us to take steps to enable meaningful and positive change for our people, we established our inaugural Diversity Board.

Our 12-strong Diversity Board was elected by fellow team members and is sponsored by a member of our Executive Board on a rolling basis to help drive our aim to shape a more inclusive, diverse and equitable future at Selfridges – and ultimately a better future for all.

After listening and learning from members of the Selfridges team from across all areas of the business, our Diversity Board created a vision focusing on three pillars: Everyone is Welcome, The Yellow Curriculum and Broadening Our Buy.

One year in, we’ve published our first Diversity Board Annual Report 2020-21 – read more about our highlights and hurdles.  

Our goal is to transform the behaviours and attitudes within Selfridges, so that we deliver equal and equitable opportunities for minority groups. That’s why we’ve signed up to become a member of Diversity in Retail to support our team members from minority groups to develop and progress into senior roles and to provide access to mentors.  

We want to make Selfridges a safe space for our team members to share their stories and experiences. But we know some of our team members often don’t feel confident enough to speak up, so our Diversity Board kick-started a number of team-led discussions following the global Black Lives Matter protests.

Chat for Change

Following the success of the open Black Lives Matter discussions, the Diversity Board launched a ‘Chat for Change’ initiative covering a wide range of diversity topics from gender pronouns to mental health in the workplace. With over 150 team members taking part so far, the Chat for Change sessions have facilitated new connections and support networks across the business to enable people to feel they can bring their whole selves to work.

Through these discussions, it became clear that our managers required support in addressing Black Lives Matter conversations. As a result, our Diversity Board worked together with our Learning and Development Team and helped to develop extensive inclusive leadership training to equip our managers with the tools they need to have confident, open and honest conversations around equity in our business. Our inclusive leadership training is just the beginning and we plan to build on this with training for all team members.  

What’s next?

Following the outcome of our Cultural Assessment, we know we have work to do to increase representation of minority communities at a senior leadership level. We’ll continue working with our partners such as Diversity in Retail to move towards more representation across all levels of our business.  

We are also reviewing our recruitment processes to support equity into management roles and implementing a minimum requirement for diversity representation from our external recruitment partners who support us with leadership recruitment. 

Across our business, we want to go further and enable more minority-owned brands to have a platform. Our Diversity Board and buying teams are committed to championing these brands and helping them to thrive and prosper, as well as working with our longstanding partners to drive positive change together.  

As we continue taking steps towards a more diverse and inclusive future at Selfridges, we’ll keep on sharing our progress through our annual Diversity Board report.