Welcome & About Whistl
Valuing colleagues Our people are the essence of our business, and genuinely valuing our colleagues is one of our core principles at Whistl. This has been – and always will be – a key and consistent focus of ours. We believe that working hard to promote a diverse and inclusive culture while also protecting our employees’ wellbeing creates a more resilient team with a stronger sense of belonging and purpose. Throughout 2023, we set out to ensure that our commitment to valuing our colleagues was supported by real, tangible action. We made great strides in this, from promoting equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) through further developing our EDI charter, to building awareness and communication around mental health issues and expanding our flexible working approach to support employees with varying needs. Equality, diversity and inclusion At Whistl, we strive to create an environment where our employees are treated with respect and fairness, regardless of their background or characteristics. To achieve this, we believe it is important to recognise the interdependence of the concepts of equality, diversity and inclusion. A diverse workforce, for example, must be supported by practices that ensure that minorities are treated equally and feel included. In 2023, we progressed in all three areas by developing our EDI charter and strategy and working to promote gender equality and ethnic minority representation throughout our business.
EDI charter In 2023, we committed to promoting EDI by updating our EDI charter and EDI sponsors. The purpose of updating the charter was to create clarity around equality, diversity and inclusion for our employees. In addition, the updated charter laid out our core goals concerning EDI. The objective of our EDI sponsors was to take responsibility for these goals and ensure that they came to fruition. Over the year, we appointed our Head of Operations as the sponsor for race diversity, our Managing Director of International and Managing Director of Parcels to lead on disability awareness and our Commercial Director of Mail and Commercial Director of Fulfilment to lead on female diversity. Within our EDI charter, we committed to supporting the Disability Confident scheme. We have increased our efforts to recruit, retain and ensure reasonable adjustments for our employees with disabilities. We have also committed to the Race at Work Charter, which aims to promote the career progression of ethnic minorities and break down obstacles to their recruitment. There are approximately 20 EDI Allies across our business, and their objective is to meet every two months to decide on relevant EDI topics that would benefit from raised awareness and action. This has led to the creation of our EDI calendar, which includes several events to promote EDI across the business. To give our EDI sponsors a helping hand, we appointed an EDI Lead from amongst our EDI Allies this year.
Whistl’s ESG strategy
Valuing colleagues
Fulfilling opportunities
Preserving our natural environment
“ My Role as EDI Lead for Whistl is to direct the EDI Allies group and develop an integrated approach to EDI in line with Whistl values, behaviours and best practice. We’re grateful for those who have put their hands up to be an EDI Ally and help to support our equality, diversity and inclusion strategy across the Whistl Group.” Louise O’Neil, HR Business Partner and EDI Lead
Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures
Appendices
12
2023 ESG Report
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