Asda: Unconscious Bias and Creating an Inclusive Culture

Being a consultative partner with Asda, raising awareness of Unconscious Bias and embedding an Inclusive Culture across all business units.

Why

Asda were looking for a consultative partner to help them embed an Inclusive Culture for all colleagues.

Asda wanted to be proactive in raising awareness of Unconscious Bias, and help their managers understand the positive impact they can have in creating a truly inclusive culture; no matter what their role within the business.

What

Using our Steps to Change approach, we worked in partnership with stakeholders in Asda to create a scalable, consistent and engaging programme for colleagues from all business units, including head office, in-store, and distribution.

We began by engaging the executive and senior leadership with a face-to-face intervention which explored their role in creating an inclusive culture. This bespoke programme enabled them to see clearly the current reality at Asda, as well as to own their role as leaders in supporting, embedding and sustaining an inclusive culture. 170 senior leaders participated and we tailored the programme for each business division (for example, head office colleagues or those based more regionally) to ensure it resonated with every single person. Significant time was set aside in this session for leaders to explore what they could do to change their own behaviours, and help others to do the same.

In parallel to this, we developed a supporting media resource and facilitator guide to reach Asda managers in all areas of the business. The media resource was reflective of the face-to-face intervention in which the leadership engaged, and the facilitator guide enabled colleagues to present the resource to their own teams, meaning all colleagues shared a wholly similar experience. It enabled colleagues to own the responsibility for taking practical, meaningful steps in their part of the business towards ensuring they too were aligned to Asda’s goal of ‘Creating an Inclusive Culture’.

Outcomes

We continue to work closely with Asda to ensure that colleagues are really living the change, and creating that inclusive culture. This is being achieved in a number of ways: colleagues are encouraged to share positive stories of the culture in action across the business, and senior leadership hold themselves to account by role modelling inclusive leadership.

This commitment is regularly communicated via blogs, town hall meetings and updates on internal and external social media, so that being a good inclusive leader is a clear expectation of all at Asda.