The Jamie Oliver Group is committed to promoting equity and preventing any kind of discrimination. We strive to create an inclusive culture that not only embraces diversity, but celebrates it, too.
We know that our vision for a healthier, happier world through the joy of food can only be achieved through an understanding, appreciation and celebration of our diverse global community. And that comes from having a diverse company.
We are already making great strides in this area through our DE&I council of representatives from across the business. We also assign key DE&I goals to our senior management team, host frequent guest speakers to continue learning, and ensure all employees take part in DE&I training within six months of joining the business.
But there’s always room to improve. So we’ve launched a strategic five-year DE&I plan to work alongside our five-year plan for the business. We are committed to achieving significantly more diverse representation across all levels of our workforce and tracking our progress based on key metrics. We will benchmark our data, so we are clear on where we are doing well, and highlight the areas we need to focus on and improve.
We focus on driving change in the following areas:
- Recruitment, retention & progression - Inclusive leadership - Learning & development - Equitable policies
- Diverse range of talent, cultures & views appropriately represented and celebrated through our media and online content - A brand with inclusive conversations and marketing
- Leveraging our diversity to create market relevant products - Diversity, equity & inclusion in supply chain
- Strengthening diversity and inclusion with our franchisees - Being a leader for diversity and inclusion in our O&O business
- Diverse range of experts, supporters, organisations and views championed through our programmes and content - Strengthening diversity and inclusion in our trainer network
Although we acknowledge that we have still got a long way to go, we’re making headway and doing some really exciting things. Did you know:
– over half of our senior management team is made up of women
– we hold ‘inspo sessions’ with speakers covering key inclusion topics throughout the year
– we regularly invite cooks from all backgrounds to join us for lunch, and introduce us to their cuisines and cultures, as well as up-and-coming chefs looking to build their profiles
We have joined forces with these amazing businesses and charities to both educate ourselves and support a generation of talent into our industry through training, mentoring, coaching and internships:
Through a collaboration with the Creative Mentor Network, annually we offer managers the opportunity to take part in a mentor programme, aimed to support young people from diverse backgrounds in pursuing a career in the creative industry.
We’re pleased to be working with Creative Access to recruit Creative Intern placements. The annual placements are ring-fenced for people from communities that are under-represented in the creative industries, to help give them a way in. All of our internships are paid more than the London Living Wage.
We have extended our partnership with Creative Access to include employee and manager training sessions on key DE&I topics, which forms part of our learning and development offering.