At The Original Factory Shop, we understand diversity, equality and inclusion are crucial to fulfilling our values of working as one team by creating a sense of belonging where everyone is valued. A diverse and inclusive culture helps us to be more creative in everything we do for our customers and in our local communities. So we embrace the talents, beliefs, backgrounds and abilities of all our colleagues to help us achieve this.
We are proud to be an inclusive employer, but we are on a journey, and here are some of the ways we are improving our ways of working…
Attracting diverse top talent
Attracting and retaining diverse talent in our local communities, is of the utmost importance to us, so we have taken our commitment to diversity and inclusion one step further, and we are now a valued inclusive partner of the Diversity job board network, to help us attract a broad range of candidates to our job vacancies to create a diverse and inclusive workforce.
Hybrid and flexible working
Flexible working is inclusive working. It is including a diversity of talent in our business; talent with disabilities, talent with caring responsibilities, and talent that understands our customers.
In our Support Centre we have taken this onboard, and now operate a hybrid working policy, which is a flexible type of working where an employee splits their time between the workplace and remote working.
Educating, raising awareness and giving everyone a voice
We want to be clear about how we are going to achieve our goal of greater equality and inclusion, so this starts with helping our colleagues to understand what our commitment is to equality and what our joint responsibilities to achieve this are.
Menopause support
Not too long ago, the menopause was something people didn’t really talk about in the workplace. But we’ve come a long way in recent years…. supporting people through menopause makes sense for everyone. Our Mental Health First Aiders have been working hard to drive awareness of this subject with all our teams and running our own menopause café.
Neurodiversity
Equality is about treating all individuals fairly and equally specific to their needs, it’s not about treating everyone the same.
We seek to embrace the talents of people who think differently. Neurodivergent people typically have Autism, Aspergers, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, ADHD, Dysgraphia and Tic disorders. To be neurodivergent smart we strive to develop a language and acceptance of neuro-difference and to celebrate and leverage neurodiverse strengths whiles taking steps to accommodate, any specific challenges that an individual may face. This starts with training our teams – ensuring empathy and understanding what their sensory needs are and what can be done to make their experiences more inclusive.
It also means we will be making universal changes to our ways of working that will benefit all of our people, jobseekers and customers.
