Overview
Halfords Group is committed to providing equal opportunities to colleagues and candidates. This applies to recruitment, training, career development and promotion, regardless of physical ability, gender, sexual orientation or gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religious beliefs, age, nationality or ethnic origin.
We are proud to promote diversity in the motoring and cycling industries (e.g. representation on D&I working groups within the IMI) and work hard to ensure every colleague feels they can be themselves at work and perform to their best. We also recognise there is always more we can do and we are excited to build on our foundations.
Progress in FY21
Today, we have a good understanding of our gender diversity within the Group. We routinely collect gender data and have been publishing our gender pay gap data for a number of years, which we are proud to say has improved even further this year. The Gender Pay Gap Report highlighted that across the Halfords Group of companies, our mean and median hourly pay gap is less than the national average, with women's mean hourly rate 1.15% higher than men's and women's median hourly rate 3.98% lower than men's.
Our focus remains on two areas: improving gender diversity across the Group, and building awareness amongst our colleagues of career progression opportunities, such as promoting female technicians in garages. We have a number of initiatives in place to support this, including partnering with schools and colleges to engage with potential candidates, delivering virtual 'Values' sessions to colleagues right across the Group, and promoting our Group career path.
Our annual colleague engagement survey is a key point in the year for us to gather overall sentiment across the Group, with some highlights of the year being:
- 80% of colleagues feel Halfords treats them and their colleagues fairly.
- 85% of colleagues feel they can be themselves at work.
- Engagement is consistent across gender, with female indexing slightly higher.
- Colleagues identifying as Asian are 10ppts more engaged.
Whilst we have not historically collected ethnicity data, our field-based colleagues live in their local communities and we therefore have a diverse mix of ethnic backgrounds across the UK. We do, however, recognise the need for a more thorough understanding of diversity across a number of categories, and so we have started to develop methods through which we can collect and record this data, which will eventually form the basis of our Inclusion programme. Data from our initial findings are shown below:
| Gender | Ethnicity |
| Role | Male | Female | Other | Prefer not to Say | White/
Caucasian/
White
Other | Black/
Black
African/
Black Caribbean/
Black Other | Asian | Middle Eastern | Mixed Ethnic Heritage | Other | Prefer not to say |
| Leadership Group | 75% | 20% | 1% | 4% | 86% | 2% | 3% | 0% | 1% | 1% | 7% |
| Management | 83% | 13% | 0% | 3% | 88% | 1% | 3% | 0% | 1% | 2% | 5% |
| Non-Management | 75% | 20% | 1% | 4% | 83% | 3% | 5% | 0% | 2% | 1% | 6% |
The data presented is based on the 94% of colleagues that completed the most recent colleague survey.
The Board is committed to improving ethnic diversity at Board level and, during the year, we will begin the process of ensuring that the composition of the Board is compliant with the Parker review into corporate governance. Importantly, the Board is committed to providing an inclusive workplace so that all colleagues feel that they can be themselves at work and perform to their best.
Jackie Hardy, an apprentice mechanic at the Halfords Autocentre in Borehamwood, was named Halfords BTCC Apprentice 2020, fending off tough competition from eight of her colleagues. The Level 3 apprentice has since been travelling with the touring car team to BTCC race weekends where she plays an integral part of the effort to win races.
To secure the victory, Jackie did a practical timed assessment on a Volkswagen van to find hidden faults and successfully convinced a panel that she has the right attitude and character to become part of the BTCC team.
After it was announced that she won in an otherwise all-male field, Jackie offered the following comment on the victory and her expectations of joining BTCC on the road:
"To be fair I didn't expect it. I was nervous during the competition but I'm over the moon now, really happy. Now I'm looking forward to joining the BTCC team, which will definitely be different from working in a garage, but I'm excited to get in there and learn and embark on the next stage of my career. Women need to know that it is okay to take that initial step, and that there are other women working in the industry. Once you get your foot in the door it is okay!"