Social Responsibility

Pillar 4

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Fostering Young Talent

The Weetabix Food Company is made up of a range of inspiring people and we really are one team. Through giving our people the freedom and support to drive improvement through making decisions – what we call The Weetabix Difference – our colleagues are ambitious, lead by example and always deliver.

In 2023, we welcomed 6 new manufacturing and engineering apprentices.

 

Strengthening Employee Support

We are always looking for new ways to ensure we create a great place to do great work. The health and wellbeing of our people is a priority and we have taken a number of steps over the past year to strengthen the support we provide to them.

We continued to expand our Mental Health First Aiders programme, with 15 newly trained volunteers joining the network, making the team 41 strong across the business in all functions and across the manufacturing teams.

 

Promoting Equality

Both the median and mean gender pay gap across the organisation have been decreasing at the Weetabix Food Company since 2021. The median pay gap in 2022 sat at 1.86% (down from 3.44% in 2021), with the mean pay gap at 3.64% (down from 4.02% in 2021). This was in stark contrast to the UK national gender pay gap average of 14.9%.

 

Harnessing the Power of Diversity and Inclusion

We have continued to focus on delivering against our vision of fostering an environment of “inclusion without exception”, led by our voluntary group of diversity champions who meet monthly. 

We have continued our partnership with Edit, a specialist agency working to help us navigate diversity and inclusion. In 2023, they helped us conduct a survey to measure our progress as an inclusive business, which identified that 69% of our colleagues agreed Weetabix is an inclusive place to work.

View full Sustainability Report

Community engagement

Community engagement

As part of our work to encourage people to live healthy lives, we have continued our flagship partnership with The English FA and Football Association of Wales on developing young girls’ grassroots football initiatives. The Weetabix Wildcats and the Weetabix Huddle programmes that help girls all over England and Wales get active, make new friends and boost their confidence.

We now have 64 Huddle providers, and 2,071 registered Huddle participants in England and Wales. The Weetabix Wildcats programme also now has an amazing 28,000 registered players. With the Lionesses’ fantastic achievement reaching the Women’s World Cup final, we’re expecting participation in these programmes to grow strongly over the coming year.

In 2020 we began donating Weetabix and now donate three additional brands of cereal, all of which meet School Food Standards in England and their Scottish equivalent, The Nutritional Requirements for Food and Drink in Schools. Thanks to support from Weetabix and other food suppliers, Magic Breakfast was able to provide fuel for learning to nearly 200,000 children in disadvantaged communities over the past year, helping them start their day without the distraction of an empty stomach.

What
we’ve done

  • Welcomed 6 new manufacturing and engineering apprentices at the Weetabix Food Company.

  • Expanded our Mental Health First Aiders network to over 40 by introducing 15 newly trained volunteers.

  • Through our work with FareShare and Magic Breakfast, we have donated 3 million breakfasts in the past year.

*Farm office situated within 50 miles of Weetabix Mills

What
we’re doing

  • Continue the reductions in our median and mean pay gap across the Weetabix Food Company that has been taking place since 2021.

  • Increase the proportion of our employees agreeing that Weetabix is an inclusive place to work in our annual inclusion maturity survey.

  • Expand the participation of young girls getting active through the Weetabix Wildcats and Weetabix Huddle programmes across England and Wales.