People and Community

Community

Metcash recognises that it plays an important role in the communities in which it operates, including being an integral part of the social fabric of many of the regional communities where our independent retailers are located.

Our support to community organisations consists of financial support from our  independent retailers and Metcash, the donation of staff time, and the donation of product from our Food pillar. Metcash has supported local communities through the IGA Community Chest Trust Fund for the past 29 years. The Fund has raised over $80m during this time for distribution to local charities, regional sporting groups, hospitals, health and wellbeing initiatives, local fire services and disaster relief efforts to name a few.

In calendar year 2017, $2.3m was raised through the Fund and distributed to over 440 local schools and 470 local sport and recreational clubs, as well as our three charity partners: The McGrath Foundation; Special Olympics Australia; and Vinnies Christmas Appeal.

Metcash staff participated in the ‘Vinnies CEO Sleepout’ held during the year at various venues across the country and raised over $63,000 to support this worthwhile cause.

A number of other activities were held by our staff across many of our sites to raise awareness and support for those in need. Over $55,000 was raised collectively through these activities.

Food waste reduction remains a primary focus for our business and our retailer network. Metcash is a long-time partner of Foodbank and has donated over one million kilograms of both food and non-food items to Foodbank over the past eight years. Through this partnership we play a small but important role in  supporting those in our community that are the most vulnerable and require assistance. A number of our IGA retailers also support the work of OzHarvest through the supply of fresh food.

Metcash and our retailer partners have collectively donated 369,000kg of food and 4,340kg of non-food to Foodbank and OzHarvest over the past year.

Health, wellbeing and safety

Metcash remains committed to the continuous reinforcement of ‘Zero Harm’, the prevention of work-related injury and illness to employees, visitors, contractors and members of the public in all areas in which we operate.

This year we adopted the more widely used Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate (TRIFR) as our key safety performance measure. This measure comprises Lost Time Injuries, Medical Treatment Injuries and Restricted Work Cases. The use of this wider measure has helped improve our incident reporting and investigation culture within Metcash, which is reflected in TRIFR reducing by 11% from 41.2 (excluding Home Timber & Hardware) in FY17 to 36.7 (inclusive of Home Timber & Hardware) in FY18.

Our safety goal remains ‘Zero Harm’ and we have implemented a number of new initiatives based around ‘making safety simple’ to help further improve our safety performance and continue our drive towards this goal.

In addition to safety, the wellbeing of our people is a top priority. Metcash provides employees with the opportunity to access a range of benefits to promote wellbeing. These include wellbeing leave days, flexible working arrangements, counselling services, paid parental leave and allowing eligible employees to access an additional week of leave per year as mentioned.

Human rights and modern slavery

Metcash has a wide and diverse supply chain that encompasses goods and  services from both food and non-food sectors. The company is committed to upholding human rights within our business and across our supply chain. We acknowledge our role and responsibility in seeking to safeguard human rights through responsible, ethical and sustainable business practices.

We support the United Nations Framework and Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the eight international fundamental conventions. We reinforce our core value of treating people with dignity and respect, and we aim to ensure that our supply chains and operations do not contain products as a result of forced, bonded or child labour practices.

We work collaboratively with our supply chain partners to ensure that suppliers have appropriate procedures and practices in place to deliver compliance with the above principles. We undertake supplier assurance audits as part of the on-boarding process for suppliers, and are able to identify non-conformance through desktop and physical audits. However, we recognise that this may not detect all breaches, and we continue to investigate opportunities for improvement.

Metcash is preparing a Modern Slavery Statement that will be completed and made available in FY19.

Diversity, inclusion and our people

We believe that our people are our most valued asset, with belonging and inclusion fundamental to our culture and core values. We recognise that each person has unique strengths, and that high performance is underpinned by embracing those strengths.

Progress against gender targets is regularly reported to the Board and includes a focus on improving female representation in leadership and in roles traditionally occupied by males. At the end of the financial year, our workforce comprised 31.5% female and 68.5% male, supported by our equal opportunity hiring policies. The gender mix of the Metcash Board is now 57% female and 43% male following the appointment of our fourth female non-executive  director during the year.

Our Group CEO, Jeff Adams, became a Gender Pay Equity Ambassador under  the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) during the year replacing former Group CEO Ian Morrice. Through this organisation Metcash has pledged to drive gender pay equality. The company was pleased to report that  Metcash’s gender pay gap at the end of the financial year had reduced to less than 2%.

Metcash also formally recognised International Men’s Day and International Women’s Day events and provided facilitated discussion forums for all staff.