Supermarket giant Morrisons is the highest ranking retailer for promoting social mobility. Retail Week finds out the secrets to its success.

Morrisons has a rich history of championing social mobility within its organisation. In 2019, it was the named 30th best employer for social mobility in the UK, the highest ranked retailer, according to the Social Mobility Foundation.

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A driving factor behind this is the grocer’s commitment to employing the best and most diverse pool of young talent.

To achieve this, Morrisons effectively has a two-pronged approach: its Morrisons in Schools programme, which provides employability workshops for kids at local schools, educating them on how to prepare a CV and behave in a job interview. The second prong is its extensive array of apprenticeships, which range from finance to engineering to butchery.

Morrisons early careers people manager Emma Cooksley explains: “In the last academic year, the Morrisons in Schools programme reached 31 out of the bottom 33 regions in the country in terms of social mobility.”

“In the last academic year, the Morrisons in Schools programme reached 31 out of the bottom 33 regions in the country in terms of social mobility”

Emma Cooksley, Morrisons

While Morrisons doesn’t directly recruit from the workshop, Cooksley believes it’s an important part of the grocer’s wider corporate responsibility and also provides an important window into the fact that working for a grocer is about more than just stacking shelves. 

“It’s part of what we see as our corporate responsibility, first of all. But it also helps with our recruitment. We build relationships with the schools that may then lead to kids coming to career fests.

“What we want to achieve by it is to help young people understand the diverse nature of food retailing. They see us as a supermarket and think the only jobs are stacking shelves.”

Morrisons also does a lot of work engaging with university students, Cooksley says. “We make sure we’re not just going to Russell Group universities,” she explains. “We look to widen the net as much as possible. We’re involved with BAME societies in those universities, so that we have as diverse an attraction strategy as possible.”

Diverse range of opportunities

Cooksley and Morrisons are rightly proud of the diverse range of early career opportunities offered by the retailer once it has made those connections with young talent. 

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Morrisons currently has 400 young people involved in early career programmes

“We currently have around 400 people involved in early career programmes across our organisation,” she says.

“We run 10 graduate programmes. We run four degree apprenticeship programmes. Our graduate schemes cover everything from finance, buying, supply chain and digital tech all the way through to retail and logistics.”

Ultimately, what’s most important for Cooksley is that “these are schemes that give our kids real work, from day one. Real work and real responsibility.” 

It’s this commitment to young talent and the depth and breadth of experiences offered that makes the Morrisons programme stand out from its competitors in this field, according to Cooksley.

“Our graduate schemes cover everything from finance, buying, supply chain and digital tech all the way through to retail and logistics”

Emma Cooksley, Morrisons

With its focus on reaching some of the most deprived areas of the UK and its diverse set of available programmes, Cooksley says that Morrisons young careers schemes are already beginning to bear fruit in terms of graduates coming into leadership roles. 

“We’ve just got to the point from our programme where we have people who started in these schemes now sitting among the top 65 leaders within the company.” 

Get involved in No Limits

If you are a senior retail leader and want to get involved in the No Limits campaign, or if you are a retail employee with an inspirational story of how the sector has changed your life for the better, contact Retail Week editor Luke Tugby on luke.tugby@retail-week.com

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