Fostering an inclusive culture at Zalando’s warehouses

In May 2022, Zalando conducted its first Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Survey to listen to and learn from our employees’ experiences. The results of the survey helped us understand where we’re succeeding and where more attention is required to improve the collective experience for everyone at Zalando.

Over the past year, we’ve been devising individualized D&I action plans to put in place throughout all 24 of our Business Units (BUs), creating a tailored approach based on the current performance of each BU and its employees' Inclusion Index¹ score. Johanna Salewsky, Senior Manager Equality and Diversity, explains how D&I survey findings were translated into actionable goals for our teams throughout the fulfillment centers in Germany.

Hi Johanna, what’s your role at Zalando?

My role at Zalando is Senior Manager Equality and Diversity. I’m responsible for Equality Management and Diversity Management in our German warehouses and advise other Business Units on D&I-related actions. Besides consultancy and giving workshops, I’m directly involved in implementing our D&I initiatives in German fulfillment centers.  

What D&I challenges are you and your team solving at the moment?

In 2023, we devoted a lot of effort to refining our strategic direction and clarifying our objectives. At the moment, we’re actively carrying out our projects to realize our Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) goals. Our main challenge right now is to avoid getting too caught up in small details. Recognizing that diversity is a highly complex subject, we know it’s crucial to review our goals on a regular basis. However, these reflections shouldn’t hinder our progress. The guiding principle should be: plan, execute, reflect, and conclude.

What are some of the barriers to inclusion that affect Logistics in particular?

One specific barrier we face in logistics is communication. A large part of our workforce isn’t connected to our internal digital communication channels, which requires us to use a variety of alternative channels that can differ in content and clarity. We also have to take into account the huge range of languages spoken on-site when we’re communicating and facilitating D&I efforts. But we’re aware of this problem and together with the D&I team we’re working on overcoming communication barriers.

I also noticed that more cases of unequal treatment in 2023 were reported by leads and not by the affected person. This shows that leads are aware of their responsibilities regarding discrimination. However, we can’t ignore the extra barrier many warehouse employees face in practice as they don't have the same access to internal tools to reach out to the Equality team. It's something we’re definitely working on and, in any case, we still have some way to go to make the culture at our logistics centers more inclusive so that Equal Treatment Act cases decrease.

¹ The Inclusion Index is our metric for measuring the progress of Zalandos’ Inclusion Experience and is based on survey participants’ opinions on four statements that were empirically assessed by our external provider People Insight Ltd. to measure the inclusion-related experiences of survey participants.

Where did you succeed in terms of tangible initiatives in 2023?

Our greatest success in 2023 was the work we did around employee enablement. Throughout the year, we ran Diversity Weeks on the topics of “Unconscious Bias” and “Religion and Worldview”.

Another big step was making two workshops mandatory for all Logistics leads from January 2023: firstly, the “AGG” workshop that explains the building blocks of the Equal Treatment Act legislation in Germany, and what it means in practice, as well as the “Unconscious Bias” workshops that explore different types of biases and offer suggestions about how to minimize these. As of October 2023, around 80% of all leads within the logistics organization took part in these training sessions.

One project I’m proud to have initiated in 2023 for our Gender Inclusion pillar aims to examine the gender disparity between women and men in logistics. We conducted interviews with 15 female employees to gather valuable qualitative data. We’re now in the process of drafting a paper outlining the necessary changes required to foster a more inclusive environment, such as further enablement measures for leads or creating strong networks for women in logistics centers.

Lastly, at the start of the year, we introduced Diversity Ambassadors in each warehouse. Their role is to build links between D&I team and the various business teams. This connection enables us to gain better insights into the effects our efforts have and to identify areas for improvement. The success of our work is evident as people become increasingly aware of the principles of Diversity and Inclusion and their significance.

How important is it to approach all these initiatives strategically?

It’s important to have clarity and structure. We’ve just formulated our own strategy for our German warehouses that aligns with Zalando’s overarching do.BETTER strategy, which guides the entire business. It focuses on the three pillars of gender inclusion, visibility and engagement, and disability.

What have you got planned for each of these pillars?

Our primary aim is to establish a gender-inclusive workplace. This involves a specific focus on enhancing women's representation in leadership positions. Secondly, our goal is to enable employees, especially those with leadership responsibilities to proactively create an inclusive workplace where everyone feels welcome. And lastly, aligning with the do.BETTER strategy, we’ll be putting in place processes to encourage genuine feelings and experiences of inclusion for employees with disabilities.

What inspires you personally to work in D&I?

What inspires me to work on D&I projects in general is to make a change. When I run training courses, I see resistance, which is totally normal and something we face in our daily work. But then I also see how people really want to understand their own biases, how they want to be an ally, and how they want to be inclusive. This always touches me and empowers me to continue with our work.

Conducting interviews with women also showed me how important it is to include people in our work and not just to make assumptions based on data. The feeling of inclusion is not something that’s easy to express in a survey or on a scale from 1 to 10. It’s far more complex, and that’s why it’s so important to initiate dialogues, ask questions, and work together to achieve our goals.

What are your hopes and dreams for D&I at Zalando and for the wider world?

The overarching vision of D&I work should always be that at one point it won’t be needed anymore. However, let's be realistic; we won't reach that point in the near future, and that's perfectly acceptable to acknowledge. My hope is that people gain a deeper understanding of why it's essential to examine our own biases and be willing to relinquish privileges in the pursuit of equality and equity. Because D&I isn’t merely a nice idea - it forms the very bedrock of a great company and workplace.