people

We ask our employees multiple times a year whether they feel valued, heard and involved, and can be who they want to be. We do this by sending out a digital questionnaire. In January 2023, employees reported an average rating of 8.0. In November 2023, the last measurement of the financial year, employees reported an average rating of 8.1.

HEMA pride was set up as a group to promote understanding of the LGBT+ community. They are also committed to creating connection and a safe (working) environment and keeping policies in focus. Activities in 2023 included organising a connecting pride drink at the HEMA office and supporting various local shopping initiatives with Pink Saturday. The team also launched a special product page in collaboration with COC Netherlands for students, pupils and teachers to make products readily available for Purple Friday. The team also helped create inclusive permanent shop signage in the new and remodelled HEMA shops featuring a genderqueer person, for example. The roll-out started in the summer of 2023 and in 2024 these images will also be visible in 125 remodelled shops. The new signage shows HEMA that everyone is welcome. The launch and nationwide sale of a rainbow tompouce pastry was successful, which enabled us to donate part of the proceeds to COC Netherlands. In 2023, the HEMA Pride group worked to further professionalise their efforts that will continue to roll out in 2024 and is supported by their own budget. Part of this plan includes re-intensifying collaboration with various NGOs, strengthening collaboration with COC Netherlands, Workplace Pride and organising educational events for HEMA employees.

Our employees have been wearing new company clothing in our remodelled and new shops since 2023. They put together their own items in order to be totally themselves in their workwear.

On 27 September 2023, Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Robbert Dijkgraaf visited HEMA. The reason for this was the impending laws and regulations for companies on a more balanced male-female ratio at the (sub)top. The minister wanted to learn more about HEMA's aspirations on diversity and inclusiveness. He pointed out that it's good to see that HEMA is serious about creating an inclusive working environment. He paid particular attention to the positive examples being used by HEMA to realise its objectives. Such as the same parental leave for all families and the internal HEMA pride working group.

In 2023 HEMA achieved Great Place To Work certification Belgium. Almost 70% of our employees in Belgium completed a survey that measures a company's trust index: i.e. the level of trust employees have in their company as an employer. The certificate means that 7 in 10 employees confidently say this is a great place to work.

Posters with our brand values have been displayed in every location since 2023. There are five of them, and they say something about what we as HEMA want to portray. About our culture, way of working and current and future colleagues. A diverse group of employees from all business units were asked to be photographed promoting our values. These posters saying ‘this is us’ were shared at each work location and can be found hanging in the canteens, corridors, offices and meeting rooms. An internal video has also been made, which is available to view on our intranet hey HEMA, among others.

On 1 July 2023, HEMA made the transition to the new HEMA employment conditions with the Retail Non-Food (RNF) collective labour agreement as the basis for it. Our affiliated companies already use this collective labour agreement. Company-specific schemes have been added for employees who are making the transition from their old CLA (HEMA CLA or HEMA HP CLA) to the new HEMA employment conditions. A transitional arrangement will also be in place for them. Every employee received a personal, accessible letter with an individual calculation that clearly showed what the transition would mean for an employee. An internal campaign was also set up with livestreams, newsletters, question-and-answer sessions, a roadshow and an on-call team. The majority of our employees switched to the new terms of employment.

Ongoing employee development is key. As such, we are increasingly seeing digitalisation as an opportunity. During the summer, all office employees and managers of the distribution centres and all employees of the HEMA offices in the Netherlands and Belgium attended a training day with artificial intelligence (AI) as the main theme. Everyone was asked to think about how AI can help with their jobs. Work is ongoing at the office as to how AI can simplify the way we work at HEMA.

The logistics service centre is a key link in HEMA's logistics chain. In 2023, a study of the working culture was conducted in which employees were able to provide their input on what HEMA can do socially to make it a safer and more pleasant work environment. The survey identified three areas of concern, namely leadership, teamwork and communication and the working environment. Based on the survey results, the ‘pleasant and safe working’ project was launched, under which various activities were organised. Including roundtable sessions, themed newsletters, brainstorming sessions, training for managers and meetings.

In addition, an awareness-raising programme around ‘working safely’ was started at the logistics service centre; with various posters and tools to start the conversation about working safely with each other.

All over-60s at the logistics service centre (>100) have been invited to an information session and intake as part of ‘Healthy Retirement’. In addition, a workshop was organised for all distribution centre employees on the theme ‘sleep yourself fit’ and various vitality activities were highlighted in the context of ‘get the best out of yourself and HEMA’ using videos and news items. From the results of the employee satisfaction survey, we see that satisfaction has increased significantly at the distribution centres, with a good rise in levels of satisfaction on all aspects surveyed.