Throughout the year, we provided our employees with health and safety training. In total, 43,316 hours were allocated to health and safety training of 22,425 participants. This is an increase of 67.1% in hours versus 2020 (which was severely impacted by COVID-19). This includes broader safety training, as well as training on specific work-related hazards and situations. The training is held during paid working hours. We use multiple formats, such as e-learning, in person training and blended formats. Training continued in 2021, taking COVID-restrictions into account. We are monitoring health and safety training on a continuous basis and in 2021 extended our curriculum to cover Poland (DC Bierún), Italy and the Czech Republic. In all the countries in which we operate, we ensure occupational health requirements and legislation are fully complied with through medical check-ups for our employees. In the Netherlands, we offer various types of preventive medical examinations for our employees. For example, preventive medical examinations are provided to store employees and managers in stores. Of the people invited, 38% were examined, exceeding the retail benchmark of 30%.

0
23,64
5,59

Work related fatalities
Lost time injury rate
Total recordable injury rate

In full alignment with applicable health and safety regulations, every country office conducts periodic consultation and engagement with internal stakeholders. Our employees are continuously encouraged to speak up on all health and safety topics. We use multiple channels for employee participation and consultation; always with the single aim of involving and including our employees in an active process of creating safe working conditions for all. Our businesses in France and Poland have dedicated Health & Safety Committees to address health and safety aspects, while in Belgium and Netherlands health and safety is on the agenda of the workers council. All our offices, stores and distribution centres conduct hazard identification and risk assessment studies to determine potential root causes of workplace injuries, illnesses and incidents. Catalysed by applicable legal requirements in every country, we proactively identify and periodically assess our workplaces for existing and potential hazards. Consequently, we can adopt effective controls to protect our employees from these hazards, help avoid injuries, illnesses and incidents, minimise or eliminate safety and health risks and provide employees with safe and healthy working conditions. As in previous years, there were no fatalities linked to work-related activities at Action in 2021. 

In 2021, we established a more coordinated international approach to health and safety, stepping up from the earlier country-level approach. A new health and safety strategy was designed and is being aligned with internal stakeholders. It includes performance metrics which are reviewed monthly and are embedded in our decision making, budget planning, workstreams and communications.

In every country where we operate, we have an independent health and safety management system in place. This is driven by applicable regulatory requirements. Workplace hazard identification and risk assessment, relevant health and safety training, and a proactive preventive health and safety mindset drive our performance towards a safe working environment. Within Action, our dedicated team grew in 2021 to 20 people focused on the area of Health and Safety (from 16 people in 2020), and it is part of the responsibilities of many others. Where relevant, partnerships with external medical services and health and safety technical service providers have been established. Our Health and Safety system covers all people working for Action, directly or indirectly.

In 2021, we conducted a review to ensure that all our regional businesses have adequate risk identification and assessments in place, not just to comply with legal requirements, but also to improve our rate of hazard and risk assessment and consistent preventive and corrective actions. For example, our businesses in the Netherlands conducted a new Risk Inventory & Evaluation (RI&E) study covering all our stores and country offices. Our newer countries – the Czech Republic, Spain and Italy - also applied RI&E assessments.

We offer educational programmes in vocational schooling, and we have strong partnerships to provide the best foundation for future career development. In 2021, students participated in Germany (120), France (73) and the Netherlands (291). As a result, we are investigating expanding this programme into Austria, Belgium, Italy and the Czech Republic in 2022, with other countries to follow at a later date. Action also provides a scholarship fund for our employees’ children. The Action Scholarship Fund was founded in 2017 and aims to help our employees pay for their children’s education if they cannot afford to finance it themselves. Due to COVID-19, we did not have an active communications campaign around the scholarship fund in 2021. However, we still received applications and provided financial support.

In 2021, we hired 119 employees in the Netherlands via WerkSaam, an inter-municipal initiative focused on reintegrating people who are distanced from the labour market. Most of them work at our distribution centre in Zwaagdijk, mainly on warehouse processes and cleaning. We also recruited 35 people to work at our Echt distribution centre via Westrom, a reintegration agency. In other countries, we have similar long-term partnerships and projects. In France, we hired and/or trained around 1,400 store employees through MRS and POEC/POEI and 30 young store employees via Impact Confiance in the Paris area. In Austria we extended our network of partners (like BBRZ, Verein Zoro) and hired 10 employees. Lastly, in Poland we employed 10 people through similar partners.

The Action employee Net Promotor Score (eNPS) shows the extent to which Action employees promote Action to others as an employer. Employees are generally positive about workload, collaboration, direct leadership, appreciation, teamwork and working effectively. Obviously, areas for improvement remain, such as showing appreciation more often and the energy people derive from their work. In addition to the Voice of Action and more traditional (appraisal) methods, we use digital tools to obtain feedback from our employees. For example, in 2021 we successfully tested an exit survey tool to identify the reasons people have for leaving Action. This will be rolled out in 2022. In 2022, we will add an on-boarding survey to hear from new joiners how they are doing 60 days into their new job. Both surveys generate a valuable understanding of our strengths and areas for improvement, supported by a clear follow-up process.

With the support of our store, logistics and office colleagues from different countries, we defined what makes Action a unique place to work. Helping potential employees understand what working at Action is all about is especially important in countries where we are relatively new and unknown as a consumer- and employer brand. In Germany, the Netherlands and Austria we have started a referral recruitment pilot to use our employees’ network to recruit new people. This is particularly effective as our employees can talk about what working at Action is like and can properly assess who best fits our team. In 2022, the programme will be rolled out to other countries. Digitalization is key for our recruitment processes. Our recruitment website action.jobs and targeted campaigns help us share vacancies with a wide audience. Over 1.3 million people visited our recruitment website in 2021, up 20% from 2020. In 2021, we developed an online assessment tool for use in the application process for store personnel. This will be tested in the Netherlands and France until May 2022 and will, if proven successful, then be rolled out to other countries.

With close to 52,000 employees at the end of 2021, Action plays an important role in society. In addition, nearly 16,000 individuals work for Action on a basis other than an employment contract. In 2021, we created 5,786 new jobs.

In 2021, our employee numbers continued to grow. We recruited over 38,000 new employees in total. As is typical for retail, a large proportion of those employees join Action for a short period of time and a limited number of hours per week. Usually as a first job alongside school to gain work experience and useful skills for their further career, to combine their job with studying or taking care of their family. For retailers, this automatically leads to a relatively high employee turnover rate.

In most of the countries where we operate, the labour market is challenging; yet we continue to successfully recruit the right number of talented people. In 2021, we developed our first international employer branding campaign: ‘Work at Action. Be surprised.’

• Providing work to nearly 68,000 people under safe working conditions
  
  
• Training over 33,500 people, making use of creative (digital) solutions
  
  
• Over 96% of employees participating in the Voice of Action engagement research
  
  
• Introducing talent identification tools for talent management

Since our people are essential to our success, health and safety management and employee well-being are key priorities at Action. This continued to be especially important in 2021, as COVID-19 required a tailored response to continue ensuring a healthy and safe working environment for all our employees. In 2021, 3,069 of our employees contracted COVID-19 (vs. 1,379 in 2020). The source of infections varied. We closely monitored (and continue to monitor) all relevant details and were able to minimise infections. Fortunately, no major outbreaks occurred in an Action working environment.

On World Health & Safety Day (28 April 2021), we connected with all our offices, stores and distribution centres to address the COVID-19 pandemic, promoting our health and safety culture and engaging our employees in all the efforts made to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in our workplaces. And in May and October, we held Health & Safety Weeks in our stores. During these weeks, all stores bolstered awareness of a different health and safety topic (such as COVID-19, manual handling, ergonomics, safety culture, aggression and violence, learning from general safety mistakes). A toolbox was shared to discuss key hazards and risks, as well as suggesting suitable behaviours, processes and preventive measures to adopt and improve. In 2022, this initiative will be expanded from two to three weeks, with health, safety and security as main themes. We developed new e-learning modules such as a health and safety section within the general onboarding programme and an emergency and evaluation preparedness training for international headquarters staff.

In addition to supporting the development of our employees, we consider it just as important to invest in future generations of retail talent. Therefore, we offer students the opportunity to learn about the nuts and bolts of an international organisation via internships.

Through the Action Academy, we offer our employees the opportunity to participate in training courses in different fields and for different purposes, ranging from work safety and systems to leadership training. Despite COVID-19 restrictions, we trained over 33,500 employees in 2021, exceeding our goal of 25,000.

In 2021, we introduced a 9-box grid tool that supports the recognition of talent. The tool assesses talent based on performance and growth potential. An employee’s position in the grid allows managers to select relevant development actions for that employee. Apart from identifying individual talent, the tool also provides useful insights and trends. In 2022, the use of this tool will be rolled out. Via continuous benchmarking, we ensure that our salary levels and benefits for our staff are, and remain, competitive.

To drive engagement and foster development we want our employees to feel recognized for the work they do. This takes place in many forms, such as training, performance appraisals, internal promotions, fair pay and benefits and feedback.

In all our markets, we aim to hire local country management staff. In doing so, we not only secure relevant market knowledge and cultural insights, but also benefit as an organisation from their input.

We provide a welcoming working environment where people can be themselves, irrespective of their background, orientation, gender, age or religion. At Action, we give people the chance to start their career, make a change or reintegrate into working life. Action offers a job for everyone, with flexible, full- or part time working options.

Our workforce reflects the diversity of our customer base. We are particularly proud that across our stores, distribution centres and offices, there are 124 nationalities. Every year, more people from all over the world join our thriving business.

Engaged and committed employees are key to our customers and our company. In 2021, we measured the engagement among our employees through the Voice of Action. Over 96% of our employees responded by completing an online survey. As a result of our expansion, the number of respondents doubled compared to the previous Voice of Action.

The 2021 Voice of Action shows that our employees’ commitment and customer focus are high and above the industry benchmark. The scores show a similar pattern across all countries, with even higher scores in Austria, Germany and Poland.

Making use of a bottom-up approach, all teams created action plans around at least one area to improve and one area to preserve. To maintain privacy, teams with more than 10 respondents to the survey received their own specific team results, while smaller teams used relevant aggregated results.

Despite a damaged house due to the flooding, store manager Jennifer Mayon (Liège, Belgium, in the picture on the right) continued to serve our customers with great energy. She also helped out in the Verviers store that was also impacted by the flooding.

Every day Action

Strong leadership is essential to keep our employees engaged, to preserve our Action DNA and culture and to deliver our plans and drive results.

Our leadership philosophy is based on three principles: leading, connecting and enabling people, with the Action values forming the foundation. In 2021, we also introduced specific competencies describing how we expect leaders to behave.

A leadership programme for our (assistant) store managers is already in place. This is supplemented by tailored programmes for our regional managers and our senior leadership. They combine learning-on-the-job, knowledge transfer between peers and formal (classroom/online) learning. By covering our entire leadership, we make sure that we maintain our Action DNA, drive engagement and support Action's continued growth.

The Action formula is powerful, but our success as a business depends entirely on the enthusiasm and commitment of our people. They are in charge of the stores and help with customer navigation every single day. Irrespective of our different backgrounds or position within the company, we all share the Action values. These are the core of our success, as they provide the basis for our interaction with each other, our customers and our business partners.

The COVID-19 pandemic required significant flexibility from our employees. Both during the (partial) lockdowns and when the stores were open, they worked hard to create a safe working and shopping environment. For this reason, all employees in our stores, distribution centres and offices received an extra financial incentive to reward them for their extraordinary commitment in 2021.

To stay in touch while some of our stores and distribution centres were closed and almost all office employees were working from home, we used various (digital) communication channels to keep our employees safe, informed, motivated and engaged. These included an employee app, videos, interactive webinars and email updates. In September, we launched our digital Action Magazine for employees.

The fun, teamwork and respect create a great working atmosphere and make our people proud to work for Action. We offer our people equal opportunities to grow and develop, flexible hours at fair pay and benefits as well as a healthy and safe working environment.  This ‘people promise’ guides our human capital activities and initiatives.

CONTENT PEOPLE PILLAR

Action’s people are key to our success, now and in the future. Their commitment and energy enable us to meet our ambitions. We want everyone who works for Action to be a proud and engaged Action ambassador. Our workforce should be diverse, inclusive and engaged, with ample opportunities for growth. Their well-being is of paramount importance to us.