At Superdrug we love that everyone is unique. We respect and appreciate what makes us different and how important it is to belong. We are committed to being a truly inclusive workplace. Where diversity is embraced, success is celebrated, communities come together, and innovation is encouraged. Kendra has been at the helm of this, championing diversity and inclusion since 2017. It was in 2017 that Kendra started the first employee representative group ‘Women’s Network’ (so called at the time and later changed to ‘Gender Equality’), where she recognised that there was an opportunity to make a real difference for the over 80% of women in the business. The group looked at the way women were recruited, right through to their development and professional career paths, with the aim to make real changes to the way things were run.
In 2019, Kendra moved into her current role of Senior Inclusion and Engagement Manager, she has since developed and launched Superdrug’s overall inclusion & diversity strategy; Everyone Matters. Everyone Matters aims to make sure we are a truly inclusive workplace. Everyone Matters focuses on 6 core pillars; Access All Areas (Social Mobility), Harmony (BAEM) Disability, Gender Equality, LGBTQ+ and our newest our Age Network.
She also leads the People pillar of Superdrug’s Doing Good Feels Super Strategy, which is focused on making workplaces more inclusive for every employee and prospective employee., ensuring we drive wellbeing and ensures fair employment in everything Superdrug does; from policies and processes, recruitment and learning, to health and safety.
Throughout her role, Kendra has identified the value in partnering with external providers to help upskill the business, including Global Diversity Practice, and since 2021 with Dial Global to upskill and challenge Superdrug leaders. This partnership has included the roll out of an inclusive leadership programme for the senior leadership team and managers across the business to help challenge and understand unconscious bias. Over the last 4 years she has also been instrumental in rolling out wider training to the business, including webinars, training sessions and panels on numerous topics to educate, upskill and challenge mindsets to make sure all teams feel like they can be their true selves at work.
She has also been key in driving new polices and developing training and toolkits that support important topics such as, gender reassignment, menopause, domestic violence, gender neutral language and updating our people systems so that people can identify as themselves. In 2023 she wrote the ‘Global People Toolkit on Inclusion’ for our parent company A.S Watson, which has been shared across people teams in Asia and Europe to help support each business unit on their diversity and inclusion journey.
Committed to ensuring inclusion and diversity remains a key focus, and in 2022 Kendra also helped to spearhead the launch of Superdrug’s ‘Where you can be you’ campaign, which celebrated the diversity of colleagues and hoped to attract new talent. This was a joint project across the internal comms and talent and inclusion teams to bring to life teams voices to talk about what it means to them to work for Superdrug and to be themselves at work.
Kendra is passionate about inclusion and diversity and her ongoing commitment to the subject and to the business can be seen through the latest employee engagement survey, where 79% of Superdrug’s retail workforce say ‘I can be myself at work’ and 81% of head office staff also feel this way. She works with our employee networks to ensure everyone has a voice and that helps to inform and guide our strategy and make sure we are better everyday.
As a result of Kendra’s leadership, Superdrug has been recognised by the FTE Leaders in diversity report. You can Listen to more about what she has done here: https://audioboom.com/posts/8016991-proud-to-be-superdrug
