Sustainability COMMUNITY continued Listen and learn report on page 112. Attendance is recorded at each meeting and includes diversity metrics – We will continue to develop effective two-way typically around a 50-50% gender split, with 20% communication channels that are engaging and non-white. involving. Based on feedback and last year’s experience, NATIONAL COLLEAGUE VOICE (NCV) we aim to increase the meeting length to Our colleagues are formally represented across improve in-depth debate further and to give our business through our colleague voice forum, more space between meetings for information which ensures that our colleagues ‘have a voice’ to be communicated from national to local and can engage regularly with members of our colleague voice representatives and vice versa. Board and senior management team. One local We made a step-change this year; our colleague representative from each store and site, and representatives are more confident and engaged around eight to ten representatives from our and they challenge and contribute more readily. support centres are elected for a period of two We are committed to evolving further how we years via our ‘Home Comforts’ intranet. From this listen to our colleague voices and act upon what group, 14 colleagues are elected to represent we hear. colleagues at our National Colleague Voice (NCV) COLLEAGUE ENGAGEMENT SURVEY meetings: We ran our twice-yearly colleague surveys in No. of NCV November 2020 and May 2021. In the May survey, Business areas/team representatives our participation rate was very high at 79% Stores 5 with record rates in our Customer Care Centre Customer centre 1 and Stoke distribution centre, and improved Manufacturing centre 1 participation in our home delivery network team. Home Delivery Network 1 Our overall colleague engagement (eNPS) score improved by1.0%pts and over 70% of store Stoke distribution centres 1 colleagues are ‘promoters’ (meaning that they Support centres 5 would recommend working at Dunelm to a friend). Total 14 We were pleased to have improved our eNPS score during a challenging year of disruption Prior to the Covid-19 crisis, NCV meetings were and furlough and that a recently added question usually held twice a year in person in relatively indicated that around 90%of colleagues expected formal settings. Retrospectively we now realise to remain with Dunelm in FY22. eNPS is a Group this was not the most conducive way to ensure KPI and executive bonus measure, see page 33. our colleague voices were heard. The Covid-19 GROUP KPI pandemic forced us to change our format – for the better. By moving it online we could increase the We have analysed data from our last few number of meetings and invite more attendees engagement surveys to understand what really to better represent our business; it also made our resonates with our colleagues (purpose, shared colleagues feel less intimidated about speaking up values and confidence in our leadership) versus and we built on this by training representatives to what may disengage them (perceived unfairness, better understand the NCV role and consultation feeling unsafe or ill-equipped to contribute to process. overall success) and to create tangible action plans. Glassdoor is another channel that we use We introduced online interactive tools such as to understand how Dunelm colleagues feel about ‘live polling’ to help shape our conversations and working for us, and we are one of the highest- changed the structure of the meeting – starting scoring retailers on this platform. with a ‘What’s on your mind?’ session, followed by in-depth discussions on particular topics. Prior toeach meeting, colleagues are sent comprehensive 79% and often confidential pre-reads to encourage of colleagues took part in our last engagement active participation and meetings typically include survey, with record rates in our Customer Care break-out groups. A list of topics covered, Board Centre and Stoke distribution centre, and attendance and outcomes is shared after each improved take-up in our home delivery network. meeting. An overview of topics covered and an insight intothe NCVfrom a store colleague perspective can be found in our governance 70 DUNELM GROUP PLCANNUAL REPORT & ACCOUNTS 2021