People and Diversity

For many years, Salling Group has worked actively to offer veterans, including veterans with physical and mental disabilities, employment in store sales, storage and logistics. Veterans often have strong leadership qualities as well as logistical skills, and they are skilled at strengthening the community in a team. These are skills that can be easily translated into civilian workplaces, and at Salling Group, we have been very successful with our veteran initiatives, for which we have won the Veteran Award, among other things.

"For us, it is natural to reach out to the wider society to which we belong. The veterans have made a huge effort for Denmark, and we are proud to be able to give something back to them and at the same time benefit from their experience and skills," remarked CEO Per Bank at the Veteran Award 2022.

The job centres offer group internships for particularly vulnerable citizens, who benefit from being able to lean on others with the same or similar problems that make it difficult to gain a foothold in the labour market. This can be anything from complicated diagnoses to labour market-cultural barriers, extraordinarily long unemployment and so on.

In the group internships, the participants can lean on each other's experiences and progress. And special resources are made available by the company and the job centre, where they work with the barriers and challenges that may exist and arise in order to achieve stable attendance and develop work ability, work identity, competences and so on.

By being met at eye level and with the right understanding of what is difficult, we generally find that the participants achieve a higher attendance rate, develop job satisfaction and, over time, believe that there is room for them in the labour market or in the education system. The courses are followed up closely via conversations and dialogue in interaction with the participants and with the job centres. It is a decisive factor for the success of the collaboration that there is constant close communication with the job centre, so that additional support can be provided as soon as difficult situations arise.

Salling Group has distinguished itself several times by quickly making jobs and training available when large flows of refugees have hit the country. In 2015, we hired the first Syrian refugees, who quickly gained a foothold in the Danish labour market through simultaneous training in shop management and language. Since then, we have educated, taught languages ​​and employed many refugees, and when the war in Ukraine in 2022 sent millions fleeing, we had a well-tested concept at the ready. The picture shows Ukrainian Svitlana Volk, who is employed by Netto in Nørrebro.

Part of the success is due to the fact that since 2016 we have offered the two-year Integrationsgrunduddannelsen (IGU), which we were one of the first to introduce. IGU is designed to help refugees between the ages of 18 and 40 to get a foothold in the Danish labour market, among other things by improving language skills and cultural understanding.

Make the invisible visible. That was the message when we, as the first Danish retailer, entered the Sunflower Programme, which aims to help employees and customers make invisible disabilities and diagnoses visible.

A yellow sunflower on a green background hangs from a lanyard around the neck and signifies that the person wearing it may need extra understanding when things become difficult; for example, when reading the name of a product, remembering the pin code for a payment card or needing extra time or space at the checkout.

With more than 100.000 purchased sunflower lanyards, we have been able to make everyday life a little bit easier for many customers and colleagues across the country.

Since 2010, in collaboration with a number of municipalities, we have given part-time employment with mentoring to more than 1,000 young people with challenges to help them on the labour market.

The target group is young people between the ages of 15-18 who need a helping hand to get and keep a part-time job. The reasons can be anything from social isolation, anxiety and other diagnoses to a general lack of skills in relation to entering the labour market. The young people are employed directly in part-time jobs and, during a transition period, are assigned a company mentor who ensures that the young people get the necessary individual support.

The offer has been a success because the young people are offered a concrete initiative which gives them labour market-oriented skills and general education. The offer differs from the educational offers that this group often encounters.

We collaborate with sheltered workshops and the like to send both individuals and entire groups to, for example, our Bilka warehouses, where the tasks are many and versatile – so there are unique job opportunities for everyone.

The participants solve specific, limited tasks in close interaction with the instructor associated with the sheltered workshop. The tasks range from keeping track of the bottle room and washing baking trays to collecting baskets and other simple but important routine tasks.

It is our experience that, through the initiative, the participants enjoy a profitable contact with the world outside the sheltered workshop and benefit greatly from having their daily life in an ordinary workplace.

At Salling Group, we get the pleasure of committed colleagues who are particularly good at spreading good humour in everyday life.

See video.

Flex-education (Gladfonden)

Since the summer of 2018, we have collaborated with Gladfonden on the ´Flexuddannelsen´ (flex-education), which aims to develop the field of education so people with the STU education – a programme for young people with cognitive and physical disabilities and other young people with special needs – can also have the opportunity to further their education and development.

The training is carried out with real learning objectives, training in theoretical and practical skills and ends with an exam. At the same time, the student's functional level is ascertained so that, at the end of the education, it can be determined whether the young person should be granted a flex-job, for example.

The experiences with the flex-education speak for themselves – 90 percent of the students who complete the flex-education subsequently go into work (primarily flex-jobs) or further education.
 

Salling Group collaborates with the national disability association LEV to create jobs for people with cognitive disabilities. Our goal is to contribute to more developmentally-disabled people becoming permanently attached to the labour market through a job with wage subsidies for people on supplementary disability pension. The job in a store or department store typically includes training in social, personal and, not least, professional skills.

Since the collaboration was established in 2012, several hundred graduates from LEV have been employed in jobs with wage subsidies for their supplementary disability pensions. The experiences are very positive, and the participants experience an improved quality of life by making a difference in the labour market and being an equal part of the community. At the same time, we have built up a loyal and stable group of employees who thrive with familiar routine tasks in the stores and who contribute to a good and positive working climate.

´Fleksjob´ is an offer for people who, due to a permanent and significantly reduced ability to work, need employment on special terms. At Salling Group, we believe that all effort has value – not just for the individual but for the entire workplace. That is why we offer fleksjob placements in all parts of our organisation and are happy to make special considerations so the individual can bring their strengths and skills into play.

Watch video