People & 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 are skilled at strengthening the community in a team. These are skills that can easily be translated into civilian workplaces, and at Salling Group we have been very successful with our veteran efforts, for which we have won the Veteran Award, among other things.

"For us, it is natural to reach out to the society we are part of. The veterans have made a huge effort for Denmark, and we are proud to be allowed to give something back to them and at the same time benefit from their experience and skills," stated by 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 labor market. It can be anything from complicated diagnoses to labor market-cultural barriers, extraordinarily long unemployment, etc. I

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 meeting stability and develop work ability, work identity, competences, etc.

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 a job satisfaction and, over time, believe that there is room for them in the labor 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 dialogue with the job centre, so that additional support can be provided immediately when something becomes difficult.

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 labor 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 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 labor 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 tells that the person wearing it may need extra understanding if it is difficult for example to read the name of a product, remember the code for the payment card or needs extra distance or time at checkout.

With more than 65,000 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 employed more than 1,000 young people with challenges in part-time jobs with mentoring to help them on the labor 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 labor 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 labor market-oriented skills and general education. The offer differs from the educational offers that this group often encounters.

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

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

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

In Salling Group, we get the pleasure of committed colleagues, who especially spread good mood in everyday life.

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Since the summer of 2018, we have collaborated with Gladfonden on the ´Flexuddannelsen´, which aims to develop the education area, so that people with STU education 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 clarified, so that at the end of the education it is determined whether the young person should have been granted, for example, a flex-job.

The experiences with the flexi-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 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 labor market through a job with wage subsidy 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 the National Association LEV have been employed in a job with a wage subsidy for supplementary disability pension. The experiences are very positive, and the participants experience an improved quality of life by making a difference in the labor 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 on 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 organization and are happy to take special consideration so that the individual can bring their strengths and skills into play.

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