Healthy and Inclusive Workplace
We are committed to delivering equal opportunities and a diverse, equitable and inclusive workforce and culture.
In 2021, we looked at every aspect of our business, from employment, pay and recruitment practices, to our everyday policies and procedures and identified where we can improve diversity, training and health.
2.3%
Increase of women in leadership roles globally
2.4%
Increase of people of color in leadership roles in the U.S.
Nearly 20000
Employees utilizing self-paced learning tools
$500M+
Spent with diverse suppliers, surpassing our goal by $21.5 million
91000
Employees received unconscious bias training in 13 languages
To truly understand and serve our customers and patients, our team members must reflect the communities in which we work. With more than 315,000 team members in nine countries, we’ve put diversity, equity, and inclusion at the center of everything we do.
And while our strategy is global, our execution is local as we have listened and learned before taking meaningful action based on local cultures, regulations, and customers.
We brought 21 leaders from across WBA together to share local experiences, provide regional ambassadorship, and accelerate the pace and adoption of diverse, equitable and inclusive DE&I initiatives, as part of our Global Inclusion Council.
This year it formed a dedicated supplier diversity subcommittee to bring our global supplier diversity program to our Boots UK division.
Our leadership accountability model holds leaders responsible for meeting DE&I goals, including increasing representation of people of color and women in leadership levels.
In 2021, we met our target to bring diverse candidate interview slates and interview panels for every leadership role. We set clear targets to bring more women and people from underrepresented communities into leadership roles in 2022 and are well on the way to achieving them.
In 2021, we welcomed Roz Brewer as our new CEO. She is currently one of only two African American women CEOs of a Fortune 500 company.
As of August 31, 2021, the WBA senior management team was composed of three men and three women and included three people of color.
We want to be transparent about diversity at all levels and publish full details of our status and goals in our global WBA Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report.
In 2021, we exceeded our target to spend $500 million with diverse Tier 1 direct suppliers in the U.S. by more than $21 million. To ensure accountability, we tied this goal to a bonus program, encouraging team members and leaders to consider diverse and small businesses in contracting opportunities.
This program is designed to provide equitable opportunities and source goods and services from enterprises owned by women, people of color, veterans and service-disabled veterans, people with disabilities and LGBTQ+ people. It also applies to businesses owned by people who are socially or economically disadvantaged.
The foundation of our brand is a promise to improve the health and well-being of our community and that includes our team members. We continuously evaluate our wellness offerings by measuring utilization, competitive benchmarking and bi-annual employee surveys to ensure we’re fulfilling our promise.
Walgreens team members enrolled in our medical plan can now access a new digital platform, where they can get myWalgreens cash, our $0 copay medication program, our Quit Tobacco support program, up to five free counseling sessions, tracking tools for personal health goals, and more.
We also support our part-time U.S. Walgreens team members with 401(k) employer match, Prescription Savings Club, annual flu shots, 365 Get Healthy Here, Life365 Employee Assistance Program, the PerkSpot employee discount program and others.
In the UK, Boots offers a flexible program where team members can personalize their benefits. In addition to insurance and time off, there’s an employee assistance program, loyalty awards, pension programs and an employee discount.
COVID-19 continues to impact the way we work and live, and in 2021, Boots UK created a framework to evaluate risk for vulnerable team members, provide help when needed and start proactive, compassionate conversations with team members determined to be high-risk.
The Walgreen Benefit Fund in the U.S. and the Boots Benevolent Fund in the UK - both funded by charitable donations - assist current employees and retirees experiencing financial hardship, with more than 1,000 applicants in the U.S. receiving funding and £130,000 ($172,000) going to staff in the UK.
We also quickly mobilized to provide disaster relief to impacted team members in Veracruz, Mexico, who lost their homes to Hurricane Grace. When Germany was devastated by floods, Alliance Healthcare Deutschland GmbH initiated a local donation program for employees to contribute to the charitable organization, Aktion Deutschland hilft e.V (Germany is Helping), supporting flood victims.
The global pandemic has dramatically impacted mental health, and in 2021 we stepped up our mental and behavioral health offerings accordingly.
Both Walgreens and Boots UK focused on building specialized expertise around mental health through Mental Health First Aid Training. In the U.S., the Walgreens program, in partnership with the National Council for Mental Wellbeing and American Pharmacists Association (APhA), committed to train more than 300 human resources partners to help them better assist employees in crisis and non-crisis situations.
In the UK, Boots expanded Mental Health First Aider training to critical roles and provided skills-based webinars and presentations in partnership with LifeWorks and Colleague Health.
To reduce hesitancy and stigma associated with seeking help, Walgreens now has an integrated platform for employee health and well-being that emphasizes social connectedness during the COVID-19 era with opportunities to share gratitude, offer encouragement and give awards. Our Boots HUG program (Hello, Understand, Go the Extra Mile) has been hugely successful in initiating well-being conversations with team members, and more than 33,000 team members were trained in HUG in 2021.
