Nurturing talent

Enabling our people to reach their full potential and thrive involves building an inclusive and supportive working environment.

Although real estate is a physical asset class, the business of acquiring, developing and managing it requires great people. Our long-term success, then, is dependent on the expertise, commitment and motivation of our workforce.

The Nurturing Talent pillar of our Responsible SEGRO strategy focuses on our goal to create a place where people are fulfilled by the work they do, inspired by their environment, and supported and developed to reach their full potential.

Our ambition is to have an inclusive and supportive culture with a motivated workforce of talented people that reflects the make-up of the countries that we operate in. This is not only the right thing to do, but we firmly believe that it will also make our business stronger and more resilient.

We recognise that as a company and as an industry, we need to do more to achieve greater diversity and to become truly inclusive, and we will support and challenge our suppliers and partners to do the same for their people.

True diversity requires diversity at all levels of the business and across all geographies in which we operate. We will achieve this through education and training to raise awareness and promote inclusive behaviours, and by bringing more diverse thinking into SEGRO.

Broadening our recruitment practices and graduate sourcing, as well as introducing innovative people policies that, for example, promote agile working will help. Yet we recognise that our stable workforce and small, geographically spread headcount will continue to be a factor in the lack of representation in certain areas.

We are working proactively to address specific as well as general opportunities to accelerate our progress towards these diversity goals. We are also proud to support sector-wide diversity initiatives such as Real Estate Balance, the British Property Federation D&I statement and the 30% Club.

Embedding our purpose and values into every area of our organisation is a longstanding priority for us, and we believe the excellent scores that come back from our regular employee engagement surveys is a direct reflection of how we put these values and goals into action.

Our supportive culture is a critical part of our success, as an employer and as a business. Which is why we continue to prioritise it through pioneering measures such as our network of wellbeing ambassadors, our confidential 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme which offers every employee round-the-clock access to qualified counsellors.

The inclusion of these aims in our Responsible SEGRO framework reflects the high value we place on the wellbeing of each other, whether that is by ensuring the highest standards of safety, fairness and working conditions or creating an environment where it’s ok to speak out, share experiences and ask for help.

From family-friendly policies that support working parents throughout their careers to an agile working policy for all employees, nurturing talent means enabling people from all walks of life to feel fulfilled and able to pursue personal goals and ambitions.

This inclusive, aspirational culture is backed up with access to training and development and the opportunity to own a stake in the company through share schemes open to everyone.

In 2021 we launched our Digital Academy giving all employees access to improved education resources on a range of digital topics with a variety of depths on offer. This included in-depth training for over 60 members of staff in our new data analysis and visualisation tool to empower them to make better use of data.

At the other end of the scale were short introductory “What the Tech Is...?” briefings by expert speakers on topics including the ‘internet of things’, drones, agile methodologies, and artificial intelligence.