I&D in consumer goods and grocery - Molson Coors case study

Katie Pearce
Chief People & Diversity Officer, Molson Coors

Adam Firby
HR Director Western Europe, Molson Coors

Your work on mental health is very advanced at Molson Coors. Can you talk a bit about that?

AF: Mental health became an area of focus around five or six years ago. One member of the team – Tina Samson – had a particularly strong passion for mental health, and she really sparked a fire in the organisation that changed mindsets and changed how we think as leaders, which is fantastic. So, the wellbeing group was built very much from the bottom-up, it came from the people who indicated that this is something they wanted to talk about. Yes, it had senior sponsorship and all the right structures around it, but it was really an employee project.

Since then, it has kept on gaining momentum. Around four years ago we started investing in mental health first-aiders, giving people the tools to talk about the topic and help themselves and others. We were blown away by the number of people who wanted to be trained – we had around 100 applications, each one of them with a personal story about why mental health was close to their heart. We’ve started training more people, and we’ve got an aspiration in Western Europe to get 10% of our population trained as mental health first-aiders. We want to get to a point where one in every ten people is someone you can turn to talk to.

How do you maintain momentum and keep the entire organisation engaged in the topic of positive mental health?

AF: It’s about communicating really heavily around its importance, telling stories and encouraging people to talk. Some people in our business very bravely went on camera to explain their personal challenges. People still talk about those videos now, and we reiterate them every so often. We have a #letskeeptalking campaign, and we celebrate key days of the year like World Mental Health Day. This is definitely one of the biggest things we’ve done in the business, is just get people talking.

KP: You can really feel the power of honesty and openness. I remember talking to people on the shop-floor team, who told me that they’d been working at Molson Coors for 40 years and this was the first time they were having these sorts of vital conversations.

What impact has your work on mental health had on the rest of the I&D agenda?

AF: I just think the two naturally merge, in terms of the cultural output we’re trying to deliver. I know it’s a little twee, but it feeds into people genuinely just being themselves. Because if they’re themselves, they’re happy, they’ll be brilliant at work. That’s the output.

KP: It has definitely made us think about our diversity and inclusion strategy and how much we want to focus on the inclusion element over the diversity. And already, the reactions that we’re getting across the total business – beyond just Western Europe – have been really positive. Everybody gets inclusion, and understands how they can be a part of it. And that’s very linked to the mental health piece, around having positive wellbeing and open conversations.

Molson Coors is a global company. What impact has this had on I&D?

KP: Our wider business is beautifully diverse and multi-cultural, spanning across multiple geographies. But this brings challenges. On diversity, for example, we have to balance being culturally sensitive to different historic cultures with being forward-thinking, progressive and brave.

Why is it important for you to put ‘inclusion’ above ‘diversity’?

KP: For me, I&D can’t be a project or a new scheme. Our focus on inclusion is about making sure everyone – whoever they are – feels that our culture is a place where they can be who they want to be. We want people to feel as though they belong.

We’re on a journey towards greater diversity and representation – we’re not there yet. But for us, we’re passionate about the fact that it starts with the right inclusive culture.