Diversifying Aldi’s Area Management talent pool with the Leaders of Tomorrow

Diversifying Aldi’s Area Management talent pool with the Leaders of Tomorrow

Green Park have been Partnered with Aldi UK&I since 2019, originally supporting with the creation and implementation of their People and D&I Strategy, EMBRACE, and have since delivered inclusive leadership cultural intelligence training to all Middle and Senior Managers across the organisation. EMBRACE is made up of five key pillars, in 2023 Green Park began supporting with the fourth pillar which was focused on Diversity Recruitment, specifically looking at Diverse Talent Pipelining for key roles across the organisation to address certain areas of the business that were underrepresented by diverse groups, specifically ethnic minority colleagues.

The Challenge

Due to distinct lack of diversity at Senior Leadership level, Green Parks Consultants began a process of discovery to understand which succession routes to the upper echelons of leadership would be most effective to target in order to create long-term change. Green Park identified the Aldi's nationally renowned Area Management Programme was a direct feeder into leadership with a disproportionate lack of diversity, and as such proposed this would be the best demographic to target our Diverse Talent Solutions programme for.

The Process

Green Park’s Talent Consultants undertook an extensive diverse talent mapping exercise across the UK, combining our functional and vertical expertise to search across the Retail and Consumer sector as well as FMCG and other sectors where skillsets overlapped with role requirements.

Initially our team went out to market to identify and map talent for the Area Management position to understand the availability both inside and outside of sector. Following this our team carried out a proportionality assessment, which included detailed analysis via dashboards of the breakdown of talent across ethnic minority groups. This assessment report was utilised to inform Aldi’s short to long term talent strategy by shining the light on availability of talent in the market, and Aldi’s disconnect with it.

Once talent pools had been identified, our team proceeded to engage with candidates across each role to understand the external brand perception of Aldi, as well as whether the business would be considered as an employer of choice. Talent pools then underwent further qualification activities, to ensure maximum alignment to the vacancies available.

The Results

Our work has culminated in successful placements in the Area Management team and through capability building within their hiring manager population we were able to support and challenge their thinking to enable the internal teams to better connect with diverse candidates through the recruitment process and beyond.