Comment: Retail should be an industry for everyone

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The Paralympics legacy can continue through fair employment for all.

This year has provided an unprecedented platform for the disability agenda. London’s Paralympics bred a new group of national heroes and made it cool to celebrate our differences.

This refreshed outlook is long overdue for the 10 million disabled people in the UK who also deserve a chance to compete – in sport, in society and in meaningful, mainstream employment. The latter being something I am convinced the logistics sector can help with.

Eighteen months ago, I spent time at Walgreens in the US. I went to look at its automated distribution centres as research for the huge logistics’ transformation programme that Marks & Spencer is undertaking.

We’re on a quest to consolidate more than 100 regional warehouses into four high-tech national distribution centres – a major project that will bring benefits to our customers, our business and the people that we recruit to work with us.

On my trip I learnt as much about inclusive employment as automated logistics. I met Will, who has autism and had never worked before Walgreens offered him an opportunity to develop his skills. Will was a true inspiration and I was impressed to learn that 30% of the workforce there had disabilities. I was determined to bring this back to M&S logistics.

We have the benefit of experience. M&S has run a retail employability programme, Marks & Start, since 2004. It has helped more than 5,000 people who struggled to find employment for various reasons. We just hadn’t adopted this in logistics – yet.

Early next year, M&S is opening the UK’s biggest, fully automated dedicated ecommerce site in Castle Donington, Leicestershire, and we need 1,000 people to operate a space that could accommodate 12 jumbo jets but in reality will be handling 2 million M&S products every week. It’s not often you get the chance to assemble a team of this size from scratch and it means we have an opportunity to create a fully inclusive workforce.

Working with Remploy, we will offer as many of these jobs as we can to people like Will, and Richard, a colleague who’s bagged one of the first jobs in the team. Richard roamed this 900,000 sq ft site for just two days before being warmly nicknamed ‘Sat Nav’ for his canny ability to memorise exactly where everything was.

Having been born with severe dyslexia, a speech impediment and mild cerebral palsy, Richard fought harder than most to get a job. Two weeks in and he is already an amazing asset to our business.

Seeing Richard shine is just one of the benefits Marks & Start Logistics brings. We know from the retail scheme that people who have to knock down barriers to get into the work place are committed, valued and motivated employees. Exactly the sort of person we want on our team – and you should want on yours.

Major employees have a unique opportunity to build on the inclusion legacy that London 2012 gifted us. It’s our responsibility to ensure that this isn’t limited to sporting champions but opened up to everyday people who deserve the same chances as others when applying for work.

If the entire sector embraced inclusive employment we could make a real difference to the lives of many people who just want to be treated in the same way as their family, friends, and neighbours. People who prove that we should all be judged on our abilities not classified by our disabilities. People who just want a job.