Northern Foods shares were delisted from the London Stock Exchange from 13 May 2011

Diversity and Equal Opportunities

Northern Foods is an equal opportunities employer and we fully embrace all forms of cultural diversity in the workforce.  We recruit from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds. Among colleagues there are at least 22 first languages other than English.

Our induction pack for shop-floor colleagues is translated into Polish, Portuguese and Urdu, which, after English, are the most common languages spoken across the business. This helps to reinforce the communication of essential messages on food safety and health and safety.  However, the working language of the business is English and we require all colleagues to have a good enough of a grasp of it to do their jobs effectively and safely.

The cultural diversity of the workforce can present daily challenges, which must be addressed quickly.  To help in this we are working alongside the Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union to devise and implement procedures that make it easier to maximise the potential of all our colleagues.

Respect and Recognition

We believe that building a culture of continuous improvement, driven by recognition of efforts, motivates individuals and is the key to the growth of the business.  In the 2010 employment satisfaction survey, 59 per cent of colleagues who responded agreed that people treated each other with respect in the company. We aim to build on this achievement and have tasked ourselves to raise this to 75 per cent by 2012.