The Okta Retail Activist
Jo Whitfield
How the Co-op’s Jo Whitfield is shaping a safer, more diverse sector
As Whitfield is named Retail Activist at the Retail Week Awards 2022, we take a look at her work to change the law around shopworkers' safety and champion underrepresented voices
Jo Whitfield is no stranger to being a role model for others in the retail sector. When she first took the reins of the Co-op’s convenience business in 2017, she was the only female chief executive of a major grocery retailer – a position that only changed when Ocado Retail named Mel Smith as its boss in August 2019.
Empowering the next generation of female leaders has remained a passion for Whitfield during her time at the helm, but the coronavirus pandemic brought another challenge facing the sector into stark relief – the tidal wave of abuse and violence being faced by frontline shopworkers.
Rising levels of abuse had been an issue long before Covid-19 hit, but Whitfield was alarmed to see reports from Co-op staff rocket during the first national lockdown when the mutual’s food business continued to trade as an ‘essential’ retailer.
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“It became different triggers at different times,” Whitfield says of the abuse shop staff faced. “Pre-Covid it was around things like age-verification checks and shoplifting. What we found during the pandemic was it became around reminding people of government restrictions like mask-wearing and social distancing in stores.”
From the beginning of the pandemic, Whitfield put herself at the forefront of the lobbying campaign led by the Co-op, the British Retail Consortium, Retail Trust and other retailers to get the government to enshrine protections for shopworkers into law.
After more than a year of lobbying, the government agreed to add an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act in December 2021, stating that assaults committed against shopworkers should be recognised as an aggravating offence. The bill has now received royal assent and will be passed into law.
Whitfield says she’s “proud” of the work done to protect not just shopworkers, but other customer-facing industries such as hospitality and public transport – work that has earned her the Retail Activist accolade at the Retail Week Awards 2022.
“The previous laws didn’t give enough protection,” Whitfield tells Retail Week. “Yes, there were general assault laws that came into play, but it didn’t take into account that our colleagues in our industry were actually upholding the law with no greater protection as a result of doing so, which to us just felt like a real gap in what they were being asked to do.
“What's really great is we've now got the law changed. We achieved this through pushing and mobilising our colleagues, who were amazing because they worked with their local MPs. They showed up and were passionate about it.”
"What we’ll see next is a gear change in the activity because what we want to see now is shopworkers get the benefit of the law being changed"
Striving to do more
Although the changes to the law have been made, Whitfield insists the work being done to protect retail staff has not stopped. She is pushing for retailers to invest more in security equipment like body cameras for store colleagues and is working with local police forces to drive better conviction rates of offenders.
“What we’ll see next is a gear change in the activity because what we want to see now is shopworkers get the benefit of the law being changed,” she says.
However, Whitfield and the Co-op have not solely been focused on the punitive aspect of the bill. Using research data, which it shared with the government, the Co-op was keen to address some of the wider societal issues that were leading to this activity.
“Preventing this kind of offending has always been a big part of our campaign – not just to treat the outcomes of the crime but to try and prevent crime happening in the first place,” Whitfield explains.
“That’s why we shared that resource with the government to help it identify how it could do better work around helping rehabilitate people as they come out of prison; help invest in drug rehabilitation and help people have happy paths through their lives and then potentially stay away from crime.”
“Preventing offending has always been a big part of our campaign – not just to treat the outcomes of the crime but to try and prevent crime happening in the first place”
Promoting female leadership and diversity
Whitfield’s work on the campaign to protect shopworkers has drawn many plaudits over the past two years but her pursuits to promote more female leadership in the grocery sector – and to make the Co-op a more diverse and representative workplace – have also continued unabated.
In 2018, Whitfield – a former ambassador for Retail Week’s Be Inspired diversity and inclusion programme – founded non-profit network The Grocery Girls, designed to “inspire and empower women into senior leadership, at all stages of their careers”. In the four years since she founded the network, it has expanded to more than 2,000 members.
Whitfield believes the pandemic has reinforced the importance of the grocery sector – and retail more broadly – as industries and their attractiveness as employers.
“What we’ve seen over the last few years is that people really mobilised around the importance of the retail and grocery industries. I think there's been a much stronger appreciation of the role we play in society,” she says.
“I think it's probably made us more attractive to people in many ways, particularly people who came out of sectors that really struggled through Covid.”
The Co-op hired 7,000 temporary staff during the pandemic, the majority of whom, Whitfield says, have gone on to take permanent roles “because when they got to experience retail and got to know the Co-op and see what we’re about from a values and ethics point of view, it resonated with them”.
“Over the last few years people really mobilised around the importance of the retail and grocery industries. I think there's been a much stronger appreciation of the role we play in society”
Jo Whitfield with her 2019 Business Woman Award
Jo Whitfield with her 2019 Business Woman Award
Whitfield had been instrumental in setting up and leading on the Co-op’s Respect LGBTQ+ network and Aspire, which aims to create a fairer world for women. Alongside the Co-op’s former group chief executive Steve Murrells, Whitfield also had a hand in shaping the mutual’s groundbreaking 2020 diversity and inclusion manifesto.
Whitfield suggests that as the world emerges from the pandemic, having such networks in place will be crucial in attracting the next generation of talent.
“I honestly think that you can't expect to attract talent if you are not living this stuff now,” she says. “It’s not enough to be talking about it – you have to be actively demonstrating that you are promoting talent on the basis of that talent being great.
“You have to be providing the right sponsorship, the right development and the right network opportunities to enable people from all walks of life to build the kinds of careers they want. I think organisations that aren’t doing that really risk talent going elsewhere.”
“You have to be providing the right sponsorship, the right development and the right network opportunities to enable people from all walks of life to build the kinds of careers they want. I think organisations that aren’t doing that really risk talent going elsewhere”
Even in temporarily stepping away from the Co-op for some hard-earned time off, Whitfield is blazing another trail. The mother-of-two is currently on a four-month career break to help her sons through their final exams and to spend more time with her family after a tumultuous two years.
The idea of c-suite executives taking a career break is almost unheard of in British business and the news of Whitfield’s plans certainly raised a few eyebrows in the hyper-competitive and cut-throat world of retail. Whitfield, however, says taking the time off had always been in her long-term thinking.
“I was very conscious that it was unusual. It's a policy that exists for all Co-op colleagues but it’s very unusual to do it when you get to the level that I'm at,” she says. “But part of me thought: ‘It shouldn’t be an issue as long as you plan it well’.
“My reflection on it is: if my doing it helps someone else feel like they could do something different at an important moment in their life, then that would be a great outcome.”
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