We strive to have a positive and lasting impact on the lives of the more than 134 thousand people who contribute to the growth of our business, as well as that of their families. Our commitment is to continually improve our ability to respond to the needs of our employees and prepare them for the increasingly demanding challenges we face.
Introduction
In 2023, the challenging social and economic environment demanded considerable resilience from our employees and from our businesses. Strong geopolitical tensions, low economic growth and persistent high levels of inflation and interest rates continued to increase the cost of living for families. As a result, the Group’s responsibility as an employer has been to identify and implement measures to minimise the impact of the rising cost of living on our employees. From a structural point of view, the gradual ageing of the population, notably in Europe, and low unemployment levels continue to create a bottleneck of available talent and the need to restructure the workforce, in terms of sources and forms of hiring. Rapid technological advances have also led to changes in our ways of working.
All these factors affect the strategic management of our people and are monitored through an annual risk assessment, reviewed each quarter, where we identify concrete risk mitigation measures for the identified risks. To address these challenges, we have enhanced our HR strategy to better respond to five major objectives: mitigate labour shortage; sustain the pipeline of leaders; guarantee the needed capabilities through people growth and development; ensure an engaged workforce; and anticipate the organisational challenges of the future.
As a result of our efforts, in 2023 Humpact (a sustainability analyst focused on the social dimension) ranked Jerónimo Martins as the company with the best social performance out of the 43 companies analysed in the retail sector. We were also included in LinkedIn’s list of the top 25 companies to pursue a career in Portugal and, in Poland, we were awarded the “Friendly Workplace 2023” prize by Marka Pracodawcy.