Leadership

Our leaders are role models who build high trust. We recognise that great people management takes time and have therefore kept colleague to manager ratios low to enable our leaders to invest their time in our people.
We have built an environment where it’s natural for us to give regular, honest feedback and to coach in the moment.
We are exceptionally proud that, this year, we were awarded the prestigious Investors in People (“IIP”) Platinum accreditation. This is reflective of the fact that our philosophy during the pandemic has been to put people before profit. This has had a profound impact on trust in leadership, and in the IIP survey we achieved our highest ever leadership engagement score of 90%.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, our leaders have acted swiftly to provide extraordinary levels of communication via regular emails, newsletters, the intranet, and weekly telephone and video conferences.
Values and behaviours
Our values are authentic, having been created by our people. They are core to the employment life cycle and bring consistency to our culture. Our leaders have high values alignment enabling us to make the right decisions and maintain morale at all times, but this has especially been proven during the pandemic.
We are empowered to do the right thing, not necessarily the easiest. This enables us to feel comfortable challenging behaviours that are not in line with our values.
- We love customers – we deliver much more than storage; we provide solutions that exceed our customers’ expectations and we expect our people to show appreciation of our customers and their businesses.
- We lead the way – we want people who talk with pride about Safestore, set themselves high standards and demonstrate passion for what they do.
- We have great people – everyone has a key role to play within Safestore and we need people who show respect for everyone, no matter their position. Our people drive their own performance and are keen to learn from others.
- We dare to be different – we want people that adapt to change and are willing to try new things. Part of daring to be different involves actively seeking feedback in order to develop new and existing skills.
- We get it – we want people to be clear on our vision and goals and, in turn, know what part they play in achieving them. “We get it” is also about communicating in a clear, open and honest way to enable sound decision-making.
Equality, diversity and inclusion
We are committed to providing an inclusive workplace, encouraging and welcoming diversity with a zero tolerance of harassment and discrimination. More detail can be found in our
People Principles document (online in the Governance section).
Our ‘Leading Through Inclusion and Diversity’ programme continues to support our leaders to recognise and celebrate diversity and to lead our diverse teams to success. This year’s workshop was ‘Male Allyship – Men Supporting Women’, delivered to our operational leaders by an external expert.
UK ethnicity facts and figures
We are proud of Safestore’s diverse workforce. To date, over half of our UK colleagues have volunteered their ethnicity data. This early data indicates that 27% of Safestore colleagues belong to a Black, Asian, Mixed or Other ethnic group, compared with 13% of people who make up this group in the UK (2011 Census data).
In 2022, we are committed to collecting more people data to support our understanding of our workforce diversity in order to inform beneficial and tangible action. This will help to further improve inclusion, enabling all colleagues to confidently bring their true selves to work.
Advocating a diverse and inclusive workforce is also a key part of our wellbeing strategy. In our IIP survey, 89% of colleagues agreed that Safestore values and respects individual differences.
Gender equality
The ratio of male to female colleagues at Safestore is outlined in the table below. Further analysis of our gender pay gap can be found in the 2020 gender pay gap report on our website. The report also sets out a range of actions we are taking to help close the gap.
Group gender split at 31 October 2021
|
Male |
Female |
Board Directors (as at 1 November 2021) |
5 |
3 |
Executive Committee and direct reports |
36 |
9 |
All colleagues (excl. NEDs) |
425 |
223 |