Veronika Pountcheva, Global Director Corporate Responsibility & Senior Vice President at Metro Ag

Veronika Pountcheva has worked for METRO since 1998 and has held various management positions in Bulgaria, Ukraine, Serbia and Germany in buying, operations, supply chain and general management. In 2015 she returned to her home country of Bulgaria, where she worked as Managing Director of METRO Cash & Carry Bulgaria before taking over her current position as Global Director Corporate Responsibility & Senior Vice President. Veronika is also a passionate start-up mentor and advocate for diversity in her role as LEAD advisory board member.

Where does the retail sector stand in terms of gender equality? Below or above average?
Above! Women make up 55% of the retail industry’s workforce – exceeding the global average of 16% worldwide. This figure has been published by the latest LEAD Scorecard in 2017.
 
You recently attended the World Retail Congress to discuss Engaging men in gender equality. Could you explain that idea further?
It is crucial to engage men in gender topics. It is simple but true: Men make the difference.

Let me elaborate on this. First, companies need to get the foundation right. We have to ensure gender equality initiatives involve women and men as active and equal partners. It is all about the right framing. Companies must learn to treat gender equality as a business issue and opportunity, rather than ‘a women’s issue’. In the short term, it`s easier to work with homogenous teams, but when it comes to real strong value creation, especially in businesses where disruptive models happen with great intensity, e.g., retail, we need diverse teams. Diverse teams have an impact on the business: they are more creative, more agile, achieve better results and ensure the learning ability of an organisation. So, you have to reach out to men and women, as well as other dimensions of diversity.
 
This means that companies have to engage a diverse group of men. Men should be included in different organisational roles and levels, and with a variety of diverse backgrounds, e.g., ages, cultural backgrounds and sexual orientations. Furthermore, companies should educate about how to lead change effectively. Not only HR departments, but also line management should provide resources for initiatives, be visible and persistent, and ‘walk the walk’. Finally, companies should encourage men and women to challenge and change gender-biased organisational policies and practices. If we want to change things, we should foster those who contribute actively.
 
Why is gender equality important across all industries including the nut and dried fruit sector?
We need to access 100% of the talent pool and we can’t afford to neglect any potential group any longer. Our customers are increasingly expecting that we deploy diverse teams. As a company, we must therefore respond in an adequate manner to secure our long-term growth.
 
How does gender and cultural diversity in businesses have an impact on employees and ultimately on consumers?
Diversity has many dimensions, and yes, diversity brings concrete advantages for companies and customers. To name some: Better customer understanding through various perspectives a diverse team can cover – be it gender, age, cultural background or sexual orientation; diverse teams are more productive and perform better – they inspire creativity and drive innovation; drawing from a culturally diverse talent pool allows an organisation to attract and retain the best talent.
 
Can you share with INC any CRS initiatives carried out at present by Metro to boost diversity?
In March, on the occasion of International Women's Day, METRO published a study on women and self-employment. The study shows backgrounds that often discourage women from starting their own business. METRO conducted this study to raise awareness of this. In addition, during that week, we cooperated with Coca Cola and held a joint event to increase focus on gender diversity. Our goal was to bring this theme closer to our own people and gain visibility for the issue internally. We ran a movie night, which included a panel discussion with our top management, who answered questions from the audience related to gender diversity. But of course, there was also a fun part. After an intense dialogue the audience watched the movie “The Intern”. After the movie there was the opportunity to further exchange ideas.
 
Aside from diversity and gender equality, what are the other key points shaping CRS policies nowadays?
Our agenda is really rich at the moment and it goes from the sourcing of things like palm oil and soy, through energy efficiency, plastic, food waste, transparency in the supply chain, and fair working conditions – to name just a few. Plastic has gained particular importance in recent months. We would like to address this complicated issue not only from a business and responsibility perspective, but also to help our customers get better prepared to deal with what is a complex problem. However, we need to be realistic here, there´s a long way to go.
 
Social media has the potential to empower people as consumers. How are CSR initiatives presented in a genuine way to consumers in a world with brands constantly under scrutiny?
The stories we share over the social media channels are authentic as they are generated through our daily interaction with our customers and the communities we are engaged with. We encourage the wider group of stakeholders, e.g., NGO´s, new vendors and start-ups to give us more impetus. The CR initiatives provide rich platforms for cooperation beyond the daily business and social media are of great help here.
 
A large share of millennials choose employers with strong CR values. How does Metro engage with digital natives?
We engage with future potentials through various university links, e.g., the Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne, the WHU and via student networks like CEMS. We show interest as a dialogue partner and discuss the questions future potentials have. With young entrepreneurs we work via our accelerator programmes and our start-up shelf of NX-Food. With these initiatives, we also foster new business ideas that contribute to solutions that shape the future, be it to improve food waste along the supply chain or to offer our customers products like edible straws that reduce waste.
 
Is this segment of the population more demanding as consumers and employees?
Millennials have shaped a new way of working and reality. They do not believe that productivity should be measured by the number of hours worked at the office, but by the output of the work performed. They view work as a ‘thing’ and not a ‘place’. The long hours at the office and status quo work-life tradeoff will not work for the company’s young workers; they want more flexibility, new ways of working like job sharing, home office, and working wherever you have internet access.
 
Millennials tend to google first before buying a product or approaching online customers. They are the hyper-connected generation with all devices. They demand fast service when approaching a customer service center. 25% of millennials demand a 10-minute response time from customer services. They use social media to complain about brand’s service – so companies should go social with their millennials and engage with them.
 
How does Metro tackle the food waste issue?
Our business is strongly focused on food, we love food, we cherish the freshness, and we feel responsible for reducing food waste! METRO has given a strong commitment by supporting the Consumer Goods Forum’s Food Waste Resolution. By 2025 we aim to reduce the amount of food waste derived from our own operations by 50% compared to 2016. We have seen a lot of creativity in our operations to address the issue, and the results are encouraging. For example, to reduce food waste from farm to store, METRO Turkey cooperates with a scientific institute to identify and tackle loss points. Another example: MAKRO Czech Republic has recently introduced a food pyramid – simple yet very efficient process which helps us to deal with food waste with the right level of priority in every step.
 
In our own operations, 16 METRO countries are supporting the long tradition of food banks.
In Germany, METRO is additionally partner of food waste fighter start-up SirPlus which functions as an outlet of near-best-before-date foods.

METRO Turkey entered a partnership with the start-up WholeSurplus, which aims to optimise the food waste stream by, for example, increasing donations to food banks or disposals via composting plants rather than landfills. On the consumer side, we help our customers to tackle food waste and loss as well.  By cooperation and partnership with initiatives and start-ups we provide access to monitoring and analysis tools as well as B2C-solutions. To further reduce the amount of food that goes uneaten, our Cash & Carry organizations in Italy, France, Turkey, Poland, and Germany have collaborated with various project partners to design a ‘doggy bag’ for restaurants and caterers and revive the ‘fashion’ of taking leftovers home. Since 2018, we are also member of the Save Food initiative. Together with other members from industry, politics and society, we drive innovation, participate in interdisciplinary dialogue and seek debate to jointly create solutions to the problem of food waste – along the entire value chain from the field to fork.