Meet Lorraine, Head of Internal Communications and Corporate Social Responsibility for Tesco Ireland.

 

She’s been with Tesco for 18 years and is involved in the business’ Women’s Development program. Here, she tells us about the program and how important it’s been to her own development.

 

I’ve been at my current  position in Tesco for 7 years now. My role is to lead on the strategy development of our colleague engagement and communications plans for Ireland and Northern Ireland. Then, on the Corporate Social Responsibility side, I lead on the social side of our sustainability strategy – supporting key social issues within the communities that we serve in Ireland. 

I absolutely love working for Tesco. I love my job – it energizes me! My job is so varied, within the two parts of the role that I have. They’re so different, that every day is different. Everybody says that it’s your team that makes you and I have an amazing team who work with me, and who work alongside me. Coming to work is a really lovely experience because we’re like a little team of friends.

I’m also currently one of only 2 women on the Group Women’s Development Program here in Ireland. It’s a Tesco Group-wide program that seeks to identify high-potential female talent from all work levels – colleagues who could do bigger or broader roles.

The program gives women an opportunity to network and come together, right across the Tesco Group. To share experiences and to understand, as a woman, how you might better progress your career and the key ways in which you can do that. The business is taking it seriously that we want and need more women in senior roles in the business. To support this, you need a system where you’re coached and mentored to do that. At the core, that’s what the program is. It’s about support, external coaching, internal sponsorship, and mentorship, which is really lovely.

The culture of the business when I first joined 18 years ago was very different, particularly for women. Was there the same level of support for a woman who was career-minded to actually grow within the company at that time? Potentially not. 

I joined in a graduate program and it was wonderful, but you had to fight a lot more for what you wanted to get. You could see your male peers coming off those graduate programs and see them stepping into senior roles very quickly. As I said, that was 18 years ago. It’s a very different place to work now. 

As a woman, you also tend to put up barriers in your own head without even realising it, when you get to a particular age or a particular life stage. For instance, when I thought about having a child, an internal monologue started in my own head and rational thinking went out the window. “I can’t apply for that job or I can’t go on that development program because I could end up on maternity leave at some stage.” Then you come back after your baby and the reality is very different. You go, “I'll do whatever I need to.” But the business isn’t looking and thinking, “Well, Lorraine’s of childbearing age. Let’s take her off a development plan.” It’s just in your mind. And since I came back from maternity leave two years ago, I've absolutely knocked this kind of internal monologue on the head. Sharing my thought process in a vulnerable way with a group of women in the Women’s Development program has helped that. With this whole program, it feels like they’re wrapping their arms around me to support me and help me as I drive my own career forward.

It’s also a conversation that you can have more broadly with your male colleagues, too. Yes, it can be difficult at times, but I think you have to be really open and say, “This is how I feel. This is what’s happening. This is what’s real.” Then it’s back to human, honest conversations.

I have two personal highlights of the program. During one of our sessions, we were all asked about what we felt we had to proactively work on. One of the women brought up a really good point about having a good work ethic. She talked about how people have a 9-to-5 work ethic, but does everybody have a ‘5-to-9’ or ‘6-to-10’ etc. for after work? How do you balance your home life so that your work-life balance is working really well? Because if you’re not investing in your home life, your family, yourself, your own well-being, it has a knock-on effect on work and then it all spirals out.

That really resonated with me and I’ve made it part of our team’s ways of working. It’s simple things like not emailing after hours – basically leaving each other alone outside of work hours unless it’s urgent. It just sits really nicely with me. 

The other bit that’s really stood out is, as part of the course, everybody’s given access to an external career coach, which I’ve never had before. I’ve had mentors over the years, but with a career coach, you can really sit back and just talk about you. They can give you some objective doses of reality about what you do. For me, that’s been a real stand-out because it challenges you in a very different way.

There are genuinely wonderful opportunities for women within our business to join at any work level, to feel supported as a female, regardless of life stage. If you’re starting out in your career, we have amazing talent pots to help people through and traditional career paths.Or if it’s of interest to you and your life,  we have great maternity and family leave policies.  

 

If you look at our own business here in Ireland, we have strong female representation (40%) on our leadership team including a female CEO, which is amazing. It’s the top job in our business and there’s a woman sitting in the seat, a mother with 2 young girls who has crafted her own career path to a very senior level– that’s really inspirational for me. It’s a great place to work and there’s lots of opportunity for development. I would definitely recommend it to other women if they wanted to work here.