Health and Wellbeing
**Inspiring and enabling our colleagues to be the best they can be starts with supporting their overall wellbeing and creating a culture where all our colleagues feel able to seek support and have access to the right resources **
Wellbeing underpins one of our core values, that we are all colleagues together, one team, and we have a comprehensive learning curriculum to raise awareness and support colleague wellbeing.
Throughout any given year we host a variety of events in support of Health and Wellbeing, encouraging all our colleagues to reflect on their mental wellbeing and take the right steps for them to feel healthier and happier, which is why we established our new Asda Wellbeing Inclusion Network, which helps us understand how we can better support our colleagues.
- Supporting Colleague Mental HealthMaintaining open conversations on mental health is vital to breaking stigmas. Our activity in supporting colleague mental health is award-winning. In 2024 we were awarded a ‘Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Workplace Award’ by the British Disability Forum and won the Workplace Wellbeing Award at the Institute of Leadership Awards. In 2023 we launched a new module for line managers, ‘Supporting Colleague Mental Health’ alongside our existing modules, ‘Looking after my Wellbeing’, ‘Developing Team Wellness and Resilience’ and ‘Why Inclusion Matters’.
- Employee Assistance ProgrammeThrough our partnership with Unum, our Employee Assistance Programme, all colleagues are able to access wellbeing resources including webinars on mental health, 24/7 GP appointments and counselling sessions, which in April 2023 became unlimited.
- Ensuring Colleague Financial WellbeingWith over 145,000 colleagues across our business, how we reward our colleagues is a big and important investment for us. We’re proud of the investments made in our colleagues. The total investment in retail pay from our shareholders is over half a billion since 2021. Our colleague base rate of pay will have increased from £9.36 in 2021 to £12.60 in 2025. An increase of nearly 35%. We’re really proud of the continued investment we are making on our hourly total reward package. In 2024 we launched a new workplace savings scheme with Wagestream allowing colleagues to save directly from their pay and earn interest on their money at a competitive rate. Wagestream also offers our colleagues flexible paydays, financial coaching and a benefits checker. Our colleagues can also access free mortgage advice, discounted will writing services, work place ISAs plus discounts on Asda insurance products.
- Accessible WorkingWe want to make sure that our Home Offices are welcoming and create a positive environment where our colleagues can do their best work. From January 2025, our Home Office colleagues will be expected to work from one of our Home Office locations for a minimum of 3 days per week to drive collaboration and collective problem-solving. To support all colleagues to work at their best, we ask our line managers to be proactive in putting in place reasonable adjustments for disabled colleagues and have made the right to request flexible working a day one right.
