GENDER-SMART BUSINESS SOLUTIONS METRO MARKETS CREATES JOBS AND CAREERS FOR WOMEN CASE STUDY: METRO MARKETS, EGYPT Creating Jobs and Careers for Women Project Overview Challenges About 50 percent of university graduates in Egypt are women, Metro Markets faces workforce challenges, such as high staff • While women receive more training than men, they have yet only 23 percent1 of women work in the formal labor force turnover, that are common in the retail industry, disrupting fewer senior roles and higher turnover rates. compared with 76 percent2 of men. Despite this large pool businesses and raising costs. Metro Markets invests heavily in of educated women, on an average, less than 10 percent3 of training its workers at the entry level, but often is unable to retain Employees typically leave the job or don’t progress because of: employees in Egypt’s firms are women. Given that Egyptian them. IFC’s assessment found: • Limited training geared toward promotion and career firms—especially in the competitive food retail sector—can’t find progression. • High staff turnover of 35% annual, which is costly. Replacing and retain employees with the right skills, the data suggest that a lost worker costs Metro Markets $19 for every new worker • High work load and challenging working hours. there exist opportunities for more women to join the country’s it hired. workforce. • Difficulty in managing family responsibilities: female • High staff absenteeism, costing Metro Markets $542,000 employees often rely on their own skills or personal support Metro Markets is Egypt’s largest food retailer. The supermarket annually. networks to manage home and work schedules, provide care chain has over 5,000 employees, who are mostly young and work • Low return on investment in training. Lack of training beyond for children, and commute to work. in its 100 branches across Egypt. Only about 300 of its employees are women. Metro Markets partnered with IFC to assess its job entry might contribute to low staff retention. • Labor intensive, low-tech work practices, such as physically workforce to close gaps between men and women and address • Low share of women in the company’s workforce, at 7 lifting heavy boxes rather than using forklifts, that make it some of its business challenges. The workforce assessment kicked percent, and high concentration of women among the most difficult for women to perform better-paying jobs. off a longer-term initiative to increase the share of women in the junior staff. Although staff turnover is higher among women company’s workforce. than men, absenteeism is lower among women. 1 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS 2 *https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.MA.ZS 3 http://www.enterprisesurveys.org/data/exploretopics/gender Project Objectives Gender-Smart Solutions The long-term goal of the partnership between IFC and Metro IFC and Metro Markets started this initiative with a workforce • Set diversity KPIs for all operations employees and managers. Markets is to increase recruitment and retention of female gender assessment to identify and quantify the challenges the • Held an event to award top-performing female staff at Metro workers. This will result in the creation of more jobs and careers company faced. Over several months, IFC and Metro Market Markets. for women. At the same time, it will help stabilize Metro Markets’ worked together and: • Appointed the first female store manager. workforce, improve the performance—by reducing absenteeism, • Collected and analyzed the company’s sex-disaggregated for example—and strengthen the overall customer experience. This • Produced a special edition of Metro Markets internal human resources data. is especially the case for female shoppers, who are likely to feel newsletter, discussing the importance of diversity for the more comfortable with female staff and potentially benefit from • Examined correlations between sex-disaggregated HR data company and celebrating female role models. their insights about household products. and some of the firm’s business key performance indicators. • Conducted interviews with company leadership, HR The short-term goal of the workforce assessment is for Metro managers, department heads, and branch and brand Markets to gain insights about its gender composition across managers. all levels and locations and understand the barriers that prevent The Business Case for Metro Markets women from joining Metro Markets, progress in their careers, and • Led focus groups with male and female workers from Metro The findings of the assessment established a strong business stay in its workforce. Markets. rationale for Metro Markets to recruit women and retain In a second step, IFC and Metro Markets leadership developed them by creating a family-friendly and women-friendly The assessment also aimed to identify opportunities for addressing an action plan aimed at creating a career path for women from workplace. The business rationale is clear: these barriers, recruiting and retaining more women, and putting joining to retiring. It also aims to improve the work environment • >60 percent of Metro Markets staff are at family- them on a career path that includes nontraditional, more technical for women in Metro Markets to raise their share in the company’s building age. A family-friendly workplace is good for all jobs (i.e. butchers) as well as senior jobs, including store managers. workforce from 7 percent. The plan will be implemented over a and can curb staff turnover. period of at least three years and includes introducing workplace • The pool of workers from which food retailers hire is practices such as the introduction of diversity key performance limited, so targeting women widens the recruitment indicators and merit-based appointments of women into store pool for the company. manager roles. These steps aim to create a company culture and mindset that empower women. Metro Markets is still at the early • Mid-career training could be a tool for staff retention. stages of the initiative, but the company has already put in place • Working mothers have demonstrated strong bold measures: organizational and multi-tasking skills—these workers can provide a competitive edge for Metro Markets. • Created a Gender Diversity Committee to oversee all gender activities in the company, including diversity KPIs for all operations employees and managers. ”A store with gender diverse staff enhances the image “It is my dream that one day we will have a female and standard of the store.” operations manager.” Saeed Shaaban Tamer Gouda Senior Area Manager, Metro Markets Managing Director, Metro Markets Contact Information International Finance Corporation 2121 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20433 USA tlozansky@ifc.org sdaley@ifc.org sessmat@ifc.org www.IFC.org/gender @WBG_Gender GENDER-SMART BUSINESS SOLUTIONS