s since working with him. I have a tendency to really push out, but Mark very skilfully reins me back in. He’s helped me recognise my blind spots.  Sometimes I can be a little bit too over-enthusiastic, sometimes I don’t always think about the long-term impact [of things] and I can be a bit dominating. In my over-enthusiasm, I have a tendency to not be the best listener. I need to remind myself to slow down and stay in the moment.  Mark is the opposite, however. He is a great listener. He picks up on the small details and he’ll pick me up on it when he needs. He is the only one who will tell me when I’ve been grumpy or defensive in a meeting. The strength of our relationship has truly helped me become a better retailer.  I wouldn’t be any good at running a business on my own. I absolutely need to be in this partnership for it to work. ML: Peta is dynamic and pushes me out of my comfort zone. I may have been a bit formulaic in some of my approaches, and I think she has brought more humanity into the business. She is very genuine, one of the best retail brains I’ve ever worked with.  She has really brought life into the team and is exciting to work with. She challenges everything that we do. You can debate issues and problems with Peta and we work it out and come up with a compromise that works for the business. At the core, both of us want the business to succeed, so we have that common goal. It doesn’t matter what you say to each other, we know each other well enough to talk it out and be comfortable. Peta taught me how to listen more to staff members, and I think that is one of the things that has been a huge change. I’ve learnt to be more open to the feedback we’re getting from the grassroots of the business and the customers, and to stop sitting in an ivory tower. PG: Because we’re not leading alone, we need to constantly talk about and agree on the goals of the business. What are the priorities? Where is the team at? What should we be doing with the business? And if you don’t have someone alongside when you do that, you can lose sight of the bigger picture.  I know I make better decisions because all my thoughts and ideas are challenged by an equal. It’s really strengthened our decision-making.  About three or four years ago, we started shifting all our leadership roles into duos. We call them “powerful partnerships”. One of the first was with the brand communications team. It was lead by one person, but we shifted it to two people. Instantly, it became far more productive. Their plans are now a lot more robust and the team is a lot happier.  When you think about it, it is impossible for one person to have everything they need to actually lead properly – the short-term and long-term vision as well as doing the job, doing all the tasks as well as the people side of things. No-one I know is good at all that stuff, let alone have the time to do it all.  Where we saw the best impact was in our stores. We stopped talking about them as the manager and trainee, and instead began referring to them as the leadership or management team. Every time we did training and meetings, so much was focussed on strengthening the dynamic and relationship between the management team – doing exercises where they are finding out more about the other, delving deep into their relationship, finding their gaps and strengths and understanding what they should appreciate about each other. What are the foundations of a good retail leader? PG: One of the things we’ve seen a need for is to build up people’s emotional intelligence, not just their intelligence in terms of running the business.  Emotional intelligence is key, so we’ve developed training and leadership approaches that are all about helping people understand themselves and their impact on others so they can have more meaningful relationships at work. The more meaningful those relationships are, the more able they are to influence others, and that’s leadership. The key life skills that we’ve been focussing on are coaching and feedback, stress perception, delegation, time management, coping mechanisms and confidence. These sorts of skills all take time to build. They don’t come naturally to most of us, but they’re absolutely needed if you are managing people. ML: Our managers’ meetings have gone from strength to strength – it’s not just us talking at staff, but people we’ve brought from outside the business, talking on topics and campaigns we’re working on.  We’re also very honest with our management teams. People know if their store is struggling because they get the management accounts. They can see what’s happening, and we discuss it with them. There is complete honesty and we’re always talking about what we can do to help. Do we need to drive more people to the store? Is there something about the stock or is it the team?  It’s a shame more retailers don’t share management accounts with their store-management teams – how else can they improve the business and learn? It doesn’t help them to become better business people if they don’t understand what is happening in their stores. PG: I think that’s quite a unique thing about Lush. We do share the full P&L with managers so they can see what sales they’re bringing in, what all their costs are, what their rent is and, most importantly, their margins. Because all management teams are on a profit-share bonus scheme, they’re motivated from day one to make a store a success. It gives them real ownership over the sales and performance of what they feel is their store. About four times a year, we take all managers and trainees away to a four-day conference around the business’ vision. One of the most powerful sections is when managers share their own journeys with Ted-style talks of success or failure or how they bounced back from something. You can see these amazing lightbulb moments happen when managers share and get vulnerable in this way. We try to create a space where people feel safe to be honest about what they’ve been through, because the more vulnerable they can get, the more powerful a shift you can bring to someone’s thinking. ML: When they do the talks and we hear some of the stories we think, “How did we leave her in that situation where she felt like that?”. It is a reality check for us, and it’s really important for us to hear what is happening at store level. There was one story where we walked away thinking we’d let the team down because we had no idea how tough it was in the store. There have been many reports showing that millennials in particular love to support brands that back social causes. There have also been a couple of incidences like the latest with Pepsi, where it has gone wrong.  PG: The nice thing about millennials is yes, they’re value-led and driven, but they’re also good at sniffing it out as well. It is one of the things we’ve learnt over the years. The lovely thing about attracting all these amazing millennials with such strong values and ethics is that they’ll call us out when something feels misaligned.  A couple of years ago, we were just about to launch a February campaign called “Take Back the Tap”, which was about encouraging the public to stop using single-use plastic bottles and carry around their own water bottle instead. So for Christmas, we gave all our staff members a reusable water bottle and banned the use of single-use plastics across the business. Staff members loved the idea of changing their own daily behaviour, especially as we were asking customers to do the same. They turned into the ultimate water-bottle champions. But when staff members see us get something wrong, they’re vocal about it, which we love. They picked out that they we had banned single-use plastics but we were still wrapping our pallets in plastic. We were like, “Absolutely – you’re so right!”. ML: We always let people know we still have a long way to go in so many parts of the business, so when we’re looking at a new store or in the factory, we’ll look to improve the process to become more effective. The important thing is being honest with people. We have a long way to go before we’re perfect. We don’t have all the answers, but when we’re transparent about an issue we’re struggling with, our teams collectively find the next step. It has always been important for Lush to reflect the diversity of our society. What is the thinking behind that? PG: We have a policy against using models in our marketing and any form of Photoshopping people’s skin, faces, hair and bodies because I think customers and staff are sick of beyond-perfect stereotypical images of what is beautiful, what our bodies or couples should look like. So any chance we have, we try to present a broader view than what is traditionally seen in magazines or windows.  We only ever use our own staff members for the imagery we produce. All we’re doing is reflecting the customer, and trying to empower them rather than make people feel awful about themselves. It is important to present a realistic view of what beauty, couples and bodies look like.  For example, two years ago for Valentine’s Day, we featured Sarah from the Mt Gravatt store in Queensland and her girlfriend Ellie. Last year we featured Tom, a pansexual man, and Mems, a transgender man, a gorgeous couple who met while working for Lush. This year we featured Darren from our Auckland store and his boyfriend Joel. Each time we run campaigns like this, we receive thousands of messages of support, shares and likes on social media from organisations, charities, schools, parents and young people, which sadly proves just how out of touch our government is with the public on this issue.   Also quite popular was our “Naked” campaign, which was created to promote our packaging-free products as part of our efforts to reduce our impact on landfill. Because it featured four of our staff members in their natural form with no Photoshopping or enhancement, it also turned into a strong body-positive campaign. Tell us about your diverse team at Lush.  PG: The average age of our staff is 23 years, 88 per cent are women, 90 per cent of leadership roles are held by women, we have a large LGBTI community, and in our kitchens, about 25 per cent are recent refugees or people seeking asylum. As our government punishes people for legally seeking asylum in abusive offshore detention centres, we’ve campaigned on this issue for the past four years. But you need a multi-layered approach if you’re going to take on or even just understand an issue as complex as people seeking asylum in Australia. So we campaign publicly, but we employ people, too. At our latest managers’ meeting, we screened Chasing Asylum and had director Eva Orner debrief us afterward.  We also work closely with the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre in Melbourne and the Asylum Seekers Centre in Sydney, which helps us understand the issue on a deeper level.  ML: Lush is a safe environment. People are attracted to us because they share our values and ethics, and when they come in, they feel safe. A couple of guys I know who work in the factory have told their colleagues they’re gay, but not yet their family.  One of the most common pieces of feedback in our engagement survey is, “I feel much more comfortable having that conversation and being honest at work”, and that “I love coming to work because I can be myself”. Having people seeking asylum come to work in the kitchen helps them adapt to the working environment in Australia, and if they stay with us for six months, that’s great, but if they’re ready to move on, we’re happy for them. Some people love working at Lush so much they have applied for the compounding and room management roles. They’re staying with us, and that’s fantastic. How does the employment process work around hiring asylum seekers? PG: There are lots of charities and organisations that help. We’ve found the best support for our kitchen in Villawood is the Asylum Seekers Centre. It is a bit of extra work in terms of funding the right equipment, like steel-capped shoes, and accommodating appointments with lawyers, but that’s the least we can do for such hardworking, enthusiastic and passionate employees. Many of them are way too overqualified to be working in a factory, but we’re told that one of the best ways for people seeking asylum to get a foot in the door of the Australian workforce is with a trusted brand, and whether it’s six months or six years, we’re happy to support such resilient and hard-working people.  It also helps with our understanding of the issue. Again, we have to take a multi-layered approach if it’s an issue where we’re trying to make an impact. Each time we do a campaign, we realise the mistakes we’ve made in the past, where we have used the wrong language or maybe not made quite the right appeal to the public. Early on, we had an unconscious tendency to swoop in like some kind of white saviour, rather than tapping into the powerful self-determination and perspective of people seeking asylum. They got themselves all the way to Australia escaping war, terror and abuses most of us can’t even fathom. They don’t need help or pity, just fairness and a far more humanitarian approach from our government. It has been a big learning process. It is also about sharing with other businesses and organisations that every time we run  campaigns like this, our like-for-like sales are great. The last one we ran peaked at 42 per cent like-for-like. It hopefully proves you can campaign on issues that are hard-hitting and controversial, because it attracts like-minded people who want to show their support. ML: Customers want to have these conversations, and we try to help them gain a better understanding of the myths, issues and problems facing people seeking asylum. I think that what has surprised us is the number of people who want to engage in these conversations and learn more about the subject. We have people who disagree with us, but it never becomes a scene on the shopfloor. It is a healthy debate and respectful conversation. What are the challenges for businesses that want to adopt CSR policies? PG: I think it goes wrong if a business has not been built on strong values and ethics. The next best thing is to have leadership that believes in certain causes and issues. Alternatively, if you want to work out the next step, ask staff members. What do they care about, and what are they passionate about? They are the ones who are having the shop-floor conversations, so we need to tap into what is important to them, looking at their demographic and the issues facing them and getting behind those sorts of things.  I don’t think you always need enormous gestures as you’re getting started. Incremental changes that affect daily behaviour are the best way to build it up – as when we gave staff members reusable water bottles. Seeing the momentum that builds can give a business more confidence to take that next step. If it is built slowly and authentically, businesses might feel emboldened to take bigger risks about what to stand up for.”  How do you ensure staff members get behind the social causes Lush wants to support? What if someone does not hold the same views as the business?  ML: Ninety-nine per cent of interviewees have come to us because they understand the work environment. When we interview people, I always tell them, “Look at the campaigns we’ve run in the past five years and be sure you are comfortable with what we’re doing. If you are uncomfortable with our views, then it might be a challenge working here.”  PG: The other really important thing with engaging staff members on issues is making sure they’re part of the decision-making process and that they understand why we care about a particular issue. For example, in a managers’ meeting we ran a campaigning 101 workshop with the experts from GetUp, who spoke about the theory of change, how we talk to people and become more influential. Staff members broke up into teams and nominated issues they cared about, and worked on shaping what they thought the next campaign should look like, the messaging, the activations and the call-to-action. Some of those ideas were absolutely fabulous, so we’ve continued to work on them, but we’ll drop them into stores only when the time is right for change.  It is something we’ve learnt along the way. It’s not about scheduling when you’re going to run a campaign or locking it in for March – you have to wait for the right time, when one of the pillars blocking your way for progress is looking a bit wobbly, or it’s out there in the public. That’s when we drop it into stores. You have to be prepared, and staff members have to be engaged on the issue, because they might have to react pretty quickly. It’s about constantly evolving and layering our understanding on issues like climate change, people seeking asylum and LGBTI equality, because we know we’ll keep talking about these issues until we see real change in laws and public policy.” Which campaigns are you most proud of? PG: We worked with GetUp on the last campaign around people seeking asylum, and used research by Anat Shenker-Osorio that explained what core values are important to Australians when trying to shift people’s perspectives around asylum seekers.  That campaign was five times more effective than the previous one. In terms of conversations on shop floors and social-media platforms, we reached more than half a million people with our message to #BringThemHere. It was all about sharing the individual stories of the men on Manus Island, to humanise them and highlight that, just like us, they have aspirations or want to be reunited with their families. We called for them to be brought to Australia and for the closure of the Manus and Nauru detention centres.   We want to use our business to effect the social and political change we care about, so 10 days before the federal election felt like the most important time to do that. We chose to educate customers about the approach of each of the three different political parties toward climate change, the Great Barrier Reef and the Adani coalmine to help the customer make an informed decision about their vote. We didn’t quite achieve the outcome we were seeking, but we’ll continue conversations about climate change on our shop floors and campaign against the Adani coalmine in the year ahead.  ML: In the past, we’d pick up a topic, run a campaign on it, step back then move on to the next thing. What we’ve learnt is that if we want to effect change, we have to pick something, run with it and stay with it until we achieve what we want to achieve. Lush was in the media spotlight when it took a stand against reducing staff penalty rates. Why was that decision important to you? ML: For us, the decision to not cut penalty rates was a no-brainer – the idea that we would suddenly pay our staff less money for doing the same hours was unthinkable. We moved to tell our staff members this immediately, because we know that many rely on penalty rates. Facing a wage reduction is frightening for people in the lower income sectors. Over the years, our business has survived through good times and tough times – and when going through economically unstable times, we have always been grateful for the support always shown to us by our staff members and customers. To reward them with falling wages would have been a betrayal of the relationship we have built.  PG: It seems our stance is appreciated by our customers and the public at large because we have been overwhelmed by the positive response on social media, engagement in our stores and even a lift in sales. Other businesses and politicians should take note that the public likes to see institutions do the right thing, and we sincerely hope other businesses are brave and stick with the current pay rates for their staff.  Reducing penalty rates may be legal, but that does not make it moral. It is clear that the happiest and most productive staff members are those who feel safe, valued and listened to, and we encourage other retailers to reflect on the impact and potential benefits before making the choice to reduce penalty rates or not.”