Diversity & Inclusion
At Nestlé, we drive diversity & inclusion through our impact on:
Culture
Society
Innovation
So what is Diversity and Inclusion at Nestlé?
Diversity and inclusion is an integral part of our company’s culture and is one of the ways we bring our purpose and values to life.
Our values are rooted in respect: respect for ourselves, for each other, respect for diversity and respect for the future. We aim to embed diversity and inclusion across everything we do, focused on three core areas: culture, innovation and society. This involves building an inclusive culture that values the different talents and experiences of our employees, innovating to serve the needs of our diverse consumers and customers and engaging with society in the diverse markets where we operate.
We recruit competent and motivated people who respect our values, provide equal opportunities for their development and advancement and protect their privacy. We do not tolerate any form of harassment or discrimination. Our commitment to provide equal opportunities starts from the point of recruitment until the end of the working relationship.
Gender Balance
Gender Balance has been a priority for us since 2008, and it helped us to increase the number of women at all levels in the organisation. We want to be a gender balanced company by creating the enabling conditions in our work environment to achieve annual increases in the percentage of women managers and senior leaders. Our global and local initiatives on gender diversity include:
- Development opportunities: mentoring and coaching programs
- A flexible and supportive work environment
- Role model events, round tables and network discussions
- Leadership development training and unconscious bias workshops
- Maternity Protection Policy (pdf, 1Mb)
43%
of managerial roles are held by women worldwide
We have embedded gender balance in all its Human Resources practices. We have made progress in recent years increasing the number of women in managerial positions. As of 2018, 43% of these roles are held by women.We will now put a particular emphasis on increasing the proportion of women in the group’s top 200 senior executive positions from around 20% currently to 30% by 2022. This target is a further step in Nestlé’s journey towards gender parity.
We believe that a more diverse workforce with more women at the top will reinforce our inclusive culture and make Nestlé an even better company. We are setting measurable goals to hold ourselves accountable. We know that improving gender balance will lead to better decisions, stronger innovation and higher employee satisfaction.
Mark Schneider, Nestlé CEO
In 2019, we have laid out an action plan to increase the number of women in senior executive positions globally. The Gender Balance Acceleration Plan includes the following specific actions:
- Supporting all managers to foster an inclusive workplace and ensuring that they are trained on unconscious bias;
- Encouraging the use of Nestlé’s paid parental leave program and flexible work policies in place in all Nestlé operating companies;
- Enhancing mentoring and sponsorship programs to prepare high-potential women for senior executive positions;
- Hiring and promoting more women in senior executive positions;
- Reviewing results with senior leaders to promote gender balance and ensure progress;
- Continuing our efforts to champion equal pay and eliminate conditions that create gender pay gaps;
- Reporting progress in the Nestlé’s annual Creating Shared Value report.
Nestlé part of the Gender Equality Index 2019
The Nestlé Gender Balance Acceleration Plan strengthens our existing commitment to enhance gender balance in our workforce. We are confident that everyone, men and women, will play a key role in advancing gender equality and creating a better place to work.
Béatrice Guillaume-Grabisch, Executive Vice President, Head of Group Human Resources and Business Services
Cultural agility
With its 308,000 employees from 177 different nationalities and its presence in 189 countries, cultural agility is very important to Nestlé and we support it through different programs for Nestlé leaders and employees to:
- Understand the impact of cultural differences on how people do business;
- Understand how to give feedback according to different cultures;
- Learn how communication and social behavior differs across cultures and how to adapt ourselves accordingly
These programs include cultural agility workshops and e-learning solutions.
Empowering different generations at the workplace
At Nestlé, Diversity & Inclusion measures include ensuring integration and equality for people across all generations. In 2017, Nestlé France organised a Millennials Day, which involved reverse mentoring workshops and intergenerational exchanges and debates. The day also featured a Millennials Challenge, requiring teams of millennials to develop and present proposals on how to build the ‘Nestlé of tomorrow’. The teams selected as finalists were invited to present their proposals to senior management.
Empowering people with different abilities
We aim to promote a culture that builds on strengths and focuses on abilities. We developed a global self-assessment procedure for all our markets to benchmark themselves against the level of inclusion and types of activities for people with disabilities in the workplace. The objective is to track best practices and actions in training and awareness, return-to-work practice, accessibility of sites and workplace arrangements.
Local programs aiming to increase the employment of individuals with different abilities are also put in place in different Nestlé markets. Examples include Nestlé Austria which has publicly unveiled two inclusion initiatives supported by governmental organisations FAB and WUK. Nestlé France has signed its second “Disability Group Agreement” which is founded upon three pillars:
- Job retention for people with disabilities,
- Recruitment and integration of people with disabilities,
- Training and communication to make mindsets progress on the topic.
Nestlé France recognized Employer of the Year at European Diversity Awards 2014, thanks to its efforts on employment of people with disabilities.
Empowering LGBT+ communities
We also expand our efforts to strengthen our inclusive workplace culture by raising awareness about LGBT+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, +) and collaborating with external organizations.
Since 2018, we are publicly supporting the United Nations Standards of Conduct to support the business community in tackling discrimination against lesbian, gay, bi, trans and intersex (LGBTI) people.
Our local efforts have for example been rewarded in the US: Nestlé USA and Nestlé Purina PetCare received scores of 95% and 100% respectively on the 2018 Corporate Equality Index (CEI), a national benchmarking survey and report on corporate policies and practices relating to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) workplace equality, administered by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.
Leading Together
Our ongoing training programs, workshops and best practice exchanges on Diversity & Inclusion as well as Unconscious Bias aim to ensure that all our employees integrate our guiding vision. In 2017, we launched a series of local conferences across the world called “Leading Together”. These conferences bring together women and men of all generations at all levels to discuss and debate how we can accelerate our Diversity & Inclusion journey.
As of 2019, Nestlé has over 25 employee networks worldwide.
Cascading Unconscious Bias
One of the catalyst solutions for sustaining a long-term diverse and inclusive culture is minimizing the hindering effects of unconscious bias in our working environment.
Unconscious biases are social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness. Everyone holds unconscious beliefs about various social and identity groups, and these biases stem from one’s tendency to organize social worlds by categorizing.
The workshops and the training tools that we run on the topic are deemed very enlightening and are highly popular among our employees:
Our workshops provide the employees with the opportunity to freely express themselves, share real-life workplace biases and come to practical resolutions on their interpersonal relationships.
The training programs and testing tools that the employees have at their disposal allow them to discover and measure the biases they may be unaware of and to follow recommendations for their personal development as well as the development of our culture. In 2018, 1’464 employees received such training, bringing the total to 12’120 since 2015.
More on Unconscious Bias:
Nestlé India developed a customized module in Hindi to train factory employees; 135 union members across four factories were trained, and they cascaded the program to employees, supported by the factories’ HR teams. The programme has be extended to other factories in 2018.
Nestlé Middle East organized a two-day diversity and inclusion event for senior managers’ committee (Mancom) members, facilitated by the Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion. The Awareness Workshop in English was recorded and made available to all employees, with subtitles in Arabic and Farsi.
