Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
Our ambition to Enhance Society Together is embedded in our commitment to an inclusive culture. In 2024, we appointed a global ED&I manager who oversees and drives the ED&I activities initiated within our organisation. We also conducted our first global ED&I survey to understand the diversity of our people as well as the challenges faced by our colleagues when it comes to equality, inclusion and belonging. We invited everyone to participate, and almost 1900 people shared their experiences and opinions with us. The scores for equality, belonging and inclusion were each 70% or above (equality 70%, belonging 72%, inclusion 71%). Our managers are considered inclusive (83%), and our teams are also perceived as inclusive (82%). Our employees feel psychologically safe (76%). An area for attention is individual buy-in as the survey revealed only 57% of our employees actively support ED&I. The results from the survey will support the development of our future plans. During the year, we held various activities across the organisation to encourage a culture where all our people, regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, physical ability, or nationality, feel valued and inspired to do their best. This included celebrating Pride month in June. We are committed to diversity in recruitment and talent sourcing to become a diverse company reflecting societies and cultures where we work. This includes ensuring vacancy texts are inclusive and we are continuing unconscious bias training sessions.
Our gender diversity is improving. The percentage of female employees increased to 29% in 2024 (2023: 28%). Our target is 32% by 2030. We are realising the target through a high percentage of female new hires (36% in 2024). The percentage of women in line management positions however unfortunately decreased to 23% in 2024 (from 25% in 2023). Our target here is 30% in 2030. We will realise this target by encouraging the presence of at least one female candidate for each vacant management position. In addition, gender diversity targets are addressed in structural meetings between our CEO and Global Directors.
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Gender diversity concerns more than the binary male/female ratio mentioned currently, 10 people within our organisation have indicated in the ED&I survey that they are non-binary or genderfluid. This is approx. 0.15% of our total population. Due to the rounding of percentages in this report, the non-binary/genderfluid people are unfortunately not visible in the figures mentioned in this report.
The gender pay gap analysis we conduct in the United Kingdom was extended to the Netherlands in 2024. It will expand outwards across other locations in coming years, demonstrating our commitment to fair and unbiased compensation practices. The UK Gender Pay Gap report for 2023 was published in 2024 and shows we made positive strides. We reduced our overall mean gender pay gap by 1.2% in 2023 and the mean gender bonus gap saw a significant decrease of 20.6%. The 2024 gender pay gap reports for the UK and the Netherlands will be available in 2025. On International Women’s Day, our CEO Marije Hulshof signed the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles at a global online event. Local activities took place alongside the global event.
Communication is at the heart of inclusion. In 2024, we launched in-house language courses in the Netherlands. The programme includes English courses and one for Dutch aimed towards those who have moved to the Netherlands from elsewhere. A similar programme exists in Vietnam for the English language.