Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

A diverse workforce enables us to embrace diversity of thought to create the best solutions. This can only happen when all our colleagues feel safe and able to contribute. That’s why we are cultivating 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.

In 2023, we formulated an Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Policy. During a week-long learning event Embracing Diversity Together, we marked International Women’s Day with online and offline talks and discussions open to our global community. We also kicked off Pride Month (pictured) with an inspirational online event about what we mean when we talk about gender and sexuality and discrimination associated with these identities.

To maintain attention on these topics, meetings between the Executive Board and all Global Directors take place to discuss diversity within their teams and progress on gender diversity targets. Ongoing dialogues on ED&I take place in management team meetings and we launched an ED&I monitoring survey in the United Kingdom. We actively search for and approach candidates to ensure a diverse candidate pool. Diversity is also represented in selection and interview teams. We provided training on inclusive language for vacancy texts and check texts before they go live. We continue to improve cooperation between agencies and candidates who face barriers in entering the labour market.

We joined the UN Target Gender Equality Programme to guide our efforts to advance gender equality. The aim is to deepen implementation of the Women’s Empowerment Principles, strengthening our contribution to relevant Sustainable Development Goals. We increased the percentage of female employees to 28% in 2023 (2022: 26%) which is good progress towards our target of 32% by 2030.