Building belonging, becoming a beacon
Find out how we are advancing equity, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) across our entire business.
Our vision for a more equitable world extends beyond our own factories and offices. We want our business to support the transformations in society that will tackle social inequality and unfairness, and end the marginalisation of individuals and groups who are under-represented simply because of who they are.
But we know that to achieve our ambition, we must make sure our own house is in order – we have to be leaders in building and maintaining equitable workplaces.
So at the same time as transforming our advertising and brands, making our products more inclusive, and promoting and supporting diversity in our supply chain, we’re also working to achieve equity, diversity and inclusion in everything we do. Key to this is looking at everything we do through a gender lens to make sure we’re continuing to build gender equality and women’s empowerment. If we had to sum up what we’re trying to achieve in our workplaces, we’d call it ‘belonging’ – a deep sense of inclusion, where everyone receives fair treatment, fair access and fair opportunities.
Tackling bias to create an equitable workplace
We’re a diverse company and we’ve worked for many years to build a strongly inclusive culture which respects every employee for who they are. We know that diverse teams operating within an inclusive environment have proven to be higher performing, more agile and faster in responding to changing consumer needs. They’re also better at coping with ever-evolving market conditions while yielding the most innovative solutions and delivering increased productivity.
But we also know that inclusion isn’t an automatic outcome of diversity; we need to tackle both. The biases and structural inequalities that contribute to inequality in society can still be barriers in our workplaces. That’s why we’ve adopted a transformational approach that actively addresses issues of discrimination and promotes equity for all.
In every workplace, we want to tackle the issues that people face in their day-to-day working lives. We’re listening to their dissatisfaction with their career progression and understanding their perception of inclusion. At the heart of our approach is our commitment to equity at every stage of our employees’ careers.
While equality has long been a tenet of fairness in the workplace, it’s crucial we consider equity too. Equality looks to treat people in the same way by providing them with the same opportunities and resources. But this one-size-fits-all approach is only effective if everyone has exactly the same needs – because it assumes a level playing field where every individual has equal advantages or barriers. This is rarely the case.
Equity recognises that people don’t all start from the same place, and prompts us to consider interventions and measures to compensate for systemic bias or barriers that can prevent individuals from reaching their full potential. So what does an equitable workplace mean in practice?