Embracing the strength of diversity
We were all born to mix and we believe that differences enrich our workplace. As an open team, we collaborate across borders and work in multicultural settings with our people representing more than 30 nationalities in our locations around the world.
Our ambition is to become an open environment with a diverse workforce where there is no discrimination, so people can be their authentic selves. “Inclusion is more than just bringing in as many nationalities as you can. You can bring in as many different nationalities as you want but if they don’t feel they can be themselves, then your D&I strategy isn’t working,” says Luciana Bosignoli, Senior HR Business Partner. “Employees, regardless of background, must feel they are part of the company – where they are respected and can share their opinions freely.”
We are constantly making improvements to our People policies and practices – and many have been adjusted to be fairer and more inclusive. We are also following a groupwide diversity and inclusion framework. At Pernod Ricard, diversity means all types of differences – whether visible or not – that makes everyone unique. Diversity constitutes our collective strengths and inclusion is at the heart of conviviality, which is an important part of our culture. This means being open and allowing our differences to connect us by creating an environment that fosters this. We believe that diversity and inclusion is a real strength, enhancing creativity and challenging established ways of working.
We play a very active role with managers, advising and training them about inclusion and unconscious bias, and how to be constructive when selecting candidates in a recruitment process. “Our application process is very detailed,” says Luciana. “We talk about an applicant’s personality, the university they attended, religion and social background, because every time we recruit, we are given an opportunity to bring something that we don’t have, to make a real difference.”
It is not just with recruitment where training plays a pivotal role. We have a robust catalogue of leadership workshops, around evaluations and mentorships to ensure that we avoid biases, and ensure we promote equal opportunity among all employees, whatever the stage of their career. “We work very closely with our people managers so they can understand why inclusion is important. We hold workshops that reflect on working practices so they can learn how to navigate our inclusion journey towards an open environment, where everybody belongs,” adds Luciana.
“We do not tolerate salary discrimination. We work actively with several tools, such as job evaluation, structured performance evaluation and external market comparison, to ensure that our salaries are fair and unbiased. What’s more, and in compliance with Swedish law, we conduct an annual gender pay gap analysis that ensures that our salaries do not discriminate based on gender.”
As part of our D&I strategy, we proactively look to create balanced teams and it’s been our long-term goal to achieve a 40/60 gender spread at every level and diverse nationalities by functions – a goal we have achieved throughout the organisation. We have also met our ’Better Balance’ gender balance in the majority of all levels same as nationalities by function and have 19 per cent nationality diversity in Stockholm (against our target of 20 per cent).
