This year, UN Global Compact Network Netherlands is piloting two peer learning groups, one on Gender Equality and one on Climate Action. The goal is for the participating companies to learn more about these important topics, to dig into the challenges that they are facing, and to exchange best practices that can help overcome these challenges. This blog is the first of many in which we aim to capture our companies’ peer learning journey.

But how do we get to equality?

Companies’ daily HR practices determine whether or not someone gets hired, promoted, or paid a specific salary. Associations with people’s genders, race, jobs often have the effect of putting people into different – unequal – social groups.

Jason Jie, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Specialist at Deloitte Netherlands, explained that companies should ensure an inclusive environment that appreciates everyone’s unique, diverse characteristics and backgrounds. Companies should also reflect on their work culture, which could exclude certain groups of people.  

To get a better understanding of the feeling of exclusion, Jason prepared a simulation game around including and excluding behaviours. All participants were assigned roles by putting on a pair of glasses with a card, with numbers between 2 and 10 – so you could see each other’s numbers, but not your own. Everyone was given the task to only talk to people with high numbers – and ignore people with low numbers. During the evaluation of the game, everyone could effortlessly guess whether they had a high or low number. It made participants aware of the subtle behaviours we have at work where we may exclude people instead of making them feel welcome.

Interestingly, Jason noted that the social norm on what’s considered legitimate inclusion or exclusion changes over time. For example, an employee resource group for LGBTQIA+ people to share their experiences could be seen to legitimately include one group and exclude others. It’s therefore important to keep having dialogues on what inclusion means, and how it can contribute towards equity.

Companies’ best practices to promote equity 

Throughout the session, companies exchanged best practices to promote more inclusive, equitable work environments. For example, Deloitte has a Panel & Proposal Promise: they aim for panels and proposal teams to consist of 40% men, 40% women, and 20% of employees that belong to underrepresented groups. A different company shared that before they start an application process, they map the existing team and what traits or characteristics could help diversify the team. This could mean focusing on a different gender, ethnicity, or educational background, and considering whether people are extroverts or introverts. Another company shared that they promote a more diverse pool of applicants in a male-dominated sector by ensuring that if internal application processes don’t have at least 33% women  applicants, they will open up the position externally to reach this.

At the end of our session, our group of companies committed to implementing at least one inclusive practice in their business. We will reflect on how this went during the next session on April 13.

1. Increase leadership diversity

AkzoNobel’s leaders understand the importance of representation that reflects the diversity of our organization. We’ve set a goal of achieving 30% female representation in senior executive roles by 2025. Currently, at 25%, we’re well on our way to increasing that number.

Diverse leadership teams bring a range of perspectives and experiences that help us make better decisions and respond more effectively to changing market conditions. So as part of striving for 50-50 gender representation in executive recruitment, we require hiring managers to put together diverse interview panels.

2. Mind the gender pay gap

We believe in equal pay for equal work – and we can prove it.

In 2022, an external review of our compensation practice found that after correcting for background variables, the annual pay gap was just 0.9% in favour of men. We’ll continue to review the data and our practices to do what we can to get even closer to equal pay.

3. Develop and retain female talent

A rebuild of our talent performance framework is currently underway to provide our top talent with more career growth opportunities. Designed through the lens of diversity and inclusion, special care is being taken to prevent bias.

Globally, many resources are already in place to make sure our work environments are inclusive and welcoming to all, including a D&I toolkit, team workshops and an ambassador network.

We’re also making structural improvements, with a €400,000 budget allocated to improve women’s facilities in our manufacturing and supply chain locations. This includes projects to enhance bathrooms, showers and changing rooms, as well as create lactation rooms. Smaller improvements can also have a big impact – for instance, we now advise our sites to provide properly fitted workwear for female employees.

4. Foster employee networks

Our employee-driven Women Inspired Network connects people of all genders who are interested in advancing gender equality. 

Organized into local chapters, the network is a place to learn, grow and empower each other to drive change. For example, our India chapter invited local leaders to reverse-mentor women, increasing awareness of gender-related challenges. For this International Women’s Day, an online event about parenting and work will encourage conversation at our sites around the world.

5. Empower women in local communities

One of our 2030 ambitions is to empower more than 100,000 people with new skills – including programs tailored specifically to women.

In Brazil, our “Mulheres na Cor” (Women in Color) program helps women transform their lives by breaking into the traditionally male-dominated vehicle refinishes and decorative paints industries. In another initiative, we started working with more than 500 women in rural India to promote entrepreneurship in decorative paints.

Our journey to gender equity continues

The five areas listed above represent just a few of the actions we’re taking to promote gender quality at AkzoNobel and in the communities where we operate. We’re highly motivated to keep learning and growing in this journey together – that’s embracing equity.

This was the challenge UN Global Compact Network Netherlands formulated one year ago for an alliance of 5 European universities (Barcelona, Budapest, Dublin, Montpellier, and Utrecht) under the name CHARM-EU, co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.* A group of four students took the challenge and came up with their presentation on February 2, 2023, in Barcelona. One day later, together with all the other 56 students, they received their master’s degree at the European University, for the first time in history.

The focus of the students

The master students focussed the research question “What are SME perspectives regarding current and emerging sustainability reporting practices considering the incoming CSRD?” They focussed on the Netherlands where both their stakeholder UN Global Compact and the four University of Utrecht students are based.

Every day, 17 million Dutch citizens purchase thousands of products: new jeans, a coffee, a t-shirt or a bottle of milk. But the price paid for these items almost never accounts for the true impact the production and consumption of these goods have on our environmental and social ecosystems.

As consumers, we often make purchases without any insight into the impact caused by the creation and/or delivery of everyday products and services. How do we activate people to be more aware of the story behind what they buy and empower interested individuals with the information they need to make informed and considered purchasing decisions?

The eye-catching digital art

The digital art campaign grabs the attention of the consumer and then raises awareness by providing additional information through a “price tag” on the reverse side (also with a QR code to find out more)

Using digital art allows us to explore digital and social media channels, as well as print and physical exhibitions, for the dissemination of our campaign. We want to take it to the next level through an outdoor physical installation and a social media campaign.

How can you contribute to this campaign?

Currently, we are still working on the funding to expand our campaign and create an additional six art pieces to create even more awareness. Would you like to have more information about our project or interested in contributing to our campaign? Let us know by emailing: susan.van.hooijdonk@randstadgroep.nl 

The gap between purpose and pay

As we all know, it is fashionable to see corporate scale as a negative thing. We believe that is the wrong way to look at it. We believe that using the scale of corporations and the creativity and good will of the millions of smart, dedicated and driven people working for them is undoubtedly our best chance of achieving a sustainable and future-proof economy. And corporations themselves seem to agree. Most of them claim, quite publicly, that they are led by a higher purpose than profit alone.   

However, when you look at the incentives offered to the executives of most large corporations across the globe, a very different picture emerges. In nearly all public companies we’ve looked at as Reward Value, there is a – sometimes significant – gap between the commitments made to people and the planet and the results for which its executives are rewarded. In other words: there’s a gap between purpose and pay.

Principles of Responsible Renumeration as a pragmatic instrument

Traditionally, remuneration policies are often established less by design but more by convention. That’s the way it has always been. Rather than making me cynical, this gives me a great deal of hope. There’s no dark force creating the gap. It’s just a habit, mixed with a fear of being the first to change.

With the PRR, we have created a pragmatic instrument to help corporations design rewards that encourage their executives to live up to them. A step forward on the path to positive change and the realization of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

To find out more about the PRR and Reward Value, please visit: www.rewardvalue.org

Scaling the impact

In 2022 we facilitated many programmatic activities to help enable our members and set ambitious targets to scale the impact that the world needs to reach Agenda 2030:

• Climate Ambition Accelerator (second edition)
• Target Gender Equality Accelerator (second edition)
• SDG Ambition programme (second edition)
• Three new groups started their journey in our Young Professionals-programme
• SDG Pioneers, our national winner Iris van Wanrooij from Emma Safety Footwear was selected as a global SDG pioneer for supply chain sustainability.

We contributed to business networking and sharing knowledge by hosting and contributing to more than 20 events. This includes conferences, workshops, and roundtables hosted by us and in collaboration with partners, such as VNO-NCW, AmCham, KVNR, MKB Nederland, NBCC, SDG Netherlands, Socires, and other valuable stakeholders. Our events hosted over 1,000 participants from various sustainability areas and expertise levels – from young professionals to seasoned experts in this industry. Moreover, a number of Dutch participants were present at the global flagship events in-person and virtually, such as COP27,  the Leaders Summit, and Uniting Business LIVE.

What is next in 2023?

2023 has exciting things in store for our members! We just kicked off our Peer Learning Groups pilot, where a total of 22 companies will learn and exchange best practices in two groups: one on Climate Action and one on Gender Equality. We will start our first edition of the Business & Human Rights Accelerator in February. Together with the Social and Economic Council (SER), we will support a record-breaking 26 participating companies to improve their human rights due diligence processes.

In March 2023, we will launch the new platform for our Communication on Progress (make sure to join our live demonstration on February 9th) We also want to thank our participants: Akzo Nobel N.V., Athalos, Barentz International, Bugaboo International, Core Laboratories N.V., Delft Imaging Systems, Dietsmann Monte-Carlo SAM, Heineken N.V,  Imres B.V., and Trital Safety B.V., who were last year’s early adopters and helped to improve the platform.

Besides offering our members inspiring and impactful programmes and events, one of our goals in 2023 is to strengthen and grow our network. Our new ‘Referral Programme’ will reward our members for being ambitious and inspiring organisations to join the UN Global Compact.

We want to thank our participants for their commitment and collaboration in 2022. We look forward to working together on our joint mission to unite businesses for a better world in 2023.