Month: May 2023

Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are an important part of company culture. They help build community and engage different perspectives with the goal of encouraging positive change within and outside of the company.

In our Spotlight series, learn about ERGs across Henkel North America, that include over 1,000 employees, and are helping to build an inclusive environment and spirit of belonging. Together we are advancing our DEI priorities.

Learn more below about our ERG: Asian American Professional Association

Henkel’s Asian American Professional Association (AAPA) ERG aims to create a meaningful network of employees who are of Asian descent, have friends and family who are, and want to learn more to be better allies. The ERG seeks to positively impact Henkel’s culture by creating a sense of community, while also helping employees achieve their professional potential by providing opportunities to help them grow and learn both in and out of the office.

The Asian American Professional Association is important to advancing Henkel’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts by creating a sense of belonging and community for its members which ultimately improves employee morale, retention, loyalty, and overall organizational culture. The ERG is also helping drive awareness and bridge cultural differences.

Despite members being dispersed across multiple locations in North America, the AAPA is able to create a sense of community by regularly hosting in-person and virtual activities, such as local food and clothing drives, guest speaker events, book clubs, trivia tournaments and virtual food festivals. One of the group’s key team building activities is participating in the annual Riverfront Dragon Boat and Asian Festival in Hartford, Connecticut. The event celebrates Asian and Pacific Islander cultures through traditional music and dance, art activities, food, and martial arts. Last year, the Henkel team won first place in the boat competition.

Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month is celebrated each May and this year, the theme is “Advancing leaders through opportunity.” To Jennifer Manuel, co-president of the Asian American Professional Association, advancing leaders through opportunity can mean several things:

“It can mean creating opportunities through networking, mentoring, and facilitating connections throughout the organization or providing opportunities for personal and professional growth through learning events. The AAPA is always looking to provide these various avenues of leadership opportunities to our community.”
Jennifer Manuel, National Business Manager, Henkel Consumer Brands, and Co-President AAPA

Throughout the month of May, the ERG will be hosting multiple events for the Henkel community such as a panel discussion on the importance of advancing leaders, allyship, and belonging at Henkel and storytelling event that will culminate at the end of the month.

“We are an incredibly complex community. We have a very broad range of diversity within the Asian community, including a variety of languages, religions, histories, cultural influences, politics, climates, foods, and socioeconomics. We invite everyone to join our ERG to learn, grow and be allies for each other.”
Bikash Rajkarnikar, Senior Global Manager, R&D Venturing & Alliances, Henkel Consumer Brands, and Co-President AAPA

Watch the winning Henkel boat crew gearing up for the 2022 Riverfront Dragon Boat and Asian Festival in Hartford, CT.

KFC has bold ambitions around inclusion. We believe our teams should reflect the same wonderful diversity as our customers around the world and every person should have the opportunity to thrive.

This week, leaders from KFC across Pan-Europe gathered for a day-long workshop on equity, inclusion and belonging with an emphasis on how our commitment to inclusion intersects with KFC’s social purpose of Feeding People’s Potential.

Throughout the room were franchise partners, General Managers, Chief People Officers (CPOs) and People & Culture team members from our business units in Western Europe, Germany, France and Central Eastern Europe.

Our journey to inclusion from the inside-out

The morning kicked off with our KFC Global Chief People Officer Cristi Lockett and Global Director of Inclusion and Capability Carolina Romero discussing KFC’s EI&B strategy and why it’s critical to our business and our brand. Specifically, we celebrated the progress we’ve made in recent years on gender parity, as KFC has reached 52% parity across our teams globally. Looking beyond gender, each market shared their commitment to address additional dimensions of diversity to better reflect our customers and the communities in which we operate.

Then, to further focus our discussion, Chief People and Transformation Officer for KFC Pan-Europe Nathalie Choudet shared context on the highly-diverse ethnic, origin and cultural landscape across the region along with KFC’s biggest opportunities for impact.

Sharing best practices brand-to-brand

The day continued with a panel led by Dr. Rohini Anand, Senior Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Advisor, and author of Leading Global Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: A Guide for Systemic Change in Multinational Organizations. Through this discussion, HR and diversity leaders from global brands and non-profits including Loreal, Disneyland Paris, Ubisoft and Club 21 Siecle shared how they’ve strategized around diversity efforts and measuring progress, something that can often be challenging. As they shared their perspectives, there were many parallels with the motivations and values that also drive KFC’s commitment to this space, as well as the perceived barriers that we’re all tackling together.

With new insights gained from the panel, participants spent time discussing the current landscape in their respective countries and new ways they can approach EI&B through recruitment, development and culture.

Opening doors to remarkable refugees

After lunch, we spent time discussing the importance of responsible hiring, specifically hiring refugees, with Helene Van Melle, Deputy Director of Tent Partnership for Refugees; Karolina Mastalerz, KFC HR Director at Amrest; and Emilia Stroe, CPO for US FOOD, Romania. These three leaders shared their experiences hiring refugees and value they bring to our restaurant teams and our brand. A key theme throughout this discussion was readiness. To be successful in this endeavor, the organization must be trained and prepared to welcome new refugee team members while we also need to prepare refugees for the role they’ll play within the KFC family.

Hamdi Ulukaya, the founder of Tent Partnership for Refugees and the CEO and founder of Chobani, summarizes the impact a stable work environment has on a refugee by saying, “The moment a refugee gets a job, is the moment they stop being a refugee.”

Continuing our journey

Finally, we wrapped the day by sharing market-specific action plans for how we can continue progress toward our EI&B commitments through recruitment and retention strategies and social purpose programs.

With partners like Tent Partnership for Refugees to help us reach and engage refugees at KFCs throughout Europe and beyond, we’re hopeful on our mission to ensuring our teams are as diverse are our customers, and every KFC team member feels a true sense of belonging.

Originally published on TriplePundit

Running a profitable business in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry isn’t easy – especially when inflation has consumers pinching pennies and hunting for basement bargains. Add that to the list of challenges the CPG industry is facing, which include lingering pandemic hurdles and conflict-zone embargoes that suppliers and manufacturers are obliged to observe.

Meanwhile, companies are under pressure to monitor their risks and impacts on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. That means not just finding and monitoring their ESG data, which can be a huge task on its own, but also developing a strategy complete with targets and accountability measures to reduce ESG risks and minimize negative impacts from business activities.

So, how in the world are business leaders supposed to do all of that?

The answer lies in the “G” of ESG. Strong corporate governance and commitment from C-suite executives are how organizations can manage today’s business requirements and thrive under the opportunities that this new landscape presents. After all, ESG-focused funds proved resilient even amidst recession fears — attracting $37 billion of net inflows in the fourth quarter of 2022, compared to $200 billion of net withdrawals in the broader market, according to research from Morningstar.

Which governance mechanisms drive ESG strategy?

TriplePundit sat down with Jonathan Gill, global head of sustainability advocacy at Unilever, to gain insight into the governance mechanisms that drive ESG strategy in the CPG industry. The key takeaway? ESG strategy must be integrated into overall business strategy, with the two components working in coordination to drive success across all brands.

1. Integrating ESG into business strategy

If there’s one thing to know about driving a successful ESG strategy, it’s this: ESG strategy has to be integrated into overall business strategy. Without integration, the two objectives will be competing for priority rather than working in tandem.

“Unilever’s purpose is all about making sustainable living commonplace. So that’s kind of the North Star, the way we think about everything,” Gill explained. “It’s been years since we had separate strategies for sustainability and for business. It’s one integrated strategy.”

2. Business structure facilitates ESG performance

For Unilever, this integrated strategy — which it calls the Unilever Compass — is “locked into the governance side of things,” Gill said. “The board oversees it. We have an external advisory council to make sure we’re making the right decisions and choices. It’s locked into our remuneration, but also into our structure.”

In the CPG industry, a parent company will own many different brands. While those brands have different priorities in business and in ESG strategy, the structure and the relationship between the parent company and its brands needs to facilitate ESG progression.

“We’ve got five semi-autonomous business units within Unilever, and each and every one of those business units have sustainable priorities within them,” Gill continued. “That’s agreed by the most senior level, by the executives, so the delivery is really embedded into it.”

3. Ensuring all stakeholders have their voices heard

When it comes to actually developing an ESG strategy and identifying key performance indicators (KPIs), it’s crucial to have a clear understanding of what is important to stakeholders from the beginning and throughout an organization’s ESG journey.

Whether that’s from investors, customers, employees, brands or the broader community, understanding the expectations of stakeholders will align and drive ESG strategy, Gill said. For example, the company holds bi-weekly sessions with employees and executives and operates 37 “People Data Centers” around the world to keep its finger on the pulse of what customers are looking for — among many other ways in which it engages with stakeholders.

Organizations that listen to stakeholder voices are better positioned to perform well on the metrics that matter, driving ESG performance and business growth.

4. Brands develop their own ESG priorities

It can be tempting to delegate to brands what their ESG priorities should be and how they should approach the subject. Parent companies are ultimately responsible for their brands, after all. But it is much better when those companies facilitate that development and allow brands to grow their ESG priorities organically.

“Within the Unilever Compass, the three priorities we have around sustainability are planet, health and wellbeing, and social. Our brands’ purposes generally fall within those three spaces, but we don’t have a formal way to make sure brands are focusing in specific areas,” Gill explained. “The brands themselves are responsible for identifying what their purpose is and delivering that. It has to be organic, it has to be real, and therefore top-down just wouldn’t work.”

5. Transparent accounting 

When asked about the value of transparent accounting, Gill said, “We think it’s quite an important lever for change to accelerate the transition toward sustainability.”

As global ESG reporting and accounting standards are being hashed out around the globe, transparent accounting is not only important to today’s investors and consumers, but it’s also soon to become a requirement. Businesses that incorporate this practice before legislation is finalized will benefit from the ease of transition to mandatory reporting, as well as from the influx of investor dollars into ESG funds. Having the right technology in place to gather, track and report on ESG data will be essential for businesses in the future.

6. Transparent ESG goals, progress and communication

Transparency in ESG goals, progress and communication is vital for highly visible, consumer-facing companies like Unilever. The company reported regularly on the progress of its 10-year sustainability strategy, the Sustainable Living Plan, from 2010 to 2020. Some of its targets were reached, some were narrowly missed, and others fell well short. Whatever the case, the company was open about its progress and the challenges it faced along the way — and it continues to report on the new Unilever Compass strategy.

This type of transparency builds trust. Trusted voices in the ESG sphere are exactly what investors and consumers are looking for amidst the tsunami of ESG information being released by companies looking to attract today’s consumers and investors.

7. Accountability measures

Finally, accountability measures must be built into the structure of the organization. Naturally, the market will act as its own accountability measure as investors and consumers pull money from companies that are underperforming and redirect those funds to companies with stronger ESG strategies.

Internally, Unilever ties ESG performance into its executive remuneration scheme. “We have essentially eight metrics, and if you perform well on those, your bonus is higher,” Gill said. “If you’re motivated by money, then obviously you’ll be motivated to deliver on those sustainability goals.”

Not everyone is motivated by money, but it’s a strong measure to incentivize performance and show commitment to ESG strategy.

A look to the future of ESG and governance challenges

One of the biggest challenges facing business executives in all sectors with regards to ESG and corporate governance is the uncertainty of reporting requirements. There are different global reporting standards, all of which are similar but none of which are mandatory — at least not yet.

“The challenge we’ve got at the moment is there are three big standards — from the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the European Union (EU) — and they are big beasts of information that need to be prepared,” Gill explained. “Making them standardized — not necessarily the same, but interoperable — would be very helpful, and we’re very keen to see them being mandatory for all companies above a certain size.”

The biggest challenge in Gill’s eyes is that with the sense of urgency to enact mandatory reporting and organizations rushing to comply, there are likely to be some errors in reporting, or errors made by assurers on the audit side that could provide the anti-ESG cohort some extra fuel for their fire. In the midst of our climate emergency, the onus is on legislators to not only get the requirements in place quickly, but to make sure it’s done right.

This article series is sponsored by Workiva and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team.

Regardless of inflation risks, shifts in the regulatory environment or industry challenges, ESG is here to stay. Our partner on this series, Workiva, offers an end-to-end solution to help companies unlock value. You can find out more here. 

Images courtesy of Unilever 

Chances are if the weather is nice in Minnesota, you’ll find Tim Clemens, owner of Ironwood Foraging outside. Tim may have started his business because he wanted to be his own boss, but his passion for what he does takes center stage.

As he notes, foraging is the most ancient human narrative and as part of his business he helps bring people out into nature to connect with trees and things they might not think of using otherwise. There may have been a large farm to table movement in recent years, but Tim sees forest to table as an even larger movement. And not only is it healthy for your body, it’s also good for your mind and soul. “A lot of people feel lonely or disconnected. You can walk into any forest and that forest has no opinion of you,” says Tim.

He believes every tree; every flower is a unique expression of our universe and should be explored. Success doesn’t come easy for Tim though, being in Minnesota, where winters are long, his entire business typically exists from May to November. However, for Tim, it’s the excitement that keeps him going every day. To be able to share his love of foraging with others in his classes, is what he looks forward to. He encourages people to take advantage of their environments around them and “Go out and touch grass!”

See Tim’s story, part of GoDaddy’s Icons of Minneapolis series, streaming now on YouTube.

About GoDaddy Icons

Icons is GoDaddy’s Customer Storytelling video series that goes city-to-city following Everyday Entrepreneurs as they fulfill their dreams and share the professional lessons they’ve learned along the way.

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GoDaddy helps millions of entrepreneurs globally start, grow, and scale their businesses. People come to GoDaddy to name their idea, build a professional website, attract customers, sell their products and services, and accept payments online and in-person. GoDaddy’s easy-to-use tools help microbusiness owners manage everything in one place and its expert guides are available to provide assistance 24/7. To learn more about the company, visit www.GoDaddy.com.