Diversity and inclusion
D&I is at the core of our culture evolution and the way we do our business.
As members of the United Nations Global Compact, signatory of the Women Empowerment Principles (WEP) and a supporter of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), driving diversity and inclusion within our Group plays a central role in advancing the principles of human rights.
Our Diversity & Inclusion Journey
2020 Commitments
Following the outcome of the Group-wide culture study (know more) in 2019, we continued to ensure that D&I is at the core of our culture evolution and the way we do our business. This year our Executive Committee (COMEX) re-signed the board charter (last signed in 2018) which sets out our Group’s commitment to uphold the principles of diversity, equality, fairness and respect among our people and when dealing with all our stakeholders.
In 2020, we formed the Transparency, Inclusion, Diversity and Ethics (TIDE) culture stream, which developed our Group’s first official D&I programme document consisting of the D&I goal, philosophy, policy, commitments, and programs to foster D&I within the Group. We are in the process of developing online training program covering important topics such as cultural sensitivity, unconscious bias and psychological safety to make our people understand how we can enrich D&I within our Group. The training shall be embedded within Chalhoub University platform by the second quarter of 2021. All our employees are also slated to sign the D&I commitment by April 2021, thus committing to a welcoming, positive working environment for everyone to feel a sense of belonging, to be themselves, feel safe, accepted and valued.
This year we concluded the 2020 D&I targets we had set for ourselves in 2016, majority of which were achieved successfully, and few are work in progress.
We have revisited our target setting methodology and have raised the bar with detailed country specific D&I targets for 2023 (know more) The monitoring and evaluation of D&I performance is now supported by our digital D&I dashboard where we have integrated several indices such as promotion, termination, salary gaps and turnover rates by gender and grade brackets; nationalization rates per country and business units etc. This in-depth analytical tool will allow us to make data-driven decisions. The access to this dashboard shall be provided to all business unit managers by April 2021 that would enable them to examine the D&I performance against the set targets.
Goal & Philosophy
The Diversity & Inclusion Tree
The six branches of our Diversity and Inclusion Tree illustrate the key elements of the diverse and inclusive workplace that we strive to create. Through fostering diversity and inclusion in our workforce, our employees are more engaged, work performance is improved, and this results in better business results overall. Additionally, the occupational, cognitive, physical, values, societal and relational diversity found in our customer base is represented Group-wide in our people.
Integrating People of Determination
We strengthened our Empowered to Work Program (know more) this year by finalizing the EWP regional guide program document which includes interview tips, FAQs, debunked myths, local support contacts and organizations etc.
We also rolled out PWD Program in all countries by providing 2 presentations and awareness session to the People Partners, HR Managers, Country Relays and Talent Acquisition teams, a total of 48 employees.
This year, in UAE, we integrated four People of Determination (PoD) including one Emirati national who joined our warehouse team. As part of our EWP Program, ensuring our new PoD hires are integrated properly and feel welcome is central to our strategy. For this reason, we have conducted three inclusion workshops for all the team members in the departments where the PWD employee has joined. Going forward we plan to hire at least one PoD in each four of the business verticals in all the countries we operate, thus welcoming 28 PoDs to Chalhoub family in 2021.
