5.1 Diversity and inclusion

At Nutreco, we aim for our teams to reflect the diverse and global society we live and work in, and to be the change we want to see. We want everyone to thrive in an environment where we feel valued and respected, in a culture that brings out the best in all of us.

To help us succeed in Feeding the Future, we welcome everyone as valued members of our family, with equal opportunities to be the best we can. We respect people for who they are and embrace diversity, listening to and learning from each other’s unique perspectives.

Our progress

During 2022, we continued to focus on our three key D&I areas:

Balanced gender representation

By 2025, our goal is to have 30% representation of women in leadership positions. We are currently at 24% and making steady progress, but we will need to accelerate this progress to reach our ambition. We have specific recruitment targets aimed at improving female representation and we review them as part of our internal reporting and audit process. We also placed particular emphasis on improving gender representation within our talent pipeline.

Increased nationality representation

We continued to perform strongly in this area, with all our management teams featuring more than one nationality. During 2022, the number of nationalities represented across our business grew to 101.

A culture that promotes inclusion

We have been measuring our inclusion index as part of our employee surveys since February 2021. In 2022, our pulse survey included one D&I question, but not the full set required for an inclusion index. We will do another employee survey with the full D&I index in 2023. In 2022, we launched a new set of company values to align better with our Nutreco strategy and our parent company SHV's core values and to support our purpose of Feeding the Future. Our new value of “inclusion” provides a stronger platform to promote inclusive behaviours and culture. One example of how we visibly promoted inclusion in 2022 was by creating female dressing rooms in our Operations facilities; this small change is fundamental to hiring more women in Operations.

Pay equity

We are committed to offering equal pay and remuneration to employees with the same job requirements, skills and experience, who work in the same location.

In 2022, we continued to conduct an in-depth gender pay gap study encompassing all employees and locations. We found that, across Nutreco, our gender pay gap is below 5%. We have pockets where we noticed bigger gaps – both negative and positive – but these could be explained by,
for example, job type or tenure. We will perform another analysis in 2023 to monitor our current status and developments. For countries or locations where we see a pay gap above 5%, we will investigate the root cause and create an action plan, if needed.

Even without a gender pay gap, we will continue to work on our policies and practices through consistent application of our job family framework and job grading, by safeguarding internal equity, increasing transparency, having policies to define eligibility for compensation and benefit plans and recording any exceptions. In 2023, we plan to establish fair pay principles, give employees visibility into salary ranges in more countries, deep dive into countries or locations with more than 5% pay gap and educate managers on pay equity. While our efforts are aimed directly at the gender pay gap, we believe that by creating more awareness and transparency we are working toward more equitable pay, or pay based on job requirements, skills and experience, irrespective of gender, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

Supporting women leaders

We continue to invest in leadership development programmes focused on supporting women leaders.

One example is our Taking the Stage training offering. Over 200 female leaders participated in this training in 2022, with great success. We are working with our parent company SHV to adapt and expand the reach of this program for 2023.

Our Management Board has also taken the initiative to build their own awareness of talented women within the company who could fill future leadership positions. In 2022, our Management Board started regularly devoting time on their agenda to discuss potential female successors to senior level positions within the company. In advance of our annual People Review process, each Management Board member will meet with several potential female successors in order to increase their line of sight on this important group.

In February 2022, we shared inspirational stories from women scientists at Nutreco, revealing the challenges they faced, and the motivations that drive them in their careers, in a series of podcasts to mark the United Nations' International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

Nutreco participated in the Women in Food & Agriculture Summit in June 2022. In some of our countries, we also created a mentorship program to offer female colleagues in our company to connect with other people in similar industries.

Chapters:

5.1 Diversity and inclusion
5.2 Community development
5.3 Key partnerships
5.4 Occupational health and safety