Initiative

Initiatives on gender equality and Diversity Steering Committee

Summary of the initiative

Cargill's starches & sweeteners business produces an extensive range of starch-derived products.

In October 2009, a Diversity Steering Committee was nominated to ensure more focus on gender equality, more follow-up and move towards integrating key messages into the business planning process and day-to-day management. The first year the Steering Committee, supported by the Diversity Business Relationship Manager, carried out a survey to identify the potential issues Cargill has in the Business Unit – attraction, retention, development and inclusion of women. Using the results of this survey, the Steering Committee re-worked the Diversity action plan and decided to nominate Champions in each location to execute and follow up on the plans.

Comparing the situation over time, Cargill has moved from:

• 21% to 26% of women at the Professional level between 2007 and 2012;
• 12% to 14% of women at the Senior Professional level between 2007 and 2012;
• 6% to 8% of women in the Executive population between 2008 and 2012;
• 25% to 66% of women participating in a Graduate programme and feeding the succession plans between 2007-2012.

In addition to those numbers, Cargill ensures that all talented women are part of the career plans.                       

Cargill also wants to ensure that the company taps into the full talent pool in the labour market. The company does this by increasing the number of people that it can attract to the enterprise, as well as by aspiring to have an employee group which reflects the community in which the company operates. Focusing on gender representation includes the need to pro-actively address glass ceiling or other barriers that may prevent all people from having equal employment and advancement opportunities.

Some examples of programmes and initiatives: mandatory gender mix in recruitment, multi-channel sourcing , expertise of recruiters and awareness of diversity issues, monitoring of recruitment data to enable analysis and action, target graduate recruitment to specific universities, cultural change training programmes, increasing the representation of women at the middle management level and above and mentoring programmes to help the development and awareness of female leaders.