Initiative

Improving and securing gender equality

Summary of the initiative

Danone is a food company specialised in dairy and yogurt, bottled water and medical nutrition.

These are some of the initiatives implemented to improve and secure gender equality:

• Work-life – Flexibility; Part-time career & Pause: systematically encouraging management to be responsive to women executives at all levels, including management wishing to benefit from part-time work or a career break for family reasons, whether it is a situation where children require more the presence of their mother or to follow a spouse abroad. Danone helps in finding practical solutions to help and respond positively to their requests. The company allows “tailor-made" part-time formulas in accordance with the managers of the department concerned such as leave on Wednesday afternoon, on a Friday or both. They have set up programmes to stay in touch during career breaks to bring in the best conditions for reinstatement at the end of it;
• Recruitment "MIXED" requires that for any position, even the more traditionally male ones, the pool of candidates is mixed. This has led to the recruitment of female production managers at the head of 200 men and women workers, as well as at the IT Helpdesk;
• Organisation: the top management encourages and sets an example not to start any meeting before 9am or after 5pm in order for mothers or fathers to assist their family;
• Facility management: the company finds practical ways to help manage the family needs of employees including an ironing service with a “catch and release” office.

Danone Belgium was the winner of the Wo.Men@Work Award in 2010.