Diageo Case Study on Women’s Economic Empowerment
Celebrating diversity and actively creating an inclusive, collaborative culture is core to Diageo’s purpose of celebrating life everyday everywhere. For our business to thrive, Diageo depends on having the right people with the skills and capabilities in each of the 180 countries in which they operate.
Diageo is the FTSE 100 company with the highest number of women at the most senior levels. In 2016 Diageo leads the ranking with 45.5% of women on its board. In addition, 40% of our Executive team is women. A more balanced leadership team means broader conversations and better decision making – Diageo aims for leadership teams to be 35% female by 2020.
We have for the past decade been committed to gender diversity. We’ve made significant progress in achieving our commitment to increasing the number of women in leadership positions, encompassing the top 4 leadership tiers of our business including the Executive team. We made good progress at Board level and at Executive levels, however achieving the target of 35% female representation in leadership positions remains a focus, with performance currently at 28%.
We are committed to developing the skills of all of our employees and eliminating unconscious bias. Each General Manager of the 21 markets has a clear plan in place to help them build a culture of equal opportunity in their business; giving their employees the freedom to do their best work of their careers and attract the world’s most skilled individuals. Our graduate programmes and mid-career development programmes ensure we have an equal intake of women and men to attract, retain and grow the best talent.
Achieving 35% by 2020
Embedding the approach in the organisation’s performance ambition is key with clear actions, accountability and governance structures for functions and business unit owners to implement:
– Highly visible leadership from CEO, the formation of a global cross functional collaborative diversity working group; engagement programmes providing business leaders with guidance and tools to embed diversity and inclusion. Policies and practices to support the achievement of this goal include hiring practices requiring balanced gender shortlists for leadership positions, leadership training designed to accelerate personal leadership growth and performance, enabling them to make the necessary shifts to enhance performance of themselves and their teams. The Future Leaders programme targeting early/mid-career is designed to strengthen and diversify our global leadership pipeline. 50% of the graduate intake is women.
– Diageo supports a range of growing networks such as the Spirited Women’s Network – a physical and online support network for women and men to facilitate mentoring and coaching relationships, providing opportunities to shape our inclusion and diversity agenda, creating possibilities and the conditions for all people to succeed. It operates in North America, the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, India and Hungary.
