THRIVING COMMUNITIES
We do everything we can to help people live better lives. Our social responsibility is to promote equity, strengthen diversity and respect human rights. We offer our employees lifelong learning opportunities, and an attractive and healthy working environment. We advocate for social progress and access to education worldwide, and we provide assistance in emergency situations.
How we implement our sustainability strategy in each country or region is tailored to local law and cultural contexts.
Our global strategy is to strengthen diversity, equity and inclusion, respect human rights and enhance the livelihoods of people.
Reduce inequities and leave nobody behind – that is the key to meaningful social progress. This progress has been seriously challenged in the last few years. Global events have increased exclusion, intensified structural discrimination, and hindered social development in the world around us.
We know that equity is at the heart of the solutions that can move us forward in times of crisis. This guides our agenda for the transformational impact of our actions. Equity is the link between different topics and the driving force behind a wide range of our activities.
Building a sense of belonging for people – with all of our differences – in our society and at our workplace, is critical to fostering creativity and innovation. We all have to listen to different voices, and understand different perspectives and ways of thinking. Our shared path is to build a corporate culture based on trust where employees are encouraged to show initiative, think proactively and be open to sharing new ideas.
We embrace the role that companies can have as key players in reducing adverse impacts and promoting positive effects.
Diversity & Inclusion strengthen our culture of belonging
For Henkel, Diversity & Inclusion are more than buzzwords, to us they are a “must have”, deeply embedded in our corporate strategy and company values. Since our founding nearly 150 years ago, Henkel has been committed to fostering an inclusive environment and culture of belonging, where all employees feel valued and respected. Our employees come from various ethnic and cultural origins, bring diverse skills, backgrounds and abilities and are diverse in many other dimensions. Therefore, we actively promote inclusive behaviors among our employees, raise awareness, and foster an environment that welcomes and embraces individual differences.
We are convinced that a diversified workforce, as well as an open and inclusive corporate culture, are important success factors in a globalized world. Different perspectives, cultures and ways of thinking enable us to meet the needs of our increasingly diverse markets and stakeholders with creative and innovative products, services and solutions. Through a number of programs and training courses, we strengthen the understanding and appreciation of diversity while promoting an inclusive corporate culture.
A milestone in the area of diversity and inclusion is the gender-neutral parental leave program, that we have introduced for all employees worldwide. It guarantees a minimum of eight weeks of fully paid parental leave and applies to all family constellations, including adopted or foster children, LGBTQ+ couples and single parents. The response to the offer was very positive. In 2024, around 30 percent more employees worldwide took parental leave than in the previous year.
Our commitment to respecting human rights
Henkel has a clear policy of doing business in an ethical and legal manner. This is inseparably linked with our commitment to respecting internationally acknowledged human rights. As early as 1994, Henkel’s Mission and Principles document emphasized that respecting social values and standards is an integral part of our company policy.
Education
Support lifelong learning and education, and motivate people to take action for sustainability.
Education is one of the most powerful tools when it comes to enabling positive change. Education enables people to acquire the knowledge and skills to lift themselves out of poverty, level inequalities, and stay healthy. Education and lifelong learning, as inherent rights and as a means of realizing other rights, are key elements that guide our strategy.
Continuous learning inspires innovation and creativity. Learning and development are critical elements of our daily work, but so is the opportunity to develop through learning outside of our core responsibilities. In contrast to traditional learning methods, we focus on innovative programs that take a holistic, engaged approach to learning, and that place a strong focus on knowledge, skills, and mindset.
This key approach to learning starts with our employees, but goes further, to our customers and the communities we operate in. Our activities are designed to empower people with the skills and competencies needed to develop innovative ideas, sustainable behaviours, and new digital solutions that will allow them to master future challenges and capitalize on opportunities.
Social engagement
Together with our employees, pensioners, customers, consumers, partners and charitable organizations, we are committed to making a lasting contribution to society worldwide, above and beyond our business activities. Henkel’s commitment is based on three pillars: volunteer engagement by our employees, partnerships with charitable organizations, and emergency aid with focus on natural disasters.
Corporate citizenship is our way of “Making society future-fit.” Our activities are designed to empower people through education to obtain the skills and competencies needed to develop innovative ideas, sustainable behaviors, and new digital solutions that will put them in a position to master future challenges and capitalize on opportunities.
Education programs
When it comes to implementing our sustainability strategy, it is our people who make the difference – through their dedication, skills and knowledge. Because of this, we want to foster our people’s commitment to sustainability. And we have expanded our existing training offers to include a holistic engagement program. The objective is to comprehensively equip our employees with the knowledge, skills and mindset that are central to Henkel’s role as a leader in sustainability. We also seek to engage and empower them to become actively involved in sustainability in their work environment and in their private lives.
In addition, we are committed to further expanding our community education programmes. Forscherwelt is Henkel’s contribution to scientific literacy.
Employee development
We promote the skills and knowledge of our employees to help them achieve their full potential. Regular and open feedback about performance and potential serves as a foundation for their development. This makes it easier to define individual development measures that address both the company’s needs and each employee’s potential, so that we can build a workforce that is fit for the future. This includes:
- Individual development planning through regular feedback: To foster the targeted development of our employees, we make use of regular development meetings and individual development plans, which we have established as part of our talent management approach. This helps us to systematically identify and develop talents within the company, and to plan internal succession.
- Career launch and lifelong learning programs: Henkel helps many young people to embark on a successful career. In addition, lifelong learning is a core element of continuous development at our company. We put great emphasis on learning in our everyday work, as well as through handling a varied range of tasks. Henkel encourages this by offering opportunities to take advantage of new roles both locally and in other countries.
- Expansion of digital training opportunities: For several years now, Henkel has been making use of virtual training opportunities in addition to traditional classroom formats to train its employees around the world. To do this, we use a global learning platform that offers trainer-led training programs as well as eLearning, podcasts, videos and virtual sharing formats. As all services on the Henkel Learning Hub are cloud-based, they can be accessed at any time – not only in the office environment, but also on the road or at home.
Wellbeing
Foster health and wellbeing, and help drive social progress.
Wellbeing is becoming increasingly viewed from a holistic perspective that sees the physical, mental and social aspects as inextricably linked – and that is how we understand it at Henkel.
Translating what wellbeing means for an increasingly fast-paced and digital work environment comes with the expectation that we rethink our approach and adapt to these circumstances. An inclusive and collaborative approach is essential to sustaining a culture of wellbeing. Understanding how the physical workplace determines wellbeing is becoming pivotal in a time where the places we work have shifted. Creating an optimal work environment that fosters creativity and supports resilience includes revitalizing our workplaces to better meet the needs of our employees.
Mental health measures continue to be an important consideration in the implementation of our wellbeing strategy. Another key area to drive positive change in this area was understanding the benefits of digital tools as a key to promoting employee wellbeing.
As our understanding of employee wellbeing continues to grow, we remain committed to a holistic approach to integrating wellbeing into our corporate culture.
Maintain and improve health and wellbeing
We promote the health and vitality of our employees to help create an agile, high-performance organization. To do so, we rely on globally uniform health and safety standards, and provide health and preventive care programs to guard against workplace risks that could lead to illness. The broad range of services offered at our sites has two aims: promoting our employees’ physical health (via seminars on giving up smoking, health checkups, AIDS prevention, etc.), and maintaining their mental vitality (through stress management and similar measures).
We pick up on important social trends, such as the demographic change, with our program for maintaining working capacity. In addition to a number of regional and local programs, we have been carrying out a major joint health campaign with all sites every year.
In 2024, Henkel's occupational health management was honored with the Corporate Health Award 2024 in the “Chemicals/Pharmaceuticals” category. The Corporate Health Award is the most prestigious award in Germany for strategic occupational health management and is presented to employers with a forward-looking and sustainable HR strategy. In addition to the global health platform MyCare, the training of Health Scouts, who bring health issues directly to the team, and the close cooperation between company management and employees in the organization of company health management were praised.
High level of occupational safety
Occupational safety within the company and along the value chain is a top priority for us. We remain focused on our long-term objective of zero accidents and want to improve our occupational safety by 60 percent by the end of 2025 compared to 2010.
To achieve our goal, we invest in training to raise awareness and increase technical safety standards. We regularly review whether our Safety, Health and Environment standards are being strictly adhered to and we are committed to improving occupational safety at our subcontractors and that of other companies’ employees working at our sites.
Regular training courses are held at all sites to ensure that our employees are able to identify and eliminate accident risks. We are increasingly extending the programs already in place in certain areas to cover the entire company. We also conduct global safety campaigns aimed at creating even greater awareness of the most important safety issues among our employees.
Future of work
At Henkel, we measure performance by results and not by presence. This is why we have been promoting flexible working models for many years. Based on a culture of trust, part-time work, flexible working hours, new workplace concepts and mobile working are a natural part of our work. We want to create the workplace of the future for our employees.
Smart Work is a holistic approach to preparing our employees and our organization for the future of work. Smart Work not only covers how we frame mobile versus office work, but also how our offices can better support collaboration among our employees and creativity, how we can improve our health program, and how we can explore the potential of our digital landscape.
