Policy
Royal Unibrew complies with existing labor legislation and collective agreements including enforcement of the freedom of association and assembly, the elimination of forced and compulsory labor and the use of child labor as well as the elimination of discrimination in respect of the employee’s gender, race, religious beliefs or political affiliation.
Within the broad area of human rights, Royal Unibrew has chosen to focus specifically on diversity among its own employees and on labor rights at Royal Unibrew and with trading partners as well as on competence development of its own employees.
Royal Unibrew has an ongoing dialogue with its stakeholders and the public on this responsibility and seeks to keep focus on these areas through continuous improvements.
It is Royal Unibrew’s goal to attract and retain competent and talented people who are results-oriented, adaptable, innovative, creative and having the right mindset/DNA of the company. This is a prerequisite for realizing our ambitious business objectives.
We are therefore investing in our employees – both by way of learning and by upgrading of skills, and by empowering them to have influence on their jobs and by listening to their ideas and wishes for the future.
We believe that we need to foster an agile, flexible and fast organization to adapt to the changing needs of our consumers and customers. We change, re-organize and fine-tune our internal structures and processes on an ongoing basis and expect our employees to adapt to new methods and tasks quickly. It puts demands on the individual and to our ability to collaborate across the organization while at the same time it offers opportunities for new assignments and/or responsibilities within or outside the business area. We believe that trust and responsibility foster great results. As Royal Unibrew has become more international during recent years, cross cultural learning and knowledge sharing have become more vital
Activities
Continuous efforts are made to ensure workplace diversity. Traditionally, the beverage industry is relatively male-dominated, but Royal Unibrew works continuously to ensure a more equal gender representation.
It is Royal Unibrew’s aim that suppliers and partners should comply with Royal Unibrew’s ethical guidelines which describe how human rights apply to Royal Unibrew’s business, and that these should be incorporated into the terms of trading with key suppliers.
As part of our dialogue with suppliers, we collect information from them to ensure that Royal Unibrew is not brought into conflict with its ethical guidelines. A supplier evaluation took place in 2018.
Royal Unibrew thrives to develop great leaders who empower their employees and secure that we have a strong collaboration across functional areas and business units. We are working continuously at raising the level of the individual employee’s competences and at strengthening our managers’ ability to drive changes and to support their employees’ development. Every year, our employees are offered a number of courses that give the individual concrete tools to handle a more complex and changeable workday, as well as on-the-job training that plays a pivotal role.
In 2018 we initiated a range of activities focusing on developing our talent pool and succession management which will have a continued focus in the coming years. Various leadership competence development activities have been put in place focusing on developing the basic leadership skills, cross-organizational collaboration as well as building high performing leadership teams. Our establishment of a growth leadership team end 2017 has strengthened our results within this important topic in 2018.
A mentor program was launched in 2017 and executed in 2018, under which e.g. young/inexperienced managers and key employees were assigned an older/experienced manager as a mentor in order to leverage the knowledge and experience existing within our organization. The mentor project is evaluated to be very valuable for us and a great tool for competence development, knowledge transfer and building network and will be continued in the future.
The acquisitions completed in 2018 have played an important role for the competence development in Royal Unibrew as many employees have developed their abilities and competences towards integrating the new companies into Royal Unibrew.
In 2018 we had a strong focus on the awareness and compliance towards GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)to secure our employees’ rights regarding the rules and that our employees working with personal information are aware of how to comply with GDPR.
Risk
There is a risk of ”biased” recruitment as compared to the demographic development, thus creating a corporate culture that does not reflect the surrounding world. This applies at all organizational levels. In the recruiting process, Royal Unibrew always aims at attracting and recruiting a diverse labor force. Historically, however, the beverage industry is a male-dominated industry within a number of functions, which challenges our diversity target.
Outside Royal Unibrew, but in relation to Royal Unibrew’s operations, there is a risk of purchasing goods or services from suppliers who do not live up to Royal Unibrew’s ethical guidelines for respecting human rights.
Royal Unibrew operates in a highly competitive market, and inability to attract and develop the right people to launch and promote new products at an ever-increasing pace constitutes a risk to the continued success of the Company. We also strive to recruit employees through different sources, as we have had great success with various methods, meeting the organizations’ need of new employees. Royal Unibrew’s competitiveness also depends on close cooperation between the individual business areas in order to ensure a strong value chain and avoid a silo mentality.
Kpi
A target has been defined for the promotion of diversity at Royal Unibrew including the achievement of a reasonable gender representation at the level of the top management team comprising the Executive Board and the executives just below, in order to achieve at least 40% representation of each gender.
Performance
The management teams and employees in leading positions comprised 69% (2017: 70%) men and 31% (2017: 30%) women in 2018.
Gender representation on the international management team
| 2018 | 2017 | |
|---|---|---|
| Women | 31% | 30% |
| Men | 69% | 70% |
We have been focusing on getting more trainees into 2018.
The collection of information from Royal Unibrew’s suppliers in 2018 did not reveal any non-compliance with Royal Unibrew’s ethical guidelines for respecting human rights.
Mentoring programs are important to us
Throughout our group we focus on developing each employee’s competences and skills in line with what is relevant for the current job position, future job opportunities and asked for by the employees.
Among our employee development initiatives are a number of mentoring programs which are defined and executed to support and fit each business unit.
During 2018 our business unit in Finland has performed a mentoring program with the participation of app. 20 younger employees as mentees and a similar number of experienced colleagues and managers as mentors, including representatives from the management team. The program has comprised a structured initiation process, four scheduled development meetings and a set of systematic follow up procedures. Each mentee has defined own goals in cooperation with the mentor. The overall mentee evaluation was 4,6 at a scale up to 5,0, which demonstrate that the program has been a success.
Examples of quotes from the mentee evaluations are “The objectives were to clarify the “big goal” on my career, outline a realistic and motivating career path, and to determine key skills I should develop in the next few year” (Sanna Valtanan, junior business controller) and “We had open and direct discussions where I got concrete tips, readings and set of approaches which I have taken into practice and proved to be efficient” (David Traclet, innovation manager).
In Denmark a similar program with a total of 26 mentee and mentor participants has been performed during the year. This program also focuses on offering a structured approach, with a number of meetings and clear methods for exchanging knowledge and transferring concrete and relevant learning to the mentees. A certified personality profile test was one of the tools used in the program, and the evaluations show us that this was a clearly appreciated development method.