As a global business, we appreciate and value our dynamic mix of people who bring new perspectives,  experiences and thought leadership to enable our organisation to continuously grow and innovate for our customers. We are committed to creating a positive and inclusive work environment where everyone can be at their best, contribute to our success and excel personally and professionally.

Whilst diversity continues to be a focus, particularly increasing our gender and cultural diversity in leadership roles; creating a culture of inclusion and belonging is equally important for us. We want to ensure all our people’s ideas are heard and discussed to strengthen our approach. Our refreshed diversity, inclusion and belonging strategy, informed by inputs from our people as well as external best practice, is fully aligned with business and talent objectives. We focus on raising awareness of this important priority through continued education and training, we promote greater diversity in our leadership profile, we foster a more inclusive workplace and we build and strengthen partnerships within our communities.

Employee led Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging Committees in many locations actively raise awareness of this important agenda, educate and inspire our people to work together to promote global and local events that foster a more positive and inclusive work environment for all.

Externally, we continue to strengthen core strategic partnerships both within Ireland and globally. In North America through our partnership with Women Foodservices Forum, colleagues participated in the Annual Leadership Development Conference in Dallas, focused on advancing women leaders and driving gender equity in business. Through our membership of the Irish Chapter of the 30% club and the Agri-Food Diversity & Inclusion Forum led by Bord Bia, Kerry hosted a Masterclass for over 80 companies within the Irish food and drink industry at our Global Technology & Innovation Centre in Naas, Ireland, with the aim of sharing thought leadership and innovative practices for attracting, developing and retaining the diverse talent we all need to continue to grow and innovate to secure the future of our industry.

We continue to sponsor volunteer programmes, with the aim of fostering a culture of inclusion both within Kerry and in our communities. We are particularly proud of our partnership with Special Olympics, launched during 2018 in the UK, Ireland, The Netherlands and Poland, which we have committed to extend to 2020. This programme provides opportunities to children and adults with intellectual disabilities to participate in all year round sporting activities and in 2019, a few selected Kerry volunteers had the unique opportunity to participate in the World Games in Abu Dhabi, supporting athletes and families from all over the world.

Finally, continuing our journey to increase gender and cultural diversity in leadership roles, we have agreed a set of measures with our Executives, endorsed by our Board to ensure our leadership teams and internal talent pipelines better reflect the broader mix of capabilities and cultural diversity we have within our organisation. This will be further developed in 2020 and incorporated in our sustainability 2030 plan.