They began their DEI journey in 2020. In just three years, Givaudan India has taken resolute strides and recently won the Global Givaudan Award for excellence in DEI practices. So, what drives the DEI goals of an organization that is in the early stages of the journey? Avtar Insights talks to Dhanashree Parab Shirodkar, Head of Pricing T&W – South Asia & D&I Council Chairman- India, Givaudan (India) Pvt Ltd. Dhanashree stresses the need to spread out strategies across different timeframes and the three dimensions of it.
Givaudan India has received the Global Givaudan Award for its excellence in DEI practices. Tell us about the DEI measures implemented so far that led to the award.
Our D&I journey started in 2020, and since then, we have taken various initiatives:
- International Women’s Day celebrations that acknowledge the strong female workforce.
- Comprehensive training sessions are conducted to create awareness around The Prevention of Sexual Harassment at the workplace (POSH).
- With the policy change, LGBTQ+ and Live-in partners have been included in individual Mediclaim policies.
- A sizable number of female employees have been selected across functions and groomed for future leadership roles.
- We introduced a gender-agnostic creche facility and encouraged the employees to avail the same.
- We publish an annual D&I newsletter, which highlights the initiatives across the sites, building awareness and soliciting participation from employees on the D&I journey.
- Further, we took the D&I agenda to the communities through CSR projects which included building sanitation facilities for rural school girls by repurposing factory waste materials and funding medical support to prevent permanent blindness in premature-born babies, to list a few.
What prompted the organization’s DEI journey?
Givaudan India’s D&I Journey stems from our Global D&I Strategy, where our approach is to deliver a Diverse and Inclusive work environment, while we ensure constant progress. D&I are important to us from 3 dimensions:
From Employees’ Point Of View: To be associated with a fair and inclusive workplace, where everyone is encouraged to bring their whole selves to work and where people feel they belong.
From a Business Point of View: The greater the representation, the higher the likelihood of outperformance. It is also a source of higher creativity and innovation.
From the Customers’ Point of View: A diverse and inclusive workforce helps ensure our company’s products and services are respectful towards our client’s cultures.
What diversity strands are you focusing on in your DEI initiatives?
Given the nature of our business, we enjoy the benefits of a very diverse workforce (global presence hence multicultural). The focus hence remains on gender ratio and creating opportunities for specially-abled resources.
However, with this being said, in the coming period, we plan to focus more on ‘inclusion’ to continue focusing on the larger Givaudan population to ensure equality across.
What has been the impact you have noted on the culture in the organization?
The response and acknowledgment from the employees is overwhelming. Employees take pride in being part of this progressive organization and feel more comfortable working in such a diverse and inclusive workplace. They are empowered to bring forth their challenges and seek support as they are now confident of not getting judged. They are more aware of our global D&I approach and local programs/benefits. With the external communities part of the Givaudan’s D&I journey, the community leaders appreciate our inclusive approach to making their lives better.
What have been your learnings after embarking on the DEI journey in Givaudan India?
The D&I journey has shown how important it is to embrace the changing cultures, choices, and preferences of the people we work with.
The support and coaching offered by organizations like Avtar help us to stay relevant by bringing in timely policy changes and also addressing the concepts of Better Balance, Unconscious biases, and many others.
It just reiterates that “We need to Care More”!
What is your next plan of action after laying a strong and laudable foundation for DEI in Givaudan India?
The Givaudan Excellence Award is a great motivator, but we know that the road ahead is long. We intend to go slow and steady but with consistency! We have decided to break our roadmap into actions that can be implemented over short, medium, and long-term periods. The immediate focus will be raising awareness around our D&I initiatives and bringing D&I-conscious behavior into the DNA of all the employees at Givaudan. We intend to do it through small refresher webinars & E-Learning sessions.
We will continue with global and local actions to progress on our better balance ambitions.
You are participating in Avtar and Seramount’s Best Companies for Women in India or the BCWI study. Tell us a little about the objective behind the participation.
Givaudan has always provided a conducive environment for employees to share their thoughts freely, get recognized and appreciated, and access cross-functional/ regional career opportunities, apart from a safe, friendly, and supportive work culture. While doing this, there always used to be a focus given to the needs of women employees – whether on the career front or to address personal challenges. Participating in this survey is a great opportunity to showcase our actions and measure where we stand compared to other companies. It will be an ideal platform to evaluate our actions and identify areas where we can perform better. Getting featured in this esteemed list of Companies will confirm our people-centric strategy.
