Gender balance

Our commitment: Enhance gender balance in our workforce and empower women across the entire value chain

Nestlé India reiterates the need for diversity, fair employment practices and inclusion within our organisation and supply chain. Our gender balance initiatives are focused on improving balance at all levels, including senior leadership, suppliers and workforce, to provide a greater share of voice and independence to women. Our initiatives include:

Launch of diversity and inclusion framework

The Attract – Retain – Develop framework is aimed at formulating strategies in the company that focus on diversity in Nestlé including gender balance, people with disabilities, multiculturalism and cross-generational workforce. Nestlé India intends to revise diversity-related policies based on the feedback from stakeholders and announced plans to launch a Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Council to accelerate gender balance in the company. The D&I Council will seat an external member to provide unbiased counsel and help the company identify best practices in D&I across industries. This will not only increase diversity in the workforce, but also promote introduction of policies and practices that provide a more conducive environment.

Diversity-inclusive policies

In order to sensitise our employees, Nestlé India conducted a trial training session on unconscious bias in 2016. Prior to this training, we conducted an organisation-wide training on Prevention of Sexual Harassment (PoSH) for all employees, including those on contract basis.

We conduct assessments of safe and accessible territories for our women field force and have enhanced entitlements to provide access to improved facilities in the field. This has led to a positive impact and resulted in improved retention with 15.5% women in our field sales, the highest across the FMCG sector. 

Nestlé India has made provisions for a 26 week maternity  leave policy with full pay and benefits with the flexibility to decide on whether to opt for it before or after the delivery, while ensuring that women have the right to return to the same or equivalent job role with provisions of flexible working arrangements. Similarly, the paternity policy provides leave of absence of five working days to be taken within 3 months of adoption or child birth.

We at Nestlé, provide a conducive environment to breastfeed. Breastfeeding mothers are entitled to reasonable daily breaks to breastfeed. All our facilities with a female population above 50 women are mandatorily required to provide breastfeeding rooms to enable them to lactate and or breastfeed during working hours in a secure and relaxing environment. Our Start Healthy Stay Healthy campaign is available online to provide counselling and guidance to expectant and new mothers. We also provide several facilities to support new mothers, which include safe private rooms to express milk, refrigerators to store expressed breast milk and flexible working hours or breaks. These initiatives have contributed to ATNI India Index ranking Nestlé India as the industry leader in promoting breastfeeding at work.

Empowering women in agriculture

Nestlé recognises the crucial role played by women in dairy farming as the primary caretaker of cattle and therefore, a critical contributor to the quality and yield of milk. The Village Women Dairy Development Programme has been developed in the local language specifically designed for women dairy farmers and is imparted by an all-women training team from Nestlé. The aim is to empower village women engaged in dairy farming to improve the quality and productivity of milk. The training provides knowledge on the following topics

• Dairy practices, including feeding and breeding practices
• Animal care and treatment
• Sustainable agricultural practices
• Personal health, hygiene, water conservation and economic independence

As of December 2016, over 66,000 village women across Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan have benefitted from the Village Women Dairy Development Programme.

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