Gender pay at Nestlé
Read our gender pay report 2022 for Nestlé UK and Ireland
What is gender pay reporting?
Gender pay gap is a comparison of the average earnings for men and women regardless of the work they do. In the UK, there is a legal requirement for organisations with more than 250 employees to publish data on their gender pay gap. In 2022 a new requirement came into place in Ireland for companies with over 250 employees. The calculations for Ireland are slightly different to those required in the UK. In recent years we have voluntarily reported on our gender pay figures in Ireland. Whilst we are not legally required to publish our figures in Ireland as the number of employees are below the threshold, we are voluntarily publishing our figures using the methodology stipulated by the Irish government in this report.
Why does it matter?
Gender pay reporting can highlight where there are differences in representation in organisations. For instance, if an organisation has more men than women in well-paid senior roles and more women than men in less well-paid junior roles, then the average pay for men will be higher than for women and there will be a gender pay gap in favour of men.
Our organisation is complex and so is our data. However, our approach is simple. We embrace difference and champion inclusion which is why gender representation across our business is an important area of focus. Improving gender balance is an important part of our ongoing commitment to foster a culture where everyone thrives.
Representation matters; we know it has a positive impact on people, business, culture and communities. At Nestlé, Respect For Diversity is one of our core values. We take gender balance seriously and we want all of our people to feel valued and to thrive. My senior leadership team and I are committed to improving representation across all roles and levels across our organisation. We are fostering a culture which values different styles, perspectives and experiences, which in turn helps us to meet the evolving needs of our consumers and the communities in which we operate.
Our Organisation
We have a variety of sites across the UK, including factories (manufacturing and supply operations), offices, Nespresso boutiques and a product technology centre. In Ireland, we have a head office and Nespresso boutiques.
Across our business, we have some high-level patterns in representation. In the UK and in Ireland, we have a slightly higher proportion of women than men in our offices, around 60%. We have a similar picture in our Nespresso boutiques. Across our factory sites we have a high proportion of men, more than 80%. At our most senior level, men make up 67% of the represented group and so we know that we particularly have work to do here and in the factory sites.
2022 data
When we refer to Nestlé in the UK, this includes our seven main Nestlé legal entities in the UK: Nestlé UK Ltd (our Nescafé, Nestlé Confectionery, Nestlé Food & Dairy, Nestlé Nutrition, Nestlé Health Science and Nestlé Professional businesses, as well as factories and corporate functions such as Group Supply Chain and HR), our two Nestlé Purina legal entities which cover Nestlé Purina manufacturing and commercial operations, Nespresso, Cereal Partners, Nestlé Waters and Nestec York Ltd, which houses our Research and Development centre. For the first time in 2022, Nestlé in the UK also includes the Aimmune business (which forms part of Nestlé Health Science). Nestlé in Ireland includes Nestlé Ireland and individuals in Ireland employed by Nespresso.
All these businesses share a common approach to pay and bonuses and are managed through the same payroll service. The 2022 report covers approximately 7,585 people across a range of offices, factories, coffee boutiques and our product technology centre in the UK; and 148 people in the head office and coffee boutiques in Ireland.
* We are not able to provide figures for this gender pay comparison as we have no men working on temporary contracts in Nestlé in Ireland.
This 2022 report includes data for our head office and Nespresso boutiques in Ireland, adopting the new methodology introduced by the Irish government. This includes some additional data points. Given the numbers of employees, we are not yet within the legal requirement to publish these figures but we are publishing them voluntarily.
* We are not able to provide figures for this gender pay comparison as we have no men working part time or on temporary contracts in Nestlé (Ireland) Ltd.
** We are not able to provide figures for this gender pay comparison as we have no individuals working on temporary contracts in Nespresso UK Ltd (Based in Ireland).
Data
We have to report on mean and median data. Mean data is calculated by adding up all the numbers in a sample and dividing by the number in that sample.
Median data is calculated by ranging the numbers in order from the lowest paid to the highest paid, and the middle number is the median.
In our report, the calculations of mean and median gender pay gap and bonus pay gap are calculated by taking the figure for women away from the figure for men and dividing by the figure for men.
To calculate pay quartiles or quarters we put the pay of all individuals in descending order and then split them into four equally sized groups. We then report on the percentage of men and women in each group.
Declaration of accuracy: I confirm that this statement is true to the best of my knowledge and belief."
About our data
Whilst the data for each legal entity may look different, the challenges which sit behind this data are the same. We have higher proportions of men in our manufacturing and supply sites as well as in our most senior roles and this imbalance drives our figures.
This is amplified in our bonus data as the bonus data looks at an annual figure.
We’ve been working to change this for some time and we’re not managing to drive change as quickly as we’d like in all areas. This is why our key areas of focus remain to increase representation across manufacturing and supply; increase representation in our most senior roles and ensure every facet of our employee experience fosters an inclusive culture.
We’ve outlined below the actions we continue to take. We continue to monitor progress and actions, making adjustments and improvements.
My career so far at Nestlé has spanned across different categories and commercial functions and geographies. I am part of a dual career path and thanks to the support of key leaders over the years, my career has been equally supported as my partners. I have also felt empowered and supported to make my own decisions in raising my family and dealing with life's challenges.
Our Approach
Our ambition remains to have balanced representation across all parts of our business, and at all levels. Currently, representation varies quite widely across our teams and has remained consistent with 33% of our workforce being female. This is significantly lower in our manufacturing and supply teams which is typical of the industry. We have increased representation at our most senior levels to 33%. However, we are clear there is a lot more work to do and have committed to improving representation across all of our teams. Our leaders are held accountable for making progress through local targets that help us to stay focussed on removing bias from our people decisions.
In 2022, we introduced our inclusive leadership programme for senior leaders. This lays the foundation for what we expect from our leaders, consistently, across all parts of our business.
Our market leadership team continue to review progress, to revise our plans and to identify additional action required.
We are delighted that Nestlé globally has been recognised in the Bloomberg gender equality index for the fifth year running, with both an improved and above average score of 78.5%. This recognises the breadth of work we are undertaking to make sustained change over the long term.
Beyond Nestlé
It is important to us that our work and leadership extend beyond Nestlé and we continue broader work to contribute to gender equality:
- Procurement continue to broaden our supplier base, directly supporting female and ethnically diverse business owners and social enterprises. We actively support female farmers through the Nestlé First Milk Women in Agriculture Group. This group helps our farmers in a male dominated industry to connect together, sharing ideas and providing peer support.
- Our partnership with Wildhearts enables us to support many students to explore career opportunities in the industry and to offer employability support. Students develop core skills and knowledge through programmes like the mentoring programme for Years 9 and 12, the national Micro Tyco schools competition and the toolkit to support national careers week and national apprenticeship week. We continue to work with trusted industry partners like the Diversity & Inclusion in Grocery network to collectively influence an industry of over five million colleagues.
Our values are rooted in respect and we continue to communicate our commitment to an inclusive culture. Through our inclusive leadership programme, our respect at work training and our policy against harassment, violence and discrimination at work we have spent time discussing what inclusion and diversity mean and why it is important to have a respectful culture at work. Our training on unconscious bias and the prevention of sexual harassment remain mandatory for all colleagues and our expectations for an inclusive and respectful culture are communicated to partners and included in all site visitor information.
We actively listen to our colleagues to understand their experience and take direct action as a result, for example through our colleague survey. We also take a deeper dive into the results to understand how different aspects of people’s identity impact their experiences at work. From this we know that women are the most positive respondents on our respect and ‘speak up’ questions, and we can better understand for example the experiences of our women at senior levels where we know they are under-represented. We have 6 colleague networks (led by employees and sponsored by Board members). These include the Gender Equity Network and Parent Talk. They represent their communities, connect people together, provide peer support, allyship, education and challenge us to continue to do more.
We know policies provide guidance and influence behaviour. We regularly review them and have many that particularly support gender equality at different life stages. For example gender neutral parental leave covering all family situations including adoption and surrogacy, from day one. Menopause guidance and wellbeing support. Guidance for leaders to support people experiencing domestic abuse or pregnancy loss.
Flexible work options enable everyone to have a greater range of career choices. We have many examples throughout our different workplaces. We have a hybrid working culture for our office teams and a policy that offers additional flex day options. We have supported individual colleagues across our manufacturing and supply teams to work more flexibly including prior to retirement.
Our Parent Talk and Gender Equity Network are active in encouraging people to share their stories and examples, to offer advice and guidance to identify even more opportunities.
It’s vital we continue to attract talented women to work with us and we continue to review our recruitment methods to help us do this. For example we use software and selection processes to remove bias from job adverts and our hiring decisions. We regularly profile the many talented women we have and they are directly involved in attracting more women into business including mentoring for girls exploring careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.
We have continued to make progress for example our gender balanced hiring approach increased the number of women we recruited into our senior roles last year. In our Academy team, we worked with external partners and hired the most diverse cohort to date. 55% of the offers we made were to women and we also increased the number of ethnically diverse candidates and candidates from a low socio-economic background.
We took direct action to focus on building a strong pipeline of women, developing their career through the organisation. 98% of vacancies were open job posted, making them available for anyone to apply. Regular Board talent sessions improved gender balance on our succession plans especially those considered to be ready to take on another role now.
We continued to offer direct development, tailored to people’s individual needs. This included mentoring and sponsorship, including through external partners. We offer mentors and mentees training in how to best support women in business and have a global Women in business leadership programme.
We are proud to be an accredited living wage employer. Pay for more than half our colleagues working in manufacturing and supply is collectively bargained. Other roles use job evaluation methodology to ensure they are sized fairly and consistently. Salary scales are published transparently and accessible to all employees. These include descriptors of each job level and guidance on how salaries might progress.
As sponsor of our Gender Equity and Eradicating Racism networks, I am committed through my actions to create a business culture in which we all feel we belong, in which we are respected, and from which we create the best outcomes together. We have a range of activities in place to continue to make progress including the introduction of leadership KPIs. More diverse representation across our leadership will accelerate the change and the UK&I leadership team is committed to make this happen.
Gender equity levels in manufacturing are historically low, but we have strong ambitions to improve this at Nestlé. These changes cannot happen overnight, but we are taking incremental steps. This includes actions such as nurturing our Women in Engineering employee network, an increased focus on attracting women into manufacturing roles, and providing mentorship and support so that their careers flourish, as well as training programmes that reinforce a culture where everyone can feel they belong.
