As the world celebrates women’s month, Nestlé Zimbabwe confirmed its commitment to enhance gender balance in its workforce and empower women across its value chain.
Nestlé recognizes and celebrates the role of women as a significant force not only in their talent pool, but also in the supply chain and in the community. We strongly believe that women empowerment, diversity and inclusion enable competitiveness, growth and above all, a better society for all of us. Gender equality, women’s rights, education and empowerment are critical to our business.
Over the years, Nestlé has put in place multi-faceted initiatives to put their commitments into practice.
“Diversity and Inclusion is an integral part of our Company’s culture and is one of the ways we bring our purpose and values to life. This involves building an inclusive culture that values the different talents and experiences of our employees,” said Saint-Francis Tohlang, Corporate Communications and Public Affairs Director at Nestlé ESAR.
“We have strengthened several of our policies and associated training programs to create truly inclusive workspaces, including our best practice parental leave policy. Our commitment is to provide equal opportunities, and this starts from the point of recruitment until the end of the working relationship,” he continued.
Nestlé Zimbabwe is proud of the following milestones achieved thus far:
43% females in executive management positions from 28% previous year. This includes having the first Managing Director for Nestlé Zimbabwe since its inception in 1959
A flexible and supportive work environment, including onsite lactating facility and up to 6 months maternity leave for new mothers or any primary caregiver to a newborn or adopted child.
28% Ready Now female successors in key positions
Female prioritization during end to end Talent Acquisition process, including a gender balanced interview panel
In 2019, Nestlé Zimbabwe was recognized for its initiatives by being awarded first runner up for the Diversity Impact Award from the Institute of People Management Zimbabwe.
In 2011, Nestlé Zimbabwe launched the Nestlé Dairy Empowerment Scheme (NDES) for commercial farmers and then in 2015, it was extended to small scale farmers. Under this scheme, Nestlé Zimbabwe trains farmers on milk production, agripreneurship and assists them to establish low cost models through supporting pasture development. Currently 16% of our farmers in the programme are women and It is this number (of women) that Nestlé Zimbabwe targets to increase. By adding more women to the initiative, we are sure that more family incomes will be enhanced, as women play a major role in providing necessities in their households.
In addition to the NDES project, Nestlé Zimbabwe is also promoting women empowerment through the Nestlé Zimbabwe Women Empowered in Business (ZIWEB). The project, which was introduced in 2019, aims at giving women in Zimbabwe the opportunity to start their own business by becoming sub distributors for Nestlé. The women taking part in the programme are trained on various aspects around business management such as entrepreneurship skills, financial, selling, product knowledge and customer care skills. The programme is also fully funded by Nestlé Zimbabwe, where each participant was given an initial capital injection as product for selling.
Momentum is key in ensuring long lasting change, as Nestlé Zimbabwe we #ChooseToChallenge.
Contact
Yamurai Zhou
Nestlé Zimbabwe
Corporate Communications Officer
+263 772156216
About Nestlé
Nestlé is the world’s largest food and beverage company. It is present in 187 countries around the world, and its 291,000 employees are committed to Nestlé’s purpose of unlocking the power of food to enhance quality for everyone, today and for generations to come. Nestlé offers a wide portfolio of products and services for people and their pets throughout their lives. Its more than 2,000 brands range from global icons like Nescafé or Nespresso to local favorites like NIDO . Company performance is driven by its Nutrition, Health and Wellness strategy. Nestlé is based in the Swiss town of Vevey where it was founded more than 150 years ago.