People at Beiersdorf¹

Consumer

Consumer

Working in the new reality – Human Resources in 2022

The demands that HR departments have to meet are becoming increasingly complex. They need to juggle a variety of topics at the same time while simultaneously helping shape the digital transformation. The increasing demand for skilled workers and the war for talent pose further challenges, and the hybrid, modern working environment requires a high degree of flexibility and openness to new ideas. In recent years, our HR department has adapted to the changing conditions, particularly in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, and we are convinced that a culture of mutual trust, openness to agile forms of collaboration, and a willingness to embrace continuous development and digitalization lay a solid foundation that enables us to keep pace with change and provide employees with the best possible support during the process of change. Investing in the future of HR work, as we are systematically doing within the scope of our C.A.R.E.+ strategy, helps us align our HR work with the requirements of the future and further improve our workplace culture. We believe the top priorities here are topics such as the learning organization, new work, digitalization, and strategies to promote diversity and inclusion (D&I).

Corporate culture

Our employees value Beiersdorf’s unique corporate culture, which is based on openness, trust, and an appreciation for cultural diversity and internationalism. We also foster a working environment that values teamwork and mutual respect. We believe it is important to strengthen the emotional bond between people and the company and to support employees at all levels in ensuring that they are always able to cope with the increasingly complex working environment. Our global employee survey “teampulse” has once again revealed the high level of identification with our purpose Care Beyond Skin, and the belief in our four core values: Care, Simplicity, Courage, and Trust. At the same time, we initiated a change in our corporate culture in the reporting year with the “Behavior Activation Journey,” in order to integrate behaviors into our day-to-day work that play an important role in our success. For more information, please refer to the “Leadership” section.

Marked sections contain information that is part of our Non-financial Statement

Attractive employer and engagement

Employee engagement is one of our top priorities, and in this age of working from home and hybrid work, this is truer than ever. It is important for us to get a real feel for the atmosphere at Beiersdorf and to find out how engaged our employees truly are. This is why we regularly conduct global employee surveys. The aim of these surveys is to promote ongoing dialogue between managers and their teams, address improvement measures, and give employees the opportunity to actively help shape their future working environment.

In the fourth quarter of the reporting year, we once again conducted our well-known “teampulse” engagement survey worldwide. It gives us a quick and straightforward way of directly “taking the pulse” and focusing our attention on issues that are important to our employees around the world. To ensure that the results can be compared with those of the previous year, the survey is based on the same core questions. This year, we added some new questions to take global trends as well as feedback from last year into account. They covered the topics of leadership, strategy and transformation, and culture and purpose, but also “softer” aspects such as diversity and inclusion (D&I), employees’ inner drive, and resilience and wellbeing. As in the previous year, a total of 89% of employees responded to our “teampulse” survey. This once again demonstrates our employees’ strong desire to share feedback. Confirming the results of previous years, the Beiersdorf culture, meaningful work, and the belief in our four Core Values (Care, Simplicity, Courage, and Trust) again met with a high level of approval at the respective affiliates in this reporting year. In addition, the results indicate that our global D&I activities are perceived as credible, for example through the majority of participants indicating that the company’s management visibly demonstrates its commitment to diversity. In addition to the answers in the standardized questionnaire, the management team also received more than 22,200 comments with detailed feedback. This feedback serves as a basis for the respective teams worldwide to enter into dialogue and jointly shape the future working environment at Beiersdorf. The feedback from the survey is discussed year after year in order to subsequently develop and implement ideas and measures at the team level. In addition, survey results that reveal a consistent need for improvements internationally will serve as a basis for initiating changes and measures at the global level as well.

Participation in decision-making and company success

Participation in decision-making and company success as well as transparency and engaging in a dialogue as equals are key factors essential to successfully creating a positive corporate culture at Beiersdorf and are intended to increase our attractiveness as an employer. In addition, the increasing share of employees in hybrid working arrangements at Beiersdorf is further accelerating the use of digital solutions in internal communication. Digital and hybrid town hall meetings and works assemblies, as well as numerous online events with opportunities for dialogue, were once again among the traditional measures used to get all employees around the world engaged and involved in the reporting year. The aim is to strengthen the bond between management and staff and above all the bond between the employees themselves, and to promote a sense of team spirit.

Marked sections contain information that is part of our Non-financial Statement

The close involvement of employee representatives is also part of our corporate culture. Working with them in a constructive atmosphere of trust enables us to make and implement important and sometimes difficult decisions together. This was true once again in fiscal year 2022. The European Dialogue, which brings together Beiersdorf’s employee representatives from across Europe, continued its work in 2022.

Another aspect of participation relates to the issue of flexible working locations, which, since December 1, 2020, has been governed by a collective agreement for Beiersdorf AG, Beiersdorf Customer Supply GmbH, and Beiersdorf Shared Services GmbH. More on this topic, which is also relevant to the management of employees, can be found in the following “Leadership” section.

Employee participation in the Campus project (the new building for the Group headquarters in Hamburg) also continued in 2022. Virtual tours and on-site visits enabled staff to see the progress for themselves in small groups. The regularly held Campus Kickstarter Sessions helped interested employees learn about tools to establish a (hybrid) team culture or improve their collaboration and share ideas about the Campus project.

Participation is also the aim of numerous diversity and inclusion activities, which are described at the end of this section. These include the Beiersdorf gender parity ambition and our D&I strategy for more diversity in management positions.

Marked sections contain information that is part of our Non-financial Statement

Leadership

An open and modern leadership culture forms the basis for an attractive and appreciative working environment in which all employees can give their best. In order to establish it, we formulated our understanding of a good leadership culture in “Leadership the Beiersdorf Way” back in 2017. This leadership culture is based on our Core Values of Care, Simplicity, Courage, and Trust. It aims to develop leaders who are authentic and inspiring and empower their team to outstanding achievements. The idea behind this is that by giving employees more decision-making power, their sense of engagement and accountability will increase. This will lead to better team performances and higher intrinsic motivation. During the reporting year, we already began to work on further refining our understanding of leadership. In 2023, we want to introduce our new “Leadership Commitment” as a pilot project in this context. In preparation for this, we already conducted numerous interviews with managers during the past year. The global rollout of the “Leadership Commitment” is planned for 2024.

To support change processes at Beiersdorf, we want to integrate behaviors into our day-to-day workplace culture that are important to our success. That is why, in October of the reporting year, we launched a “Behavior Activation Journey” – a program designed to help all employees worldwide change their behavior. Through the “Speak Up” lever, we want to foster a culture in which employees feel comfortable having their own opinions, expressing them openly, and questioning things. In this way, we aim to leverage the potential of different perspectives among our workforce. Since the beginning of November, activities have focused on activating the “Speak Up” lever. Starting in the first quarter of 2023, we will also focus on a second important lever: “Prioritization.” To instill these behaviors in all employees worldwide, managers worldwide were offered interactive training sessions. It is the responsibility of managers to bring about a fundamental cultural change, to exemplify the right behaviors, and to serve as role models. A comprehensive activation toolkit and customized e-learning sessions for employees are supposed to help bringing the Behavior Activation Journey to life.

Beiersdorf has been relying on what is known as the “Development & Potential Process” since 2021 in order to identify and promote new management talent. In line with the slogan “Develop your way,” it focuses on each employee’s individual development and consists of three stages: focused self-reflection, a round of talks between managers (known as development reviews), and an individual development meeting, in which the employee discusses their individually tailored development plan with their manager. This approach is intended to identify talented individuals with leadership potential at an early stage, giving them the opportunity to quickly gain relevant experience and develop their personal skills. To identify an employee’s potential, we employ the “learning agility model,” which consists of four dimensions: mental agility, people agility, change agility, and results agility. On this basis, we aim to identify potential leaders who have the ability to adapt to new circumstances, learn quickly, including from experience, and continue their personal growth. As such, potential should not be equated with performance, but rather the ability to deal with future challenges in the best possible way. In the past fiscal year, we worked on improving the quality of the process. By providing training to managers, we want to enhance their ability to correctly assess individual potential and implement appropriate development measures.

Our explicit goal is to fill the majority of management positions with talented people from within our own ranks. We prepare future managers for this new role through various measures and programs. In fiscal year 2022, 100% of positions at the first management level (previous year: 100%) and 89% at the second management level (previous year: 88%) were awarded to internal candidates.

To support change processes, we also established three new management programs at the beginning of the fiscal year. They all address the topic of leading/dealing with change and aim to prepare and train our leaders for changes. These include the Lead with Care & Courage program, which was geared toward level 1 and 2 managers, the Lead in Change program, which is aimed at all other managers, and the Base Camp training program, which is aimed at all employees who are taking on a management position for the first time. More than 300 managers worldwide took part in these three training programs. They complement our existing advanced training programs, which also include special management training courses that we make available via our COMPASS Learning online learning platform. Topics covered on this platform include leading virtual teams and resilience.

Marked sections contain information that is part of our Non-financial Statement

New working world and the normalcy of hybrid working arrangements

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of the workplace. It has also impacted the way we collaborate.

Marked sections contain information that is part of our Non-financial Statement

Hybrid working arrangements, i.e. alternating between working remotely and at the office, have become common practice in many areas at Beiersdorf. Beiersdorf has taken a clear position in this regard: we as a company also want to promote hybrid or flexible working arrangements in the future. At the same time, we want to adapt the office environment to today’s world and create places where people can meet and work together in ever-changing formats. The basis for this is a collective agreement that we entered into back in 2020 for Beiersdorf AG, Beiersdorf Customer Supply GmbH, and Beiersdorf Shared Services. It grants employees the right to work from a flexible location for up to 40% of their individual planned working hours (since January 2023), provided that their job is suited to remote working. With a regular 60% of working time spent on campus, a conscious effort is made to ensure that the campus is the center of collaboration and togetherness for our employees.

Marked sections contain information that is part of our Non-financial Statement

In addition, we are continuously developing tailor-made solutions for modern teamwork at our more than 170 locations worldwide. The most significant example of this is the construction of our future Beiersdorf Campus in Hamburg, which is scheduled to open in summer 2023 after a delay caused by the coronavirus pandemic. We also pooled our resources in the reporting year to create spaces for piloting new, dynamic working environments at our site on Wiesinger Weg in Hamburg. The completely renovated spaces boast a modern look and features a desk-sharing model, state-of-the art, hybrid technology, and various room modules that allow for a mix of collaboration and focused work. Similarly, we also opened a new research building in December of the reporting year. Covering a total area of more than 10,000 square meters, it is designed to promote cross-functional exchange and facilitate modern, new forms of collaboration. In addition, we created modern, new working environments at our sites in Paris, Brussels, Montreal, New Jersey, Jakarta, and Mumbai in the reporting year that facilitate a new form of collaboration and provide employees with the right setting for a pleasant, modern working atmosphere. We have started preparing for the implementation of new working environments at our sites in Amsterdam and Sofia, and further locations are in the pipeline.

Digital transformation

To accelerate the transformation process at our company, we continued to push ahead with our future-focused “Digital Fast Forward” program during the reporting year. With this program, Beiersdorf aims to automate 20% of all business processes worldwide by 2025. In addition, this is intended to make us more responsive to the changes in consumer behavior brought about by digital media.

As in previous years, our HR activities also supported the digital transformation at various levels in the past fiscal year. Due to the growing flexibility of workplace choice worldwide, the share of hybrid working arrangements is noticeably increasing. Thanks to the support of targeted training measures, more than half of Beiersdorf’s workforce now regularly works from outside the office. This is also clearly reflected in the changed communication processes within the company. Microsoft Teams played a central role in this regard in the past fiscal year. For example, Beiersdorf employees now send and receive more than 2.5 million chat messages a month, ensuring that communication between them remains smooth. Yammer has also recently become a well-established business network at Beiersdorf. More than 75% of the workforce actively uses the service on a regular basis to communicate with others or find information. This development shows the extent to which digital communication between employees worldwide has already become commonplace and a part of the “new normal.”

In addition, Beiersdorf expanded further its digital transformation using the COMPASS human resources management system during the reporting year. Based on the standardized global master data module Employee Central that was introduced back in 2021, another module was added to the COMPASS system in the form of SimPay. This global salary management tool gives managers the ability to securely conduct global salary planning.

Many of our activities to promote young talent were also implemented digitally in the reporting year. These included, for example, the Virtual Open House Day, which has already been held several times and where Beiersdorf, Tchibo, and tesa jointly introduce themselves to young talent and offer insights into their companies and the various entry-level programs. In addition, we presented key topics that our company is currently focusing on to numerous students and young professionals in a total of five webinars, including sustainability, innovation, digitalization, and diversity & inclusion, as well as a session with our CEO Vincent Warnery, in which he introduced himself and his career path and answered around 200 questions bundled from the students.

Support for our employees

“Care” is a key component of Beiersdorf’s corporate culture. Consequently, we implement various measures year after year to care for our employees in different ways. These include, for example, providing technical equipment as well as training courses to prepare the workforce optimally for the new world of work. We also kept our employees informed and up to date via our “Coronavirus Info Hub” and offered them free COVID-19 and flu vaccinations at the Hamburg site via our company medical team. 1,784 employees took advantage of the flu vaccine offer during the past fiscal year, and 2,620 employees the Corona vaccine offer.

Through our health management system, we also do our part to help employees stay healthy and productive, to promote their health in a systematic way, and to actively help them get better in the event of illness. This system comprises the three teams Medical, Wellbeing, and Social, which are consolidated under the common umbrella GOOD FOR ME. The services offered range from ergonomics consultations, psychological counseling sessions, exercise programs and presentations about health, to regular medical checkups and skin cancer screenings. Through our new “Leadership Meets Health” leadership training program, we provided important support in the area of “healthy leadership” in the reporting year. Through special mental health offerings, the GOOD FOR ME team has brought the topic of mental health to the forefront, thereby playing a key role in raising awareness of mental health and strengthening the culture of health within the company, particularly against the backdrop of hybrid work.

Marked sections contain information that is part of our Non-financial Statement

Training and further education

Our mission also includes creating employment prospects for young people. This is demonstrated by our range of vocational training opportunities and degree-integrated training programs as well as our global trainee program BEYOND BORDERS and the numerous internships we offer to students from all over the world. Beiersdorf offers vocational training in nine different occupations at its Hamburg site alone. At the end of 2022, we had 99 vocational trainees here (previous year: 104), and the retention rate for those who completed their training this year stood at 100% (previous year: 97%). We recruited a total of 34 vocational trainees (previous year: 32) in the reporting year, four of whom started their training under the new degree-integrated vocational training model. Here, the trainees complete a three-year vocational course as an industrial business administrator along with a four-year bachelor’s degree in business administration with a focus on industry. A total of 16 young employees were enrolled in the global BEYOND BORDERS trainee program at the end of the reporting year (previous year: 16). Of this total, 11 trainees started in 2022 (previous year: 10).

Knowledge and learning

We are convinced that the skills and expertise of our employees play a crucial role in our sustainable growth and long-term success. For this reason, we continuously invest in training our workforce and pursue the idea of a learning organization through our global learning strategy, which encourages self-directed, lifelong learning by all. In this context, our concept is built on a three-pronged approach:

• Building and maintaining a global learning infrastructure, i.e. a flexible learning management system in which we can create our own learning content
• Promoting targeted learning, including guidance and providing group-specific learning content
• Enshrining learning in our day-to-day work

During the reporting year, we added new learning content to our COMPASS Learning online learning platform that we introduced in 2019, such as an e-learning program on the topic of sustainability, and also updated and expanded existing content. The majority of these offerings, which are tailored specifically to Beiersdorf, are developed by our Sales, Finance, Procurement, R&D, HR, Quality, and Planning professional academies. Due to the still noticeable impact of the coronavirus pandemic, we also made use of a virtual classroom in the reporting year. This online tool enabled us to implement numerous interactive workshops and training courses for all employees worldwide. In light of the new way we collaborate – the model of flexible working arrangements – we want to continue to offer more and more virtual training in the future.

In addition to our own offerings, we again offered our employees the ability to use LinkedIn Learning’s virtual training content, where employees worldwide can choose from more than 15,000 online training courses and over 500,000 videos in different languages. Since Beiersdorf implemented LinkedIn Learning in 2020, employees have shown great interest in this training option, with almost 540,000 training videos watched in full and more than 19,000 courses completed by a total of more than 4,500 active users. Courses on new ways of working, the digital transformation, time management, communication, Excel and PowerPoint, and strategic thinking are especially popular. Curated learning paths help our employees find the right training content on selected topics. For example, they link to training courses that focus on working in virtual and hybrid teams, digitalization, diversity and inclusion, and resilience. Our online-based Beiersdorf Learning Hub also brings these offerings together in a single location, making them easily accessible. The Learner Experience platform pilot project was tested in the reporting year. This is a global learning ecosystem that includes a learning infrastructure and tools to create instructional content for learners.

Since August 2022, we have also offered a new, external language learning program with standardized language and course offerings for employees through our partner KERN Training. The main reasons for choosing KERN Training as a full-service provider were the flexibility, the simple cost structure, and the fact that KERN Training offers a self-directed learning platform that can be used by employees free of charge.

Our Learning Program Germany, which has been in place for many years, is a flexible and open training offering for all employees in Germany. It includes both pre-curated content from LinkedIn Learning, which we use to promote self-directed learning, and instructor-led, virtual training. To support employees and teams in their transition from working completely from home to a hybrid working model, we offer an e-learning path on the topic of hybrid working.

Marked sections contain information that is part of our Non-financial Statement

Marked sections contain information that is part of our Non-financial Statement

Diversity & Inclusion

As a company that operates worldwide, we view the diversity of our workforce as both an opportunity and a key factor in our business success. We are convinced that people with different backgrounds bring different perspectives, experiences, and skills to the table and thus contribute to greater creativity, innovative strength, and customer focus. For this reason, we strive to build an organization that reflects the diversity of our global consumers, achieves gender parity at all management levels, and ensures that we foster a culture of inclusion where everyone can unlock their full potential and everyone enjoys equal opportunities. We raise awareness of this important issue among our employees at all levels through various dialogue formats, presentations, and training sessions. We want to highlight the positive contribution that diversity and equal opportunities can make to Beiersdorf and thus promote an understanding and appreciation of diversity within our company.

In order to enhance diversity and inclusion across Beiersdorf as a whole, in 2020 we created the position of Global Director Diversity & Inclusion (D&I), that reports directly to the Executive Board. Together with a small team, this individual leads and coordinates Group-wide D&l initiatives. A core cross-functional D&I team, consisting of members of senior management, and a global network of more than 100 D&I champions at our international subsidiaries are also driving progress in this area. In addition, the Diversity Committee of the Supervisory Board regularly reviews and supports various initiatives.

Through our diversity and inclusion agenda formulated in 2021, our global “D&I Roadmap,” we aim to implement a holistic approach to address all aspects of diversity, reduce bias (including unconscious bias), and promote a diverse and inclusive corporate culture. On the basis of this roadmap, we continued to focus on the following three strategic priorities in fiscal 2022:

• Driving leadership diversity
• Fostering an inclusive culture
• Championing consumer representation

In each of these areas, we set important priorities in the reporting year and implemented a wide range of measures to foster an inclusive working environment. Examples of these activities are presented in more detail in the following sections. At the same time, we have been working on refining this roadmap in recent months, and the new version was launched in December of the reporting year. With this global “D&I Roadmap 2.0,” we want to increase our attractiveness as an employer globally. To achieve this, we want to strengthen an inclusive culture of togetherness, expand diversity within our management team and our workforce, and achieve full gender parity at all levels of our management worldwide. Our aim is also to ensure that our diversity goes beyond the issue of gender. Our partnerships to better represent consumers, for example as part of our NIVEA D&I External Expert Panel, and the optimization of our global D&I operating model and governance are particularly important to us.

The Beiersdorf Gender Parity Ambition that we formulated in 2021 is of particular significance. This lays out our goal of achieving equal representation of women and men at management positions in the Consumer Business Segment below Executive Board level by 2025 at the latest. Further details on this ambitious initiative can be found in the “Focus dimension: Gender balance” section below.

In addition to our D&I strategy and our Beiersdorf Gender Parity Ambition, our D&I KPI dashboard, which was developed in the previous year and rolled out globally in the reporting year, helps increase data transparency. It makes changes transparent in the form of semiannual D&I KPI reports, enabling regions and functions to analyze the progress they have made in their D&I work and the remaining untapped potential on the basis of hard data. The aim is to help enshrine D&I ambitions and strengthen D&I governance on the basis of this data and in close collaboration with global, regional, and local stakeholders. The quarterly D&I Champion calls and D&I Council calls that we have established also help to achieve this. In addition to these measures, the Executive Committee is also evaluated on the basis of changes to the KPIs.

In order to expand the knowledge of our workforce around the topic of diversity and inclusion, we introduced a “Global D&I Knowledge Framework” in 2021. It encompasses various training programs for our employees and managers and is designed to help build a sustainable foundation of D&I knowledge within the organization and foster the desired inclusive culture. The offering includes, for example, D&I inclusive language training, which was added to the training catalog in the reporting year, along with other pilot programs. Its goal is to raise awareness among employees worldwide regarding the need to use language in a sensitive, nuanced way in order to avoid subtle discrimination and to respect and honor the perspectives and feelings of others. Through the training courses “Successful on the Job,” which is aimed at female employees, and “Opportunities & Risks in Retirement,” which is designed for employees over the age of 60, the company continued to offer specific courses for these target audiences. Individual brands are also making efforts to be more proactive when it comes to D&I. NIVEA’s “D&I Compass” complements our brand’s communication guidelines. It defines how we want to be perceived worldwide and helps to appropriately address local communication challenges and avoid stereotypes and unconscious biases. After initial tips on how to use gender-neutral and inclusive language were shared in German and English in 2021, guidelines for the use of inclusive language were formulated across the company in the reporting year and are already being applied. We also analyzed the recruiting process again in the reporting year in order to identify existing biases and initiate necessary changes in the process.

Marked sections contain information that is part of our Non-financial Statement

Focus dimension: Cultural diversity and internationalism

An international workforce that embraces and accepts cultural diversity is a key measure of diversity for us as a company, and we promote it accordingly – because it is important to us that our workforce is representative of our diverse range of consumers around the world.

In the Consumer Business Segment, we employ people from different countries, cultures, and generations, of all gender identities, and with and without disabilities. Employees from 102 countries worked at Beiersdorf as of the end of the reporting year (previous year: 107). At the Group headquarters in Hamburg, the proportion of international employees increased to 21.7% (previous year: 19.7%). Of our global managers in the top three levels of management, 42% had lived and worked outside of their home countries for at least three years (previous year: 41%).

Marked sections contain information that is part of our Non-financial Statement

Focus dimension: Gender balance

Alongside international and cultural diversity, gender – especially equal career opportunities for all genders – is a particular focus area for us. Our activities around International Women’s Day, which we present in more detail later in this section, and our annual Wo*Men in Leadership Convention, which is aimed at all employees worldwide and this time was held under the banner Forward: #StrongerTogether, are further ways in which we promote gender balance at our company. In addition, we have entered into a close partnership with the LEAD Network, the largest European network for diversity and inclusion in the FMCG and retail industry. Like Beiersdorf, the LEAD Network is committed to promoting gender equality and creating a diverse workforce in which all people of all genders can work to their full potential and where people with equal talents are given equal opportunities. The LEAD community within Beiersdorf’s workforce already boasts around 240 employees, including CEO Vincent Warnery and our Executive Committee, as well as many managers and employees of all genders. Beiersdorf has also partnered with the Shape Talent organization, which also aims to improve gender equality and offers a range of results-driven solutions, including a program to empower women in the workforce.

Marked sections contain information that is part of our Non-financial Statement

In addition, in order to create an inclusive workplace and promote the goal of gender parity, we offer a wide range of flexible working arrangements and opportunities to facilitate a healthy work-life balance at Beiersdorf. 75% of our organizations offer flex time (previous year: 69%), 95% remote work or the ability to work from home (previous year: 98%), 48% part-time work (previous year: 54%), and 35% sabbaticals (previous year: 34%). In addition to individual part-time work, we continue to encourage job sharing. This is an arrangement in which two employees share a position in a job tandem. The job-sharing model has been standard practice at our company for several years – including at the top management level since the reporting year (known as “top sharing”) or, via the already established joint leadership model, up to the middle management level. In addition, we have also gained experience with the “senior meets junior” model, where job sharing enables part-time study, knowledge transfer between generations, and/or a transition to partial retirement. The aim is to make even greater use of the potential of this working arrangement and to make it clear that it is not only a successful model for returning mothers, but is designed for all employees who want to use their labor in a more flexible manner. We also see it as an important tool for strategic HR work and development.

At the end of the reporting year, there were 42 job sharing tandems at Beiersdorf in Germany (previous year: 34). 22 tandems involve a management role – either part-time or full-time (previous year: 19). In addition to these options, we offer childcare for our employees in Hamburg through our company kindergarten ”TroploKids”. With its 108 childcare spots and 28 teachers (as of December 31, 2022), this is one of the largest such kindergartens in Germany. In addition, we offer an online portal with information for all expectant parents, as well as two “parental leavers” programs, which we run in collaboration with the start-up MyCollective. One is aimed specifically at managers, while the other is open to all employees. Both programs are based on an online platform that enables employees on parental leave to remain in contact with Beiersdorf throughout this period if they wish, to expand their network, and to take advantage of further training opportunities. The focus here is on providing the right tools to support their return to work in the best possible way. We also continued our partnership with the ”conpadres” initiative (formerly VÄTERNETZWERK) in the reporting year. Within the framework of this project, we want to better identify the need to take action on behalf of fathers and, at the same time, help interested fathers connect with each other.

Marked sections contain information that is part of our Non-financial Statement

Since the introduction of the German law on the equal participation of women and men in leadership positions (FüPoG) in 2015, Beiersdorf AG has been legally required to set targets for the proportion of women in management positions at the two management levels below the Executive Board. At the same time, companies are required to set deadlines for the achievement of these goals. For the period ending June 30, 2022, the targets were 35% for the proportion of women at the first management level below the Executive Board and 50% for the proportion of women at the second management level. At the end of the last target achievement period, the actual figure for the first management level was 32% (as of December 31, 2021: 31%), which means that Beiersdorf fell just short of its target, partly due to the low number of total positions at this level. In contrast, the company met its target for the second management level, with women holding 51% of all management positions at this level as of June 30, 2022 (as of December 31, 2021: 52%). Beiersdorf AG had also aimed to have women comprise 10% of the Executive Board by June 30, 2022. Women made up 38% (as of December 31, 2022) of the Board, meaning the company significantly exceeded this target. At the same time, Beiersdorf AG has thus met the requirement under FüPoG II, which has been in force since August 2021, for the Executive Board to include at least one woman and one man. The company also met the statutory minimum requirement of 30% women and 30% men on the Supervisory Board in the reporting year, with approximately 42% of the members (5 out of 12) being women (previous year: 33%). These figures mean that Beiersdorf is in compliance with the voluntary targets that it set for the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board in the context of its diversity policy (with a target of 30% women on the Executive Board and 33% on the Supervisory Board).

To continue complying with the statutory requirements in the future, Beiersdorf AG has continuously formulated targets for the proportion of women at the different management levels during the reporting year. As part of this process, the management levels were redefined in line with the current organizational structure. As a result, the following targets apply with respect to the proportion of women on the Executive Board and in management positions at the two management levels below the Executive Board:

• Executive Board: women hold at least 30% of seats on the Board (as of December 31, 2022: 38%)
• First management level: women hold at least 35% of the positions by December 31, 2026 (as of December 31, 2022: 31%)
• Second management level: women hold at least 50% of the positions by December 31, 2026 (as of December 31, 2022: 48%)

In addition, in order to increase the proportion of women in management positions at a global level, Beiersdorf also formulated a global target in 2018 for the proportion of female managers in the three highest management groups (MG 1 – 3). According to this, we wanted to have women hold 35% of all positions in management groups 1 – 3 by June 30, 2022. As of the aforementioned deadline, we had achieved this goal, with women holding 37% of all management positions across these groups (previous year: 34%). At the end of the reporting year, the proportion of women on the Board of Directors of La Prairie (excluding the CEO) stood at 50% (previous year: 43%). The proportion of women in top management stood at 64% at the end of the reporting year (previous year: 59%).

In line with our Gender Parity Ambition formulated in 2021, we aim to achieve gender parity across all management positions below the Executive Board (management groups 1 – 4) by 2025 at the latest. As of December 31, 2022, the proportion of women in management positions across all of these groups stood at 48%.

Marked sections contain information that is part of our Non-financial Statement

Generational diversity and inclusion of people with disabilities

Alongside internationalism, cultural diversity, and gender balance, we also promote effective collaboration between different generations at Beiersdorf. Our goal is to be mindful of the abilities and needs of every employee and especially those of older members of staff. In the Consumer Business Segment in Germany, the proportion of employees aged over 50 was 32% at the end of the reporting period (previous year: 32%). In contrast, a total of 15% of employees are younger than 30 (previous year: 15%). The average age of employees in Germany as of December 31, 2022 was 42 (previous year: 42). To support our employees over 50, Beiersdorf AG offers internal training courses tailored to the needs of this group. One focus in this context is the learning initiative on digital topics offered through the support of Beiersdorf’s affiliate Beiersdorf Shared Services GmbH. In addition, the ”New Generation 50+” employee network is committed to questioning age as a career obstacle and to highlighting ways in which employees can advance in their careers regardless of their age. The community is also a partner of the cross-company meta-network ”Generationen50PLUS”, which was recognized as an “Innovative Network 2022” by Germany’s Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil at the Innovation Day 2022 event organized by the Germany Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. Through this network, Beiersdorf initiates events together with OTTO and the ”Demography Network” to promote the advancement of age-sensitive corporate cultures at other companies as well. During the reporting year, this included the first nationwide ”Change Maker 50+”, online conference, which took place on October 27, 2022, at the initiative of the ”Generationen50PLUS” network. The network pursues the goal of promoting opportunities for professional development among employees aged 50 and over and increasing their societal standing.

As an employer, we are actively committed to the inclusion of people with disabilities. Our workforce includes various individuals with disabilities; in addition, we have been supporting the nationwide ”Innoklusio” initiative since 2021. Its goal is to promote inclusion awareness at all levels in order to integrate more people with disabilities into the labor market. The aim is to break down the preconceptions that can lead to exclusion of people with disabilities and to bring about a profound cultural change. At the end of September, our inclusion team met with the creators of the ”Innoklusio” model project to kick off the project together with key members of our company and define concrete ways of implementing the “inclusion revolution.” “Working hand in hand instead of side by side” is the idea we are using to bring about a global mindset shift at our company and further improve the inclusion of people with disabilities. An internal exhibition will be held in fiscal 2023 to raise awareness of the issue among all employees.

In addition to these activities, we also hired a number of sheltered workshops to provide services in 2022. Beiersdorf’s green spaces in Hamburg, for example, have been cared for by Elbe-Werkstätten, the largest sheltered workshop of its kind in Germany, for many years. In addition, we continued our partnership with the Sozialhelden initiative in the reporting year. Its team helped us with the preparations for the planned accessible Beiersdorf Campus again this year and provided advice on the accessibility of selected Beiersdorf products – to ensure that our brands meet the needs of people with disabilities even more effectively.

Diverse initiatives, activities, and partnerships

Beiersdorf conducted a wide variety of activities in the reporting year to further boost diversity and inclusion. Due to the outbreak of war in Ukraine, we did not communicate externally on the occasion of International Women’s Day on March 8, but offered our employees various internal formats for sharing opinions and ideas as well as learning, all organized under the banner ”#BreaktheBias”, which the Executive Committee also participated in. The wide range of activities we carried out on International Women’s Day were designed to draw attention to stereotypes and prejudices against women and girls and thus promote greater equality. Under the banner of ”#NowMoreThanEver”, we also initiated the ”Global D&I Day” at Beiersdorf on May 31. The multifaceted program included keynotes, panel discussions, best practice sessions, and training seminars. In this context, all of our employees had the opportunity to learn more about how and why diversity and inclusion are practiced at Beiersdorf, either live in the auditorium in Hamburg or virtually via an online stream. Every employee was invited to actively participate in the discussion on the topic of D&I. In response to the question “Are you future ready?”, experts discussed, together with the first leadership tandem from our ranks, the extent to which job sharing is a future model for leadership positions.

Beiersdorf was also active on the occasion of Pride Month, on Christopher Street Day 2022 in Hamburg, and beyond, demonstrating its commitment to tolerance and acceptance. We drew attention both internally as well as externally to Beiersdorf’s multifaceted activities in support of the LGBTIQ+² community. In the reporting year, this included the launch of our partnership with the Hamburg-based non-profit initiative WELCOMING OUT, for example. The initiative aims to alleviate fears of coming out among members of the LGBTIQ+ community and communicate the important message to them that they are welcomed just as they are. To this end, the initiative specifically targets heterosexual cisgender people and educates them about the importance of allyship. As one of the first PATRONS OF WELCOMING OUT, Beiersdorf is speaking out for respect, tolerance, and more togetherness. The NIVEA and Labello brands also once again showed their support for the pride movement in the reporting year. The brand sent a clear signal of acceptance with various campaigns and products that featured the slogan “NIVEA is for everyone.” The Labello brand also showed its commitment to the LGBTIQ+ community with the Labello Pride Kiss Edition.

Through our partnership with the Generation Rainbow initiative on Pride Day Germany, July 7, 2022, we also underscored our commitment to equality for the LGBTIQ+ community, especially in the workplace. One part of the initiative was the publication of the book Generation Rainbow – So That Being Different Becomes Normal. The book features rainbow role models who serve as guidance and inspiration to live LGBTIQ+ diversity more fully in the workplace. To complement this, we sent our own Beiersdorf truck to join the colorful parade on Christopher Street Day in Hamburg for the first time on August 6. More than 150 employees and allies were on hand that day, both on and next to the truck, and made a clear statement that everyone should “be proud in your own skin.” Participation in the march was organized and managed by the internal employee community ”Be You @Beiersdorf”.

With the aim of further advancing gender equality at Beiersdorf, we also celebrated the 6th ”Wo*Men in Leadership Convention” on November 3. Around 160 participants attended the event in person, and more than 3,000 employees tuned in to the livestream. They all experienced a mix of inspiration, upskilling, and discussions with internal and external role models under the banner ”Forward: #StrongerTogether”. The common goal of all participants is to create a culture in which everyone enjoys the same opportunities and where talent and potential are the basis for following one’s own career path and achieving success. The packed agenda included keynotes, panel discussions, and masterclasses on leadership, as well as jam sessions where employees took over the global stage for ten minutes and spoke very personally. Members of the Executive Board and senior management answered questions from interested employees in small group sessions and shared tips to help employees along their career paths.

Other activities and internal events were initiated by our numerous employee networks dedicated to various aspects of diversity. The “Be You @Beiersdorf” community established back in 2019, which aims to raise awareness of LGBTIQ+ issues and create an even more inclusive environment for all LGBTIQ+ people, has the backing of CEO Vincent Warnery, who personally serves as a ”Be You @Beiersdorf” ambassador. The community supported all of the company’s activities surrounding Pride Month in the reporting year. For International Lesbian Visibility Day in April, the team behind ”Be You” also debuted a new format called ”Closet Talk”, which features inspiring people of all genders. As part of a presentation entitled “Why coming out as a queer woman is good business!”, three queer women spoke about their experiences and encouraged LGBTIQ+ members to come out as well. In the second installment of the event series, the theme was “Bi+: the invisible dimension.” The network already has 230 members worldwide and is supported by numerous allies, i.e. people who show solidarity with the LGBTIQ+ community.

In addition to the ”Be You @Beiersdorf” employee network, other employee communities also initiated their own individual activities during the reporting year. The grassroots community #SisterhoodisPower, founded in 2020 to help women empower each other on their career paths, continued its digital #PowerTalk series in the reporting year, which features inspiring women sharing their stories and thoughts on leadership, as well as their personal tips. In addition, the initiative focused on its peer mentoring program #Grow2gether, which was launched the previous year. It is the first inclusive, company-wide mentoring program aimed at all employees worldwide and seeks to foster inspiring relationships based on trust and mutual respect that benefit both mentors and mentees. For International Women’s Day, the community also launched a postcard campaign inviting employees to send an e-card to their coworkers to celebrate this special day.

Other active employee communities include the ”New Generation 50+” network, which initiated various learning sessions on the topic of digitalization in the reporting year, the employee community ”WEnited”, which was newly established in 2021 and aims to promote exchange and cohesion among international coworkers with a buddy program and various events, and the fathers’ network ”DAD.icated”, which was established in the reporting year and is a community of fathers, fathers-to-be, and allies who encourage others to make their own idea of life as a father a reality. In July of the reporting year, the network established a regularly scheduled get-together. In addition, ”DAD.icated” became a partner of the ”conpadres” initiative, a cross-company network working with employers as partners to improve work-life balance from a father’s perspective.

In addition to its many internal activities, Beiersdorf also supports cross-company dialogue within the framework of external partnerships. This includes, for example, our activities in support of the ”BeyondGenderAgenda” (BGA) initiative launched in 2021, which aims to enshrine diversity, equity, and inclusion (D&I) in the DNA of public and medium-sized German companies and thus ensure that the German economy remains competitive over the long term. Beiersdorf is also a signatory to the ”Diversity Charter” initiative, which aims to advance the recognition, appreciation, and inclusion of diversity across a variety of dimensions in the world of work. Other partnerships with a focus on gender equality include the LEAD Network (Leading Executives Advancing Diversity), which aims to attract, retain, and promote women in the consumer goods and retail sectors in Europe, and the MyCollective and conpadres programs, which focus on parental leave and fatherhood. To strengthen the LGBTIQ+ community, Beiersdorf has also partnered with the Hamburg-based WELCOMING OUT initiative, which aims to ease the fears of members of the LGBTIQ+ community around coming out and to set a clear signal in favor of acceptance. Through our partnership with ”Queere Vernetzung”, we support efforts to increase acceptance of gender and sexual diversity at Hamburg-based companies, and through the PROUT AT WORK Foundation, we support equal opportunities for LGBTIQ+ people in the workplace.

In order to include people with disabilities more strongly, we also work together with Innoklusio and Sozialhelden.