Diversity within the Company is one of Henkel’s ingredients for success. We are convinced that the different cultures and skills of our employees help us to understand our markets better, underpinning our long-term success. It is a source of creative, innovative and economic strength. We therefore further each employee’s abilities and appreciate their individual characters and special qualities as valuable to the company. This appreciation is embodied in our Code of Conduct and the Code of Teamwork & Leadership. Henkel has publicly demonstrated its commitment to diversity, for example by signing the Diversity Charter. And in 2007, we established an organizational unit for Global Diversity Management.

Diversity Management has a long tradition at Henkel. We rely on employees whose experience, talents and skills reflect the diversity of our markets and customers.

We want people of different origins and ages, and with a variety of individual abilities, to work together effectively and happily at our Company. Employees from 116 countries work at Henkel, with more than 80 percent of all employees working outside of Germany.

We want to have the best teams – irrespective of the age, gender and nationality of their members. We select our employees on the basis of competence and potential, rather than to satisfy quotas. In this context, we strive to identify and eliminate barriers that limit individual development perspectives.

Balancing family and career is a topical sociopolitical theme in many countries today and is a focal aspect of diversity management. We can only utilize the skills and abilities of our employees to maximum effect if we help them to master the challenges of combining career and family. We are therefore planning to make it even easier for employees to take advantage of flexible working hours, part-time work, and home offices – when this is economically feasible, and taking due account of individual circumstances. We believe that this will strengthen our employees’ bonds to the Company. In order to support our employees in their efforts to coordinate their dedication to their careers and their plans for their private lives, we offer locally organized working groups. Depending on the given situation or local challenge, appropriate targets and solution can be developed.