Silke Muenster
DIVERSITY “ IN ORDER TO DRIVE THIS INNOVATION , YOU CLEARLY NEED PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY ”
Silke Muenster
TITLE : CHIEF DIVERSITY OFFICER COMPANY : PHILLIP MORRIS
SILKE MUENSTER CHIEF DIVERSITY OFFICER , PHILLIP MORRIS
Aiming to transition into a broader lifestyle and consumer wellness company , PMI plans to generate revenues from tobacco-free or nicotine-free products . At the same time , the company also focuses on wellness and wellbeing from the inside .
Breakthrough in wellness and health impact Yulia O ' Mahony started her tenure as PMI ’ s Global Head of Health & Resilience just a year ago as the role was introduced in the middle of the pandemic .
“ It was a clear signal of the importance of health and wellbeing of employees at PMI for the future , which the COVID pandemic brought into sharp focus ,” says O ’ Mahony . “ One of three pillars of our inclusion and diversity strategy is to create an environment for sustainable high performance .”
In terms of benefits , PMI has long been boasting of its reputation as a good employer . However , according to O ’ Mahony , the next imminent step is to understand what should be the balance of global versus local activities , because wellbeing is a lot more than just benefits .
More than two years ago , Muenster found the company struggling to recruit more women into its array of employees . The company then formulated the answer , which mainly revolved around creating accountability by setting individual objectives for leaders . To tackle this , the company pursued accreditation to ensure potential candidates and was able to leverage on the fact that PMI was the first company globally certified for equal salary certification in 2019 . “ Having this equal salary certification is helping us to recruit women ,” says Muenster . “ We have made huge progress when it comes to female representation . We had declared that we want to have women representing 40 % of management roles by 2022 , and we are super close . We then made 2 percentage points ’ progress , just on last year , which was really huge .”
The company also saw huge progress when it comes to senior women roles , which is currently above 25 % after scoring 18 % at the same time in 2020 . Based on the current trend , Muenster is confident that the company will achieve 40 % female representation in management roles this year .
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