Nestlé at forefront of promoting full gender equality

Vice president of the Vietnam Women’s Union Tran Thi Huong signed a cooperation agreement for the 2020-2022 period with CEO of Nestlé Vietnam Binu Jacob

As part of its efforts to build a more inclusive and diverse company, Nestlé has made great strides in expanding the number of women in management roles. The Gender Balance Acceleration Plan has also been implemented to increase the proportion of women in top management positions.

Specifically, Nestlé has been training its managers and employees in unconscious bias training and sexual harassment prevention. The company also introduced a flexible working environment policy to build a collaborative and energising work climate and recognise the diversity of employees.

Nestlé trains female team leaders of coffee farmers under the NESCAFÉ Plan project, contributing to the gender balance and empowering women

But the company’s contribution to gender equality goes beyond the internal company to promoting women’s empowerment in the community. Nestlé Vietnam has cooporated with the Vietnam Women’s Union (VWU) to implement the “Nestlé Accompanies Women” programme. Launched in 2020, it will continue to expand to all provinces in the country. So far, the programme has attracted 4,000 female members in 700 communes of 10 cities and provinces nationawide, creating positive impacts on their lives.

Training on nutritional knowledge and sales skills are implemented within the framework of the programme “Nestlé Accompanies Women”

The programme has helped equip women in rural areas with skills to promote and spread nutrition education in rural areas and also to help them gain financial independence and security.

According to vice president of the VWU, Tran Thi Huong, the programme shares the same purposes with the union and govenment in supporting disadvantaged women.

“We highly appreciated the practical communication and training activities of the Nestlé programme to improve women’s capacity, knowledge, and skills. to support them building happy and healthy families in the construction of new rural areas and civilised cities,” Huong shared.

Another example of gender balance and women’s empowerment throughout the entire value chain is the NESCAFÉ Coffee Plan, in which Nestlé works with 20,000 farming households in the Central Highlands. As a result, 30 per cent of leaders who train other coffee farmers are women and have increased their incomes by over 30 per cent.