“This is another example of Air Products putting its values into action,” said Seifi Ghasemi, Air Products’ chairman, president and CEO. “Our higher purpose includes bringing people together to collaborate and innovate solutions to the world’s energy and environmental challenges. In order to realize this, we want to further increase representation of diverse talent in our managerial and leadership positions and continue building an inclusive culture where all employees feel they belong and matter.”
Air Products plans to share progress towards these goals both internally and externally. In its 2020 Sustainability Report for the first time, Air Products published 2019 metrics on the representation of U.S. minorities, and added an additional level of metrics for females in Executive roles.
“We believe that by being transparent about our goals and our progress against them, we can visibly demonstrate our genuine commitment to diversity, inclusion and belonging and bring everyone along on the journey with us,” Ghasemi said.
The goals to increase the percentages of global female and U.S. minorities in professional and managerial roles are the latest in a series of actions and programs to build an even more diverse and inclusive workplace at Air Products, including:
- An enhanced Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging company policy;
- Publishing company diversity metrics internally and externally for transparency and accountability to drive progress;
- Accountability of senior leaders companywide to create and execute Diversity Action Plans, including diverse succession planning;
- Leadership Development Programs for diverse talent (women, minorities);
- Monthly “Inclusion Moment” topics for discussions companywide;
- Manager training on unconscious bias;
- An expanding Inclusion Network, which is focused on attracting and retaining talent, raising cultural awareness, developing colleagues, and contributing to the company's overall diversity, inclusion and belonging objectives;
- Numerous Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), including: AERO (Asian Employee Resource Organization), BERG (Black Employee Resource Group), EDGE (Ethnically Diverse Gulf Employees), Enable (Valuing employees of ALL abilities), HOLA (Hispanic Organization of Latinos and Amigos), ISERO (Indian Subcontinent Employee Resource Organization), Spectrum (LGBTQ+ Resource Group), Spectrum EU (LGBTQ+ Europe), WSN (Women’s Success Network), WSN Houston (WSN Chapter for Houston), WSN Operations (WSN Chapter for Operations), WSN EU (WSN Chapter in Europe), UDAAN (Women in India), KWS (Korean Women’s Success Network), and the company’s newest and soon to be launched ERG in the Middle East (MEERG);
- Four Diversity and Inclusion Councils in Asia in China, Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia.
Air Products’ new diversity goals come on the heels of other, recently-announced sustainability commitments. Last month, the company announced its “Third by ‘30” goal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) intensity (kg CO2/MM BTU) by one-third by the year 2030. Air Products set this new target as it closes in on successfully attaining a series of 2020 Sustainability goals.