Quick facts: Yıldız Holding – Turkey – Snack, Retail and Frozen Foods Sector – 60,000+ employees

Target: Empowering women in business and ensuring their right to have equal opportunities

• Increase percentage of female employees
• Increase percentage of women in:
• Board of Directors
• Senior management
• Mid-level management
• Increase percentage of female new hires
• Increase percentage of promoted female employees

Date Set: 2023

Progress Made:

We, as Yıldız Holding, support a corporate culture that treats everyone without prejudice and aims to provide an equal process. We consider pioneering in line with the goals of empowering women and ensuring equal opportunity in the business through this mission. To this end, we have established The Yıldız Holding Women’s Platform with the participation of our Group companies in March 2021. We have prepared the Manifest of Yıldız Holding Women’s Platform Equal Opportunity and Women Empowerment through the feedbacks we received from our employees at the bilingual workshops with global and local employees participating from all levels including the Board of Directors. We set targets in the fields of Discourse, Working Environment, and Cooperation and created our strategic road map consisting of actions to be taken in these three areas. We have shared all the actions to be taken with Yıldız Holding companies and established work groups that enable cooperation.

In this scope, we consider equal opportunity as a common issue for all our employees as a company that values inclusion, equality, and pluralism in all our business processes. We carry out our activities to involve all our female and male employees and created learning and experience sharing areas to listen to each other.

As a starting point, we have prepared the Manifest of Yıldız Holding Women’s Platform Equal Opportunity and Women Empowerment. We created a step within the process that also reflects suggestions from our employees in Turkey and abroad for equal opportunity and empowerment of women in the business world. We promise to create a company culture where all our employees are respected and valued without prejudice, regardless of gender.

• We have published Holding Group wide remote working principles.
• Targets for the upper-level managers of pladis have been determined to increase representation of women in management level. Pladis’s goal is to close the salary gap while acknowledging that the salary difference between genders is due to inadequate representation of women in upper management roles. The main objective here is to increase the proportion of women in the management level to 45% until 2025 with gradual increases taking place every year.
• Pladis started Harlesden Women’s Network project to increase the proportion of female employees in the factory, especially in engineering, technician, and managerial positions. Women who participate in the Network will receive a series of training by professional consultants to prepare them for the relevant roles. As a result of this training, 50% of the women in the first group received promotion.
• Kerevitaş, with 45% of female employees in 2020, participated in Equal Opportunity for Women at Work Project, which was implemented by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.
• We signed the Women’s Empowerment Principles as a holding group.
• Godiva motivates employees to work voluntarily on the issues of socioeconomic development and the protection and support of women and children through the Gives Month global employee volunteering program.
• We have started Equality Talks to provide a role model and raise awareness for gender equality.
• 52% of the applications or a total of 17,500 in 2020 submitted to the young talent program, Yıldız Holding @ Job, consisted of female university and graduate students. For nine years, we have helped young women take their first steps in working life through this program.
• Lady GODIVA Initiative recognizes the success of NGOs who work to empower women. The initiative provided USD 25,000 to support each of the five initiatives selected from five different countries in 2020.
• Being She is a volunteer employee group created by pladis employees to carry out activities that improve equal opportunity with companies in the United Kingdom. Inspired by the activities that were carried out, various employee groups were created to empower women in production areas. As a result, it was observed that women applied for more promotions and were promoted in roles where men were more dominant.
• pladis employees aim to be role models for their career journeys by cooperating with the non- profit social institution called Inspiring Girls. This partnership framework aims to inspire young girls and motivate female role models through social media and participating in the #ThisLittleGirlIsMe campaign. As a result, stories of pladis employees have reached thousands of people on social media.
• Şok Marketler has been supporting housewives to earn income from their efforts via Ben de Varım/I am in too project. About 15,000 cloth bags produced by unpaid domestic workers were sold in 2019-2020.

What is driving your company’s ambition to advance gender equality?

Diversity and inclusion are critical for sustainable development and the success of our companies. As two of the most important issues related to equal opportunity today, we address them by ensuring gender equality and participation of women in the work force. Every step, taken in this field, creates an important opportunity for both the world’s economy and our companies.

20% of senior managers are female across Yıldız Holding. We know that there is much more to do. We aim to pioneer and provide equal opportunity for women in the business. With the support of our CEO and our “invest in people” vision, our objective is to create opportunities that are spread throughout the whole society and to position our company among the companies where people want to work for.

What is one concrete action your company is taking to reach your target and help move the needle on women’s representation and leadership?

We made a public commitment to increase female employment in all levels. We believe that the establishment of ambitious indicators and crosscutting objectives, incorporated into our business strategy, will ensure and accelerate the company´s equal opportunity agenda.

• Discourse: We strive to reflect our stance on equal opportunity in our statements and the language of our communication and to build an equal and inclusive corporate culture.
• Working Environment: We are creating a business environment where all female and male employees can work in just and secure conditions.
• Cooperation: We actively cooperate with external stakeholders for the economic and social empowerment of women.

What is one lesson or pitfall to avoid that other companies could learn from?

Each company has its particularities, and many internal and external factors impact the effectiveness of the strategy. Company size, localization and culture are some of those which must be considered. We learned that it is essential to keep a systemic vision, to promote respect and empathy, and to have active communication to strongly develop each step of this journey.

From the beginning, it is important to pay attention to the alignment between companies so that each unit has a good understanding of the organization-wide goals that need to be achieved and can work together more solidly and benefit from synergy.