Podcast with Martijn Roelants

I'm glad that we could record this session together, thank you. I'm looking forward to it.

Well, I think it's not very surprising. I think the whole discussion around diversity in companies has been with us for quite some time. I think you must have been quite ignorant to the topic if you've not picked this up. Over the past decades now, we've been discussing how to move the needle and get a better equilibrium between men and women in the workforce. The result only shows that we still have work to do.

I think it's very much at the heart of our purpose and our strategy going forward. If you want to be a leader in the industry, if you want to be a company that is part of society and at its best, this reflects in how you build your teams, how you get the best out of your people. That means we need access to the whole talent market, teams that reflect the capabilities that are out there. That's part and parcel of the right composition—not just gender, but different backgrounds and different thinking styles. You need to be holistic in your view to battle the issues that come across and to be innovative and creative in ways forward. That means we need to have our claws in everything and everyone that can be part of the solution. So that's one: being really open to all the qualities and capabilities in the workforce. Secondly, there's a moral and fairness component: why would you as a company want to exclude parts of the talent or people in society? That just doesn't feel right. And reflecting our customers—if you want to be a sustainable company as Nutreco wants to be, you need to think long term. You need to be a company customers recognize as one they want to work with. There are societal pressures and more regulation coming our way, but more importantly, if you want to be a leader in the industry, you need to stay close to yourself and take leadership positions in these discussions. You want to be a company that is truly inclusive for our customers, for the people around us, and certainly for our employees.

Now certainly. I don't think we're excluding half of the workforce obviously—we have always had male and female colleagues within Nutreco and will continue to. It's more about how we get better at balancing that out. This is a complicated discussion; if it was simple, I think we would have solved it some time ago. There are items we can do a quick fix on, but as you mentioned, we're talking about biases that are perhaps not as visible or conscious, and it takes more time and effort to overcome. It's something we need to continue to work on.

Well, I think everyone should have noticed over the past few years that we've been quite active in creating awareness and communicating. We've had our posters, our webcasts, our videos. So we've been quite active in creating awareness across the company. As this is part and parcel of our strategy going forward, we want people to understand that we want to take this to the next level. Secondly, it's been part of our engagement surveys for quite some time. We try to figure out where we are and get focus areas on where we're doing better than other places so we can focus our attention. We had our D&I week again last year, which is an excellent event to put this on the radar and get inspiration from external speakers and interaction from people within Nutreco and even across SHV companies. We've had various programs like Taking the Stage, included it in leadership development programs, and we're still thinking about launching new things. We have an inclusive leadership workshop coming our way which will be excellent for engaging with future and current leaders to instill more inclusive behaviors within the company. We even have a bias game coming—gamification on this topic, serious gamification. So I'm really looking forward to continuing with what we've done but extending our activities to get more outreach and get more people involved.

Yeah, we keep the finger on the pulse. Every year we see areas of improvement, but there's also a clear signal that there are quite a few areas where we can still improve. If we go back to the gender side, often we see that recognition between males and females is not yet at the same level in many places. So to me, it's a clear signal that there's still work to be done. It gives us a measure point in time and the ability to focus on the things we need to address first.

Yeah, it was the product of a very engaging and fueled discussion within the management board. We concluded that we really want to take this to the next level and increase our ambition. We've always had an ambition around a better balance between male and female leaders, but we felt that although we were on track, we still needed to add something to really progress and make it more visible and create more momentum. We've upped our game and had a good discussion on where we can move the needle faster. We know it's about developing our female leaders and creating better promotion chances, as you mentioned in the opening. But the quickest thing we can do is get more female colleagues and leaders in by recruiting at least 50% of our new hires as females. That's ambitious. It means that given our current intake, we need to consciously make different decisions in our hiring process to move the needle. It's a courageous decision to take, and we want to get committed to this topic and get results. So we're aiming for it, and hopefully it will have positive effects soon.

I think 'best' is obviously subjective—it's in the eye of the beholder. Often, 'best' is what we recognize of ourselves in the other person, which is comfortable because we can relate and benchmark against ourselves. But that's also the danger: we create a homogeneous community, versions of ourselves, which is exactly what we don't want. What we want is a more diverse group of people that can tackle the issues in an ever-faster-moving, challenging, rapidly changing environment. You need people with divergent minds who can look at it from different angles, and then a process to converge. It's that diversity that will make sure we can thrive and tackle things. So 'best' in that regard is very subjective. Sometimes 'best' means experience or education; sometimes it means different qualities they bring to the table, perspectives, and life experiences. So it's excellent that we take different decisions here and build more diverse teams. I wouldn't bother too much about this 'best' topic—ultimately it's about building the best teams, which is a combination of many different aspects, not just the experience in your resume.

Well, as someone responsible for people in the organization, this needs to be a topic close to your heart. If I were not passionate about this topic, I would seriously need to question whether I'm in the right place. To me, it's obvious: having a broad range of backgrounds, capabilities, and experiences in your team really enriches the team dynamics and your ability to come up with the best solutions. I've seen it work in the past. I grew up in professional services, which means I always worked with people who are generally smarter than me—that's great, you learn from one another and get different perspectives. But it's also perhaps deeper, from a principal perspective: there's an element of morality and fairness. To me, it just doesn't feel good if we are not trying to be inclusive, if we exclude people from the opportunities we have to offer as a company. There's a real business driver—we do this because we get better results and better dynamics. But to me, it's also a little deeper: it just won't feel good if we didn't take this topic seriously. I think it's something we need to keep our eye on, a topic that requires continuous attention and effort to move forward. But I do feel that within Nutreco, we take this very seriously.

Yes, sometimes obviously it is easier, but this is short term versus long term. Again, this is not an easy topic. We're not just talking about gender; we're talking about different backgrounds and thinking styles. You want to make this work in a very diverse group of activities within Nutreco. It's a topic that requires attention; it won't happen automatically. Perhaps the most difficult thing is that even with our minds and hearts, it's so easy to fall back into old behaviors and unconscious biases. The hardest part is to make sure we consciously keep working on this so we make progress. It takes true grit. It's warming to see that there's a bigger community out there that will help carry that flag. This is not just you or me; we have quite a few people convinced we can take the next steps, and that's good.

I've done those tests of unconscious biases, and even myself, though I try to be deliberate, it is difficult. There are things you're not aware of that influence your thinking. Imagine we replicate that across the whole employee base at Nutreco. Still, lots of good initiatives, good progress. We can and need to go faster, but I think we have the momentum and at least the conviction to do it.

Well, I would say—getting nice words of wisdom—get in there. This is equal for men and women. There are lots of initiatives, lots of events, a lot we try to do to get this on the table and move it forward. But we're only going to make progress if we take deliberate actions and continue to discuss this at all tables within the organization. This goes from the very practical: last week I had a discussion on how to facilitate more female workers in our factories—it starts with making sure we have changing rooms in place—up to how we involve senior leadership and ensure the right tracks in our selection processes. So from the practical to the very strategic, there are lots of things we can all do. My advice: get in there, make good use of the opportunities we provide to engage in the discussion, extend your hand and reach out. I've had meetings with female colleagues around the world, and every time I get in there, I hear new things. Sometimes they're good, sometimes disappointing, but you only get to that level of realization and commitment if you are willing to listen to your colleagues close by. So let's get in there, make good use of the things we provide to move the topic forward, and have real discussions with the folks around you. If we all do a small step, it will accumulate into a big result.

It was a pleasure, thank you.