One of the things I most value in a team is diverse thinking. The more that a team is representative of the actual population, the more you get that diverse thinking, and we see that every day.
We’ve taken steps to accelerate our DEI strategy with a particular focus on women and people of color. First, we’ve paused and listened to others, including employees, the market, and the communities in which we live. We’ve also set the tone at the top of the organization with our board of directors and senior leadership. We recognize that while we’ve made progress, there is still more work to do.
From The Company
We believe our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts drive business results and help us make more moments of goodness.
At Hershey, we look at DEI as a business priority – it’s part of what makes us a leader in the industry, a great place to work and a company people want to do business with.
Our CEO Michele Buck and her Executive Committee intensified their commitment and leadership of The Pathways Project, our diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda. We continued year two of these efforts as enterprise priorities while successfully managing the business and employee impact of a lingering global pandemic.
Hershey stands for equality as evidenced by:
• 58% of our Board Directors are diverse, including five women or 42% gender diversity
• Our workforce diversity reached a five-year high with the highest levels of Black, Latino, and Asian representation since 2017. In 2021 POC representation increased 25%.
• We continued to pay U.S. salaried women and people of color $1 dollar for $1 dollar compared to male colleagues. We are focused on achieving pay equity by job category across our global workforce by 2025.
• The U.S. percent of total giving directed to organizations that formally support People of Color organizations increased 59% and Tier II diverse suppliers increased 33%.
