Once again, Henkel’s family-aware personnel policy has been validated with the award of a “Career and Family Audit” certificate issued by the German charitable foundation Hertie-Stiftung. The review, conducted under the auspices of Federal Minister for Family Affairs Dr. Ursula von der Leyen, is a management instrument introduced to encourage the continuous improvement and promotion of a family-aligned corporate policy. Since its inception, it has developed into a “seal of quality” for an empathetic HR management approach. For many years now, Henkel has been offering its employees various ways and means for reconciling their work, career and family obligations, and the company has already received a number of additional awards for its commitment in this regard.

With 53,000 employees from 110 nations spread over all the world’s continents, Henkel is one of the most internationally aligned German companies. Given this background, diversity management is an important issue at Henkel. Henkel has now appointed its first global Diversity Manager, reporting directly to Kasper Rorsted, Vice Chairman of the Henkel Management Board and Executive Vice President Human Resources. With this newly created position, Henkel intends to strengthen diversity as a strategic factor for success within today’s internationally competitive environment. “Only through the diversity of our employees can we understand the markets of the more than 125 countries in which we are represented by our products. The better we are able to harness diversity, the more successful we will be as a global player,” commented Kasper Rorsted, underlining the importance of this decision.