ESI Group reinforces its commitment to gender equality at work and signs the United Nations Women's Empowerment Principles

By becoming a signatory to the Women's Empowerment Principles, ESI Group is committed to taking bold steps to advance gender equality in the workplace, marketplace and within the community. The Group will focus on non-discrimination, public reporting of progress toward gender equality, and on providing equal opportunities for education, training, and professional development. Diversity is key to accelerating a company's performance, enriching its culture, and employee well-being. At ESI, the workforce is multicultural, international, and comes from different areas of expertise. Women make up 43% of the Board of Directors and 50% of the management team, yet women are still underrepresented everywhere else. I am convinced that we can do better in this area and that rapidly improving the ratio of women to men in all teams will help our company to progress, satisfy employees and clients, and establish long-term performance.

Cristel de Rouvray

CEO, ESI Group

A priority objective for the group

ESI Group is already committed to gender equality, notably through actions taken to promote the recruitment of women and their professional development within the industry. In May 2022, the Group set up its Women@ESI network, which strives towards strengthening internal collaboration between employees and creating a communication channel to share ideas that promote the representation of women. ESI Group confirms its intention to continue to move further.

Among the various actions in progress and to come, ESI Group will continue its policy of compensation promoting equality between women and men, based on objective market data that takes into account the position held and the level of seniority without gender consideration. ESI plans to reach 25% of women in the company by 2024 and 33% by 2028. The Group will strengthen the inclusiveness of its job offers and recruitment processes, by systematically presenting a selection of candidates composed of women and men. Furthermore, in order to materialize a safe and inclusive group culture, ESI is committed to developing, in addition to its ethical charter, a charter further strengthening its commitment to preventing harassment. The group will also provide a specific training on the subject of harassment to all staff. Finally, the Group wishes to implement a global parental leave policy for women and men by 2028.

Established by UN Global Compact and UN Women in 2010, the Women's Empowerment Principles, are informed by international labor and human rights standards and grounded in the recognition that businesses have a stake in, and a responsibility for, gender equality and women’s empowerment. There are a set of seven principles offering guidance to business on how to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in the workplace, marketplace and community:

• 1: Establish high-level corporate leadership for gender equality
• 2: Treat all women and men fairly at work – respect and support human rights and non-discrimination
• 3: Ensure the health, safety and well-being of all women and men workers
• 4: Promote education, training and professional development for women
• 5: Implement enterprise development, supply chain and marketing practices that empower women
• 6: Promote equality through community initiatives and advocacy
• 7: Measure and publicly report on progress to achieve gender equality