On June 16th 2015, the 4th annual International Diversity Meeting was held at L’Oréal headquarters in Paris.

Over 40 Diversity managers from more than 30 countries came together to work on strategies and actions to advance Diversity in their countries and at a global level. Participants from, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, USA, Portugal, Mexico, Poland, Brazil, Nigeria, Romania, United Arab Emirates, Russia, to name a few, gave their insights and shared their best practices that allowed them to learn from each other’s experiences and actions.

The meeting was structured as a practical working day with participants sharing their thoughts and learning from internal and external speakers about Diversity related topics. During the working day, a special focus was given to the Gender balance strategy. L’Oréal is committed to creating a Gender Equality culture where both women and men can develop their full potential overcoming stereotypes and bias.

In order to create this culture and to ensure that actions and internal processes in the Group are aligned with the objectives on gender equality half of L’Oréal subsidiaries have undergone gender equality certification processes since 2011. Gender equality certifications help the Group to measure the impact of strategies end actions and to identify areas of improvement to work on. Countries who are members of the European Union undergo the GEEIS (Gender Equality- European and International Standard) certification while non-EU member countries go through the EDGE (Economic Dividends for Gender Equality) procedure.

During this International Meeting, the two founders of the GEEIS and EDGE certification process exchanged with the countries about the certification processes and how to advance the gender equality topic in the workplace. Cristina Lunghi, from GEEIS, explained that this certification contributes to the creation of a common culture of gender equality in the workplace in Europe. Aniela Unguresan stated about EDGE: “It is a concrete roadmap for companies to understand the dynamics in their talent pipeline through a gender lens as well as their underlying causes.”

Participants from the countries highly appreciated the exchange with EDGE and GEEIS representatives. A number of tools and strategies, shared by them as well as other countries that underwent these Gender Equality certifications, are now on the participants agendas to implement in their home countries. 

Christina Hillebrand & Stephanie Oueda (L’Oréal) for Eve le blog