By Cyber Era NG Special Correspondent

Diversity, inclusion and equal opportunity are integral to the corporate culture and strategy of Deutsche Post DHL Group. The company’s ambitious Sustainability Roadmap offers a blueprint for creating a safe, inclusive and attractive work environment for all employees.

In November 2021, the company received three important awards in recognition of its Group-wide efforts in this area. RainbowNet, the company employee network for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer employees founded in 2008, received the European Diversity Award in the category of Outstanding Employee Network. As one of the largest inclusive employers in Germany, Deutsche Post DHL Group also received the “Inklusionspreis für die Wirtschaft 2021” (Inclusion Award for Business) for its inclusive corporate strategy, barrier-free structures and innovative solutions in the training and employment of people with disabilities. For its exemplary activities aimed at equal opportunity across the multiple dimensions of diversity – including inclusion and intersectionality – Deutsche Post AG once again received the Total E-Quality award, making the Group one of a handful of companies to have been a consecutive recipient of the distinction for more than 20 years.

Deputy spokesperson for the RainbowNet network, Markus Zittlau is particularly proud of the European Diversity Award. “Our aspiration is to be a great place to work for all,” Zittlau says. “Including our LGBTQ+ brothers, sisters and non-binary persons. It’s very rewarding to be part of and contribute to a corporate culture in which no one has to explain, justify or even hide their sexual orientation or identity.”

For Board Member for Human Resources, Thomas Ogilvie equal opportunity is an important selling point for the Group as an employer and service provider: “Equal opportunity is the key to outstanding service and highly satisfied customers. Diverse teams make better decisions. We have some 570,000 employees from around the world all working together, which shows that the active promotion of diversity has a positive impact on company success. In fact, a robust corporate culture of inclusion and diversity is increasingly viewed as a major competitive factor in securing talent.”

Deutsche Post DHL Group intends to step up its activities aimed at broadening equal opportunity and diversity in the workplace. At the DHL Express hub in Cologne, for example, an inclusion department was established to better address the needs of employees with autism and integrate them more effectively into the teams. At the DHL Express hub in Leipzig, the company launched a special project for the hearing impaired. There, it uses pagers and blinking lights to create barrier-free working conditions that have enabled the hiring of several employees with hearing disabilities.

The promotion of women is also firmly anchored into the Group’s Sustainability Roadmap. Logistics has traditionally been a male-dominated industry. Well aware of that fact, Deutsche Post DHL Group has continually increased the percentage of women in middle and upper management positions around the world since 2014, achieving a current rate of 23.2 per cent. 

Moreover, a total of 34.2 per cent of all Group employees are women, and more ambitious goals are targeted. The company currently aims to increase the percentage of women in upper and middle management to at least 30 per cent by 2025. To achieve this goal, the Group-wide initiative “Shift up a Gear” was introduced – a comprehensive program specifically designed to train and promote the next generation of female leaders for positions in senior management.