L’Oréal awarded the Grand Prize for Diversity by Ethics & Boards and ICR

At the first Diversity Awards, held on 30 January at the Palais Bourbon by the Ethics & Boards Observatory and the Institut du Capitalisme Responsable (Institute for Responsible Capitalism), Jean Paul Agon,  chairman and CEO of L’Oréal, received the the Grand Prize for Diversity in the CAC 40 Category, tied with Engie, as well second prize in the Consumer Goods and Services category.

Jean-Paul Agon said:

Diversity is a strategic priority for our group as it is a source of creativity, innovation and performance. These two awards recognise L’Oréal’s long-standing commitment to gender equality at all levels of the company. They encourage us to further accelerate our efforts to advance diversity in our company and in society.

During the ceremony, French MP Marie-Jo Zimmermann inaugurated the Diversity in Business Index, also known as the Zimmermann Index, which is directly inspired by the Copé-Zimmermann Law. It will create an independent and objective annual measurement of the diversity of SBF 120 companies’ Boards and executives.

The index is structured around 6 business sectors based on the MSCI (Modern Index Strategy Indexes) classification, and will be extended to all of Europe in 2018.  The Zimmerman index takes three areas into account: 1) Board Diversity  2) Diversity of the executive management committees 3) women’s representation within the company.

This Grand Prize is an opportunity to note that women make up 70% of the L’Oréal Group’s total workforce of 89,331 employees. They also account for 33.3% of the Group’s Executive Committee and 46% of the Board of Directors (7 out of 15 members) (as of 31/12/2016).

The L’Oréal Group has a long-standing commitment to workplace gender equality, and aims to ensure equal job classifications and pay for equal skills. In France, where the Group has worked with the French national institute for demographic studies (INED) to analyse the pay gap since 2007, the gender-based pay gap on a like-for-like basis was under 4% in 2015 for management and non-existent for other categories of employees.

In recognition of its progress on workplace gender equality, L’Oréal has received GEEIS (Gender Equality European and International Standard) and EDGE (The Global Business Certification Standard for Gender Equality) certification in 30 countries.

The Institut du Capitalisme Responsable is an independent, non-profit applied research organisation focused on integrated and responsible thinking for businesses and the financial community. Ethics & Boards is an independent group which analyses the governance of European and US companies.