@all women, thank you for your contribution in 2020 and let's take new challenges for 2021!
Whether they were nurses, cashiers, ministers, astronauts or tennis champions... each played an essential role. In our company, they were technicians, bookkeepers, scientists, engineers, managers; they were also on the front line.
I would particularly like to thank the women of SUEZ, who have ensured the continuity of our essential environmental services by innovating, coordinating or protecting the teams to face this unprecedented crisis.
At SUEZ, we are proud of our employees, and we support them every day in their personal and professional development.
We are doing everything we can to ensure that we increase the number of women at SUEZ, through recruitment to operational and technical positions, career and leadership developments, etc.
The value of diversity in companies is no longer in doubt. We've known it for a long time: diversity is a source of innovation, performance and more successful teams... Diversity benefits everyone, men and women. The debate is over!
To encourage this diversity at SUEZ, whose highly technical professions have historically been held by men, we have been working for several years to increase the proportion of women at all levels of the company and to build a working environment that allows them to express their full potential.
Recruit more women
Creating a supportive work environment for women
Recruiting more women is not enough: we also make sure that they benefit from a suitable working environment and that they have the best conditions to develop and manage their careers.
One way of ensuring a favourable working environment is to provide personal protective clothing and equipment adapted to women.
It also means strengthening social dialogue: SUEZ has signed a European agreement on professional equality with commitments to fight against sexism and sexual harassment and to provide support for parents (without distinction between men and women).
Also, SUEZ encourages sharing initiatives, women's networks exist in many of the Group's entities. In 2020, nearly 5,000 women were part of a SUEZ women's network. And these networks will continue to grow. For example, a new women's network in France has just been launched.
Boosting women's careers
We now carry out People Reviews dedicated to women in each of the Group's entities to identify individual development programmes and accelerate their promotion to key positions.
We take care to identify female talent (44% are female) and provide leadership development so that women can reach decision-making positions.
Results
This policy has shown some results: from year to year, the proportion of women is increasing among our managers (30%), and our executives (36% of the executive committee). Even if we can and must make further progress, our positioning in relation to the other major Groups is encouraging, as the official rankings show:
SUEZ ranks 26th in the SBF 120 companies according to the Copé-Zimmermann index; and the new Board of Directors and Supervisory Board diversity index launched by the European Women on Boards (EWOB) network and the firm Ethics & Boards places SUEZ in the top 10 companies of the STOXX 600!
On this day, SUEZ and its 90,000 employees would like to pay tribute to all the women who, in 2020, have shown that they have a leading and essential role to play.
BRAVO, for taking up all the challenges of 2020 with courage and determination and taking new challenges again and again.