Nestlé Pakistan: Helping Women Achieve Their Potential

Nestlé believes that for a company to be successful over time and create value for its shareholders, it must also create value for society. We call it “Creating Shared Value” (CSV). Given the nature of our activities and our ambition to be the world’s leading Nutrition, Health and Wellness Company, Nestlé has identified focus areas where it can optimise the creation of shared value. These are:

• Nutrition
• Water
• Rural Development
• Environmental Sustainability 
• Our People

The importance that we give to women engagement and empowerment can be gauged from the fact that we have women-focused initiatives whether it be Nutrition, Rural Development or Our People. 

Nestlé Pakistan, as an organization, realises that Gender Diversity is a critical business case not just for our success as a company but also the entire Pakistani nation since about 50% of college graduates are women. 

Nestlé is a signatory to UN’s Women Empowerment Principles. The principles make a case for corporates to take action to promote gender equality. But Nestlé has been playing its part in women empowerment, both inside and outside the organization, since before we became a signatory. 

At Nestlé Pakistan, we offer our female employees:

• One of the best maternity leave policies (up to 6 months)
• Flexibility policy* (Sabbatical, flexi working hours, working from other locations), 
• Day Care Centres* across sites
• Transport facility for women in case they have to work late
• A dedicated parking lot for women to ensure their safety
• A safe working place where their colleagues are gender sensitized
• We have a sexual harassment policy*  in place

Externally, we engage with women, in rural and urban areas, with the help of following initiatives.

A) Dairy Hub

Nestlé Pakistan started as a dairy business and more than 30 years in the country we are proud to engage with 190,000 dairy farmers every day. While interacting with farmers, the role that women play in an agri-based economy like ours became all the more visible and soon it became apparent that any rural development initiative would not be successful without taking women on board. 

Dairy Hub is a Nestlé Pakistan project under which we have set up offices and placed teams in Kasur and Mian Channu to help our base of farmers. Through this team we were able to engage more farmers of small and medium capacities to help them through the implementation of best farm practices and support their businesses. Over the years, we have expanded the scope of Dairy Hub to include mainly female advisors. This is a unique activity in the field and gives us the ability to interact with farmers and their wives to improve farm incomes and facilities in a defined region. The larger agri-services team of almost 100 veterinarians, agronomists and livestock professionals is working across the Punjab and the northern Sindh area, bringing improved technology and ensuring milk quality standards are met. So far, we have trained 10,882 farmers. But we look at it as just the beginning. 

B) Kero Aitemaad

With Kero Aitemaad – Believe in Yourself , Nestlé is furthering its credentials as a responsible employer by not just providing equal opportunities to females but also encouraging them to overcome stereotypes that have prevented women from realizing their true potential and demonstrating their talent.

Kero Aitemaad – Believe in Yourself is a ground-breaking Creating Shared Value initiative taken by Nestlé Pakistan’s Corporate Recruitment Team for career aspiring women, currently outside the organization, to help them in:

• Understanding different aspects of a working woman’s professional life and how to navigate by learning through experienced leaders at Nestlé Pakistan
• Break Stereotypes within the labor markets
• Learn about Nestlé Pakistan and how it  supports female professionals
• Become Ambassadors and spread the message of ‘Kero Aitemaad’

We recognized an opportunity that upcoming female talent pool of country is facing a lot of barriers in forms of personal hesitations, culture and gender stereotypes causing hindrance in realizing their career goals along with their responsibilities as a family woman. 

The Kero Aitemaad – Believe in Yourself Platform will drive three strategic initiatives focused on career oriented females only. 

1. The first initiative is nationwide, regular series of Kero Aitemaad Circle - Women Empowerment Seminars dedicated specifically for upcoming female university graduates. Through this seminar, we empower and inspire the young female talent by making them meet with successful female professionals at Nestlé Pakistan who broke the barriers of gender career stereotyping and achieved success along with their families. The participants of these seminars become the Ambassadors of the Kero Aitemaad – Believe in Yourself and are engaged to spread the message into their circles by creating a Kero Aitemaad Circle of their own!
2. The second initiative will be Kero-Aitemaad Apprenticeship/ Internship Programme with apprenticeships / internships in functions which are usually avoided by the female talent pool due to flawed perceptions that those roles are suitable only for men. The pilot project in 2015 will be in Sales and then move on to rest of the functions.
3. The third initiative is to stay connected with Alumni Network of former female employees of Nestlé. We aim to make this platform as a “back to work” forum for females, who want to stay abreast with the career opportunities, on-job trends and career building tips to return to work when time is right
   
   

 C) Healthy Women

Indicators show that malnutrition including both under nutrition and obesity among the rural as well as urban women of reproductive age in Pakistan is high. Malnourished women are more likely to have children with nutritional deficiencies. These children are prone to developing health problems in both short and long term, including impaired physical and cognitive ability. This may also lay the foundation for the development of metabolic disorders, including obesity and non-communicable diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular diseases later in life. 

Nestlé Healthy Women is a programme designed to raise awareness on how Nutrition impacts young women and their future generation. With this programme Nestlé aspires not just to disseminate nutrition information but to also positively impact lifestyles. For this endeavor, Nestlé Healthy Women has set a campaign with multiple stages each with a reward for those who make it to the next stage. These stages include Nutritional Awareness sessions, conventional quizzes; digital engagement, hands on healthy cooking classes, poster presentations and engagement with senior management at Nestlé. In addition, successful participants are being offered an internship programme that encompasses extensive exposure to the organization. 

Healthy Women has been rolled out in Forman Christian College and Kinnaird College for Women during pilot phase. It will be taken to universities in other cities of Pakistan in 2015.

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