Henkel aims for gender balance in management roles by 2025

German multinational company Henkel is embarking on what it described as an "ambitious journey" of achieving gender balance across management roles by 2025.

This means a significant increase on the number of women starting from the top management levels to junior and middle management positions. Currently, the company's proportion of women in management stands at 38%.

"We have made good progress, but more needs to be done. Reaching gender balance across all management level is a truly ambitious journey," said Sylvie Nicol, chief human resources officer of Henkel, in a statement.

So, how does Henkel plan on achieving this ambition? The organisation said in a statement that it plans to "accelerate its programmes and measures along the whole employee lifecycle - from recruitment to development and retention."

This covers enhancing the company's gender inclusive recruitment and talent retention, its monitored promotion and succession plan, intensive upskilling on diversity, as well as unconscious bias trainings and inclusion programmes.

Henkel also said it plans to expand new working formats, which will see the emergence of shared or part-time leadership roles, as well as further leveraging on the company's mentoring and networking initiatives for diversity worldwide.

"We will foster more inclusive mindsets and relationships and build even more equitable and transparent structures and processes," said Nicol.

Read more: How to achieve gender balance in the workforce

Behind the ambition of gender balance, Henkel chief executive officer (CEO) Carsten Knobel said they see it as their "responsibility to ensure equal access to opportunities for all people."

The said ambition also stems from the company's goal of becoming successful, according to the CEO.

"We are deeply convinced that gender diversity plays a crucial role for our future business success. Our purposeful growth agenda is built on the foundation of a collaborative culture and empowered people," said Knobel.

"Embracing diversity and strengthening our inclusive culture are key elements that allow us to collaborate effectively, include different perspectives and empower each other – not despite of, but because of our differences."

Henkel was one of the first German DAX companies to establish a dedicated global diversity team in 2007. It has since established a company-wide diversity, equity and inclusion network that is collaborative across all its departments and regions.