If employment rates in Europe for men and women remain constant, experts predict that there will be a shortfall of 24 million in the workforce by 2040; this falls to just 3 million if employment levels for women can be raised to match those of men.
This means that we need to be a company where women want to work, at every level and in every function.
We have a comprehensive programme to make PepsiCo a place women want to work, which benefits all our employees. Here are just some of our focus areas:
Women in manufacturing
We have signed up to the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology charter to support the participation and advancement of women in manufacturing. Initiatives to support and encourage women in this part of our business have included a particular focus on developing females managers in manufacturing, resulting in a representation of 36% against a national average of 25%.
Women in leadership
We need women in the managerial ranks and leadership roles so we are adjusting our practices to accommodate life phase needs and provide a flexible approach to career growth. This enables women to tailor career development to suit their life stage, stepping on and off the fast track as they need to. As a result, 30% of PepsiCo's 80 leaders in the UK are women.
FlexiCo
Flexible working is the new norm at PepsiCo, underpinned by an environment of trust. Two thirds of our non-operations employees regularly work from home. We're positively impacting our women by pushing flexibility further all the time, creating new ways of working to enable more job shares, flexed hours and locations.
Our actions mean that, for the fourth year running, PepsiCo UK has been named in the The Times' prestigious top 50 'Where Women Want to Work'.
