The development and wellness of our global employees are critical components of how we do business and these efforts are part of how we measure success. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we prioritized the health and safety of our employees–this was McCormick’s primary concern.
We engaged our Employee Ambassador Groups to provide feedback on policies and practices that were being considered for implementation, resulting in a number of innovative suggestions that involved opportunities with flexible work arrangements, technology and solutions for both child and elder care challenges. Beyond the pandemic, McCormick continues to invest in our people to ensure a culture of wellbeing among all employees.
McCormick recognizes the importance of retaining our people and, beyond our wide range of financial, physical and mental wellbeing benefits packages, McCormick actively listens to its employees in order to truly understand and address their needs. Therefore, just as we encourage our employees to continuously learn from each other, we are leading by example and learning from them.
In 2021, we introduced a new global working model called MyFlex, enabling employees in eligible roles the ability to work remotely up to 50% of their time over the course of a month. This approach will enable us to have work location flexibility and the opportunity to co-locate with colleagues either in our offices or at customer sites, leveraging coming together as collective and cross-functional teams.
McCormick’s Global Supply Chain employees participate in quarterly pulse surveys that are tailored to the concerns of each location, designed to deliver fast, frequent and measurable insight. We also leverage VIBE, our annual engagement survey, as part of our overall Continuous Listening Strategy. Launched in 2019 and expanded in 2020, the annual survey consists of 26 questions plus an open-ended response to measure engagement and enablement while generating new insights that fuel actions to drive improved results.
In 2020, we conducted three COVID-19 surveys to understand how employees were feeling and what they wanted and needed as we navigated the pandemic. As a result of their feedback, we prioritized actions around strengthening culture at McCormick with clear and regular coaching and feedback from managers.
These new surveys and listening efforts complement our existing Organizational Effectiveness function, responsible for enhancing employee communications, engagement and experience across the enterprise.
Through our long-standing commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion as well as our partnership with Korn Ferry, we continue investing in the Global Women’s Ignite Program, an initiative aimed toward assisting female talent in advancing within the Company. This is an investment in the long-term success of these women, and in the long-term growth of our business. As of 2021, 100 women have graduated from the program. Similarly, our U.S. Ignite Program, also in partnership with Korn Ferry for ethnically diverse talent, cultivates talent through a competitive nomination process that helps identify and partner participants with managers in an intense three-day curriculum designed to help manage headwinds in careers. Participants have praised the opportunity to connect with colleagues and develop the tools to think through their career progression.
At McCormick, our first priority is our employees, and we are committed to their health and safety. We have a special responsibility to ensure our employees are protected and feel supported – particularly during the pandemic. The majority of our workforce continues to work on-site, which has led us to implement a multitude of new initiatives to ensure these employees are protected while on the job.
Our belief is that an environment free of risks and hazards drives our forward-looking and mitigative approach to provide a safe workplace, which promotes the health of all employees as we look to drive real actions to attain our zero-injuries goal.
See how McCormick is committed to employee health and safety »
Our Global Wellbeing program for employees outlines McCormick’s commitment to having 80% of our global employees participating in wellness initiatives and programs by 2025. In 2020, we reinforced our commitment to employee wellness by building it into our organizational structure and hiring our first Global Wellbeing Lead, a new position charged with providing additional resources and support around mental health. Since then, we’ve launched Nourish, McCormick’s first global wellbeing program. Nourish is meant to define and broaden the definition of wellbeing for our entire global workforce and prioritize programs that support personal wellbeing for our employees. Programs within Nourish include those aimed at improving physical health and fitness, supporting work-life balance and ensuring personal growth. As we continue focusing on building sustainable engagement and measuring our employees’ motivations and energies to deliver their best performances, our 2022 roadmap includes a plan to capture participation rates over time.
Over the past two years, many of our employees experienced outside stressors caused by the pandemic and other events. To address these new challenges, we implemented our Caring Conversations initiative, which equips managers with tools and resources to connect with, better understand and support employees.
We have also developed a mental health toolkit for our non-corporate, frontline workers, to ensure company-wide access and participation. Regular wellness screenings remain a priority as well. Through McCormick’s new wellness investments and long-held commitments, we’re demonstrating that wellness programs are an integral part of how we care for our employees.
McCormick has worked to build holistic wellness into the foundation of our benefit programs. Among the programs we offer, we recently introduced the Nourish wellness campaign that offers resources and classes to employees on mental and financial wellbeing, time management and healthy eating tips. This program, an evolution of the Together McCormick program, helps us formalize participation data within the organization while addressing top-of-mind issues.