Employees

Essity offers career opportunities in a leading global hygiene and health company that is breaking barriers to well-being in the world. Employees at Essity make a difference and improve people’s quality of life by providing access to leading hygiene and health solutions and increasing knowledge in these areas through development initiatives and collaboration. Essity’s employees are the company’s main asset and we strive continuously to develop our corporate culture, expertise and leadership to create the best possible conditions for a successful Essity. All Essity employees are to be treated fairly and respectfully. We value and work continuously to increase diversity in the company.

Development is important

Everyone should understand their contribution to generating results. It is important that Essity’s employees have the right skills and are committed to performing at their best. In so doing, employees can grow as individuals and contribute to the development of the company. Employees are expected to continuously learn and develop. Everyone should give and receive regular feedback. We strive to leverage the opportunities offered by digitalization to facilitate ways of working and processes. This is all supported by leaders who nurture a supportive and enabling environment. As a mean of developing functional skills, Essity provides a number of academies with comprehensive training programs for employees.

One aim of Essity’s global human resources strategy is that the company should be perceived as an attractive workplace for existing and potential employees and that Essity is a safe and healthy workplace, based on ethical business practices. Essity recruits and develops employees in line with its strategic competence plan. The plan is based on Essity’s strategy, demography and access to expertise and determines the measures that the company needs to take to meet future skills and resource requirements.

Essity’s “Beliefs and Behaviors”

Culture is key

Essity’s corporate culture is central to its operations and is formulated in a set of “Beliefs and behaviors.” These serve as a compass to offer guidance in how we are to act as Essity employees.

Diversity and inclusion

As a global company, we value and work continually to increase diversity and inclusion. All employees are recruited, evaluated and promoted based on objective criteria without discrimination with regard to gender, marital status, origin, sexual orientation, religious faith, political affiliation, age, disability or other categories protected by law. This is stipulated in our Diversity Policy. Fundamental to our corporate culture is offering a diverse and inclusive work environment, which helps to strengthen the company and its results. Our diversity and inclusion strategy aims to continuously increase employees’ sense of belonging and inclusion of different perspectives, and also seeks to attract and recruit employees motivated by the company’s objective of breaking barriers to well-being in society. Everyone who works at Essity is to be treated with dignity and respect and have an opportunity to develop in their career.

To increase the proportion of women in leadership positions, a number of programs and networks are run to highlight and support women in senior positions. The power of diversity and leveraging people’s different perspectives are key. The organization receives training in “unconscious bias” with the aim of reinforcing an inclusive approach. Local activities are being carried out in various countries to include our employees with disabilities. A diversity study is held every year and encompasses nationalities, age structure and gender distribution in general and in leadership roles. No unjustified pay differences should exist due to gender, age or background. This is regularly monitored and any unjustified differences are corrected on an annual basis.

Caring through a safe and healthy work environment

Working at Essity means the right to a safe and healthy work environment. Health and safety for our employees is fundamental to our business and is based on our Beliefs & Behaviors and our Code of Conduct. Nothing we do is worth injury and our highest priority is that everyone who works or visits us, arrives at production facilities and offices that are safe and healthy. Essity’s aim is zero workplace accidents and we work proactively to address the issues of safety and health.

Essity implements the international standard OHSAS 18001 (Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series) to ensure the use of uniform processes within the Group and that Essity’s units continuously improve workplace-related health and safety. OHSAS specifies requirements regarding the organization’s occupational health and safety management systems.

Essity has a global framework to increase focus and awareness on different perspectives of health and ensures local efforts to secure a healthy work environment. The framework is based on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) definition of health and includes the physical, mental and social well-being aspects of the work environment. On this basis, Essity conducted self-assessments of health activities at the largest production facilities and offices in 2020. This forms the basis of local action plans. Essity offers health-enhancing activities, training in stress management and work-life balance, opportunities for remote working, flexible working hours and time off, where possible. The aim is to create a sustainable working life based on a healthy workplace.

Accident frequency rate

Remuneration and benefits

Essity offers a “Total Reward” concept. This entails a mix of monetary and non-monetary components. We offer market competitive remuneration comprising salary, variable remuneration, pension and other benefits. We also offer a good working climate, competent leadership, individual development plans and international development opportunities. Together, this forms our “Total Reward” concept. The company follows local salary structures and respects internationally established rules for minimum wages and reasonable compensation. The company works continually to limit and prevent unjustified pay differences and other differences in employment conditions. The programs for variable remuneration are for most employees at Essity.

Employee relations

Transparent communication is fundamental to the trust between the company, its employees and union representatives. Essity recognizes the right of every employee to join a trade union and participate in union activities. The company meets with employee organizations at various levels on a regular basis to inform them of and discuss issues concerning the company’s results, forthcoming changes, and health and safety and employment terms and conditions. Essity has an agreement with the industry union IndustriAll. When there is no union representation, Essity establishes other channels where possible, such as an employee council.

Essity supports Global Deal. This is a global partnership with members in the private and public sector. Its aim is to improve the dialogue between parties in the labor market and national governments.

Attractive employer

The basis for Essity to ensure access to competence is that the company is considered to be an attractive workplace, both internally and externally. Based on annual competence planning, we strive to attract potential employees through university events and extensive activity in social media. Knowledge of Essity and the company’s attractiveness has been gradually growing since 2017. We have been externally recognized many times for our work on Employer Branding. We offer a manufacturing apprenticeship program to ensure the long-term supply of talent. This takes place in partnership with local schools. Furthermore, we offer a new program to help recent graduates to find their first job and ensure sufficient talent in critical areas. Essity’s “GO! Program” is a two-year program in which participants have a combination of project work, development activities and rotation, while also working in proper job. The annual Essity GO! program has 30–50 participates every year.

Leadership for success

Everyone at Essity practices leadership. Regardless of whether you are in charge of an operation, a team, or yourself, leadership skills are needed that ensure success in today’s complex and rapidly changing environment.

To enable all employees to perform at their best, continuous dialogues are held between line managers and employees aimed at deciding goals, coaching and development. A digital platform with global processes is used for setting goals, individual development, recruitment, introduction and salary review. The platform is to ensure compliance and to realize Essity’s HR strategic framework.

Continuous development of leadership is decisive to our continued success. To achieve this, Essity runs a leadership academy comprising 20 global training programs for managers at various levels or with specific competencies. All new managers take part in mandatory introduction training aimed at creating a shared basis for leadership at the company. In addition to the programs, training is offered through coaching, virtual seminars and leadership publications.

Our leadership platform is at the core of all our leadership activities and encompasses the competences and expectations required to contribute toward Essity’s results and culture. Competences form the basis of recruiting and developing employees and thus creating the best possible conditions to deliver on Essity’s targets.