We recognized that the diversity of our management team did not match the diversity of our customers or the geographies where we operate.

After spinning off from Air Products in October 2016, Versum Materials was a 1,900-person organization poised for rapid growth as it scaled up its organization to operate as a stand-alone company. For many employees, the company’s 30-year legacy of diversity and inclusion was already ingrained in their day-to-day actions. However, as Versum, we wanted to differentiate ourselves with a new, forward-thinking culture. We saw an opportunity to shape the future of our company with a recruiting strategy designed to reflect the diversity of our customers and to build upon the different perspectives and strengths of our global team to innovate and collaborate at a more meaningful level. After identifying the geographies and cultures in which our customers operate, we expanded our leadership team and realigned responsibilities and objectives to align with the needs of the business to gain a better understanding of how to best serve our customers.

We become more externally focused on building strong and diverse business leaders and team members located closer to our customers to advance our strategies further and grow our company. We created new experiences for our leaders and team to grow and develop, above and beyond their legacy D&I initiatives. Our customers have recognized us as having a new sense of customer focus.