Sonoco strives to be a diverse and inclusive work environment. In order for a business to be successful, it has to be reflective of the global diversity and regional community. To encourage a stronger focus on diversity for our salaried workforce we embedded standardized questions.

To help us work towards this goal and make our talent reviews more action oriented we have embedded standardized metrics and diversity related questions into our annual talent review & succession planning process. Annually, each business GM will review their current diversity statistics compared to both the corporate statistics and the EEOC and S&P 500 benchmarks along with plans to address any gaps.

Standardized questions that are covered:

1. For those diverse members of your team, what are you doing specifically to develop them for the future?
2. If you lack diversity, what are the specific actions you are taking to make sure you have diversity of thought as you build your strategic plans and make decisions?
3. Are diverse candidates applying for and being interviewed for roles in your organization?
4. Have you promoted any diverse talent in the last 12 months? Do you have any diverse talent identified for promotion opportunities in the coming year?
5. Have you experienced any voluntary turnover of diverse talent in the last 12 months? What steps did you take to retain the talent and/or understand their reason for exiting?
6. What is your biggest concern related to diversity in your organization and what help do you need?

We now have year over year diversity metrics for each business that allows us to monitor our progress along with diversity focused action plans that are updated annually to ensure we continue to move Sonoco towards a more well-balanced diverse workforce.

Nia Rothmaller