Reckitt Benckiser : One year of rejuvenating sustainable growth

One year of transformation: Our journey

At RB our journey of transformation to rejuvenating sustainable growth started a year ago. At the time we launched our purpose. We protect, heal and nurture in the relentless pursuit of a cleaner, healthier world. We united behind our fight. To make access to the highest quality hygiene, wellness and nourishment a right, not a privilege. We defined our culture with our compass. We used these foundational elements to guide us as we quickly adapted in support of our customers, consumers, colleagues and communities.

Our purpose is delivered by RB colleagues

Throughout 2020, colleagues have delivered in extreme circumstances. Whether working from home, or from our production and research facilities, teams kept supplies running and worked closely with customers on their needs throughout the pandemic. To support our teams, we deepened the range of support provided to employees impacted by the pandemic. We are proud that we worked to ensure employment continuity through this period.

The health, safety and wellbeing of our people is paramount. We published our guides for safe workplaces externally, to share our hygiene expertise in Navigating our new normal. We supported employee wellbeing in a myriad of ways throughout the year. Resources provided ranged from leader-led wellbeing podcasts, to guidelines, training and tips on working from home and how to maintain hygiene standards through the pandemic. We ensured that the Employee Assistance Programme gave global coverage, meaning all employees had access. As a thank you for their extraordinary contributions over the course of the year, we sent hampers and product packages, and gave all colleagues 2 additional days off.

In early 2021, we have launched a global wellbeing programme with a £3.5 million investment over the next 3 years, backed with an online wellbeing hub and ongoing digital conversation platform. Wellbeing is now firmly part of the employee experience.

While adapting to the changing environment externally, we transformed the culture internally. We established the Stronger Together conversation series for peer-to-peer storytelling about diversity and inclusion (D&I). We established a new D&I board who are using these stories, and external research to inform our diversity and inclusion agenda.

We introduced the Sir James Reckitt Award - to recognise and celebrate colleagues, teams and sites who have lived our purpose. The first winners were the team from our factory near Wuhan, who kept disinfection production running in extraordinary circumstances through the first lockdown in China. In addition, we have introduced The Compass Awards and The Pinnacle Awards to honour the exceptional efforts of colleagues. Recognition and celebration are now central to our culture - learning from and celebrating each other to create shared success.

The positive changes in our culture have been recognised by the almost 30,000 RB colleagues who responded to our June 2020 survey. The vast majority recommended RB as a place to work, expressing an overwhelming sense of pride about working at RB, double digits above the external benchmark. We continue to actively seek feedback and to move these numbers into increasingly positive territory.

Our Executive Team analysed how to further build strength on the foundation that our purpose, fight and compass provide. Our new leadership behaviours were developed as a result. They capture the uniqueness of RB, capitalise on our existing strengths and stretch us in areas where we still need to shift the dial.

We are working to embed these characteristics - a source of our strength - deeper within the company.

Our purpose is activated through our brands.

Our new Marketing Excellence capability centre partners with marketing teams to ensure that products are increasingly creating value for society. We are building partnerships that support the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the creation of a cleaner, healthier world by meeting growing consumer and customer needs.