Ensure diversity and equal opportunities

Gender equality: decide on company strategy
Sign France-level agreements with unions
Define disability consistently to improve reliability of indicator tracking percentage of disabled employees

 

Nationalities in corporate staff l LA13 l STS8 l
			2006
Different nationalities represented in the corporate staff			8

 

Gender split for professionals l LA13 l STS10 l			%
	2004	2005	2006
Men-professional	81	80	80
Women-professional	19	20	20

 

Gender breakdown l LA13 l STS9 l			%
	2004	2005	2006
Men	60	60	61
Women	40	40	39

 

Disabled employees l LA13 l STS12b l			%
		2005	2006
Percentage of disabled employees		0.41	0.62

 

Women in management l LA13 l				%
		2004	2005	2006
STS11	In senior management (Job grade 17 and above)	6.3	6.6	7.04
STS12	In executive management (Job grade 19 and above)	3.8	4.1	5.65
STS12a	a In staff management reporting directly to site/senior organization manager		10	12

Ensure diversity and equal opportunities

Diversity at ST is a key strength, and multicultural diversity has always been a strong point for ST, reflected by the dominant presence of employees and managers of local origin in ST’s many sites around the world. This cultural diversity is also reflected by the 8 nationalities that are represented at the Corporate Vice Presidents’s level. These cover England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iran, Italy and Singapore.

We are now focusing in ST on increasing the representation of women at all levels of the company. As the figures above show, our results are improving consistently over time, notably for the representation of women in senior management and executive management.

Since last year, we have also been tracking the percentage of women who directly report to the site or senior organization manager at local level, and this year we have seen an improvement in this indicator. The split between men and women at professional level (below senior and executive levels but above operator level) is stable at 20%. Our overall gender split reflects the fact that many of our Operators are women.

Many of our sites and regions have specific programs and initiatives relating to gender equality and equal opportunities.

Following on from the focus on Equal Oppportunities in France in last year’s report (see pages 30-31), in 2006, a key agreement was signed with France-level unions defining the specific objectives ST France has committed to meet for gender equality.

Company strategy for gender equality

In 2006, following the work of the corporate-level working group on gender equality, it was decided that a soft, cultural approach should be taken to developing a company-wide strategy for gender equality. Since gender equality is subject to many cultural and social differences depending on location, each region should have its own approach within the clear framework of the Principles for Sustainable Excellence and the new Social Policy.

It was also decided that the work to share best practices and a common approach to some aspects of gender equality can be continued through the new internal working group on Human Rights (see page 36). In particular in 2007, the objective is to transfer successful practices from France to Italy and to progressively bring other regions into the best practice sharing process.

Integrating disabled employees in 2006: we have seen a slight increase in the number of disabled employees across ST. This is due to an increasing focus on this area and to the specific initiatives of some countries and regions.

ST supports Equal Employment Opportunities for candidates and employees. ST commits to recruit, screen and select candidates solely on the basis of qualifications and abilities needed for the work to be performed.

Race, color, age, political opinion, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin cannot be used as selection criteria.