Our company culture is people centric and devoted to beauty

Suzan Schlag CEO for L’Oréal in the Nordics.

For many, wanting to make a difference and working for a company that has a clear purpose and cause to serve are high on the wish list. Learn how L’Oréal embedd purpose into their organisation and engage their employees around its company values and commitments.

Purpose is also influencing the actual growth, a study published by Harvard Business Review Found showed that companies who had a clearly articulated purpose which was widely understood in the organization had better growth as compared with companies which hadn’t developed or leveraged their purpose.

This makes it clear why purpose-driven companies are on all our lips. We wanted to have a chat with Suzan Schlag, CEO for L’Oréal in the Nordics, on this topic knowing that they work with purpose throughout their business.

Do you feel that your Sense of Purpose helps you attract and retain talent?

First, our main priority and commitment is to take good care of our people. Our founder Eugène Schueller used to say; “A company is not about walls and machines, but people, people, people”. These few words have become a credo within L’Oréal. Our culture is based on two inseparable business drivers: a devotion to beauty and a priority for our people. For us the individual will always come first, ahead of the organization and its processes. Also, sustainable growth and the social model are inseparable. Since 2012, we’ve rolled out a set of priorities for health, social protection, work-life balance and workplace well-being across the globe, through our Share & Care Programme. This policy enables all our teams to enjoy the same protections and the best social practices around the world.

When it comes to being a ‘purpose driven’ corporation you are right. Today people go to work because they want to make a difference. The commitments and actions behind our sense of purpose manifesto “Create the Beauty that Moves the World” are very powerful and make our employees’ work meaningful. We believe that beauty is an essential need and powerful force that moves us. We know that beauty is more than just looking good. Beauty gives us confidence in who we are, in who we want to be, and in our relationships with others.

When it comes to our commitments, we focus on three key areas; – the planet, the people and our offer to consumers.

As the world leader in beauty, the desire to respect, preserve and restore the beauty of the world is a core commitment. We are radically transforming the way we operate as part of our ambitious sustainability program called “L’Oréal for the Future”, we are committed to fairness and ethics in all aspects of human relations, and the L’Oréal Spirit places special emphasis on diversity, equity & inclusion. When it comes to the safety and efficacy of our products, we always choose quality and safety over all else, and never compromise.

At the same time, we cannot solely rely on our sense of purpose to attract and especially retain talent. Especially now it is more important than ever to re-calibrate our relationship with our employees. To take well care of them. Grow with them. Invest in them and support their needs and aspirations when it comes to their individual careers.

You mention sustainability as part of your sense of purpose commitments. How do you engage your employees around the topic of sustainability?

We have designed a clear sustainability roadmap with local goals. We have a committee with experts from every function involved in the company, every business unit.

We have 80+ ongoing sustainability projects in the Nordics. For example, we have managed to reduce the CO2 emissions linked to the transport of our goods in the Nordics by 25% during the first half of 2022 (versus 2021) and have implemented fossil-free deliveries in 21 Nordic cities.

Until today, we have succeeded in reducing our global carbon dioxide emissions by 87% compared to 2005, while production increased 37% over the same period. This shows it is indeed possible to combine growth with sustainability. In 2025, all our facilities will be carbon neutral worldwide. We would not have succeeded in this if it had not been for the commitment of our employees. Remaining within the planetary boundaries must be an urgent goal for all corporations, as well as individuals in the coming years.

And for us, it is important to have a local and genuine engagement, based on concrete and tangible initiatives and actions, to be able to reach our ambitious goals, and all our employees are invited to take part in our journey.

In partnership with Bring, L’Oréal has established emission free ’green last mile’ deliveries in 21 Nordic cities, where their products are delivered by bike or electric vehicles.

You seem to have a big focus on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, can you tell us more about how you approach these topics?

Diversity has always inspired us and because we know our actions have impact, we believe it is our duty to be the most inclusive beauty leader and contribute to a society in which everyone can live safely, peacefully and equally. Diverse outperform homogenous teams by a landslide. But our commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion goes beyond that. Our commitment to diversity is embedded in our company goal: to offer each person around the world the best of beauty, to satisfy all beauty needs and desires in their infinite diversity. Hence, our team members must be as diverse and inclusive as the society itself. With employees from 44 different nationalities in our Nordic organization, 58% women in leadership positions and being GEEIS certified we are well on our way.

Our Nordic Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee has an ambitious agenda – which starts with the careful evaluation of whether all our employees indeed feel included. Then the real work starts on each of the dimensions as we define them: gender equity and LGBTQIA+, socio-economic and multicultural orgins, health and disability, age and generations. With that said, we have a lot of initiatives in place already, for example, in 2010 we founded Diversity Charter in Sweden together with 10 other companies – to highlight the benefits of an inclusive approach to business and in society. And through our social inclusion program Solidarity Sourcing, we have helped 100,905 people from unprivileged communities gain access to work and long-term-employment.

L’Oréal Water Saver, a sustainable haircare system for the salon, that uses two liters per minute, compared to the household standard eight liters, and with no detectable difference in pressure, developed with environmental innovation company Gjosa.

You also position yourself as an innovation-driven company. In which areas do you drive innovation and why is it important to you?

This links back to our overall purpose, “Create the Beauty that moves the World”. L’Oréal was born from science, from a vision, created from the idea of a chemist. We drive innovation on a wide scale, by contributing to a more sustainable future, thanks to scientific progress and the complementary nature of our expertise in green chemistry, biology, biotechnology and the eco-design of our formulations. We also drive innovation in tech with a deep conviction that the future of beauty lays in the intersection of science and technology. This will allow us to invent the future of beauty. We are working to harness the revolution in technology and the digital world, and to apply them to beauty. These revolutions give us an opportunity to reinvent ourselves, to explore new areas and to offer consumers unique products and services. We can multiply our areas of expertise, monitor our overall performance, and invent new experiences that can meet the worlds’ aspirations for beauty. Thanks to these possibilities, we are creating beauty that is tailor-made, unique and designed to reflect the infinite diversity of expectations and needs of our consumers. |

If you want to learn more, please visit www.loreal.com/nordics

IN CO-OPERATION WITH LOREAL.