HOW WE'RE DELIVERING ON PEOPLE & COMMUNITIES
Our ambition is to help our Danoners and the communities where we operate and source from thrive in a fast-changing world. As a B Corp, we have a commitment to being a force for good for people and the planet. So we integrate social impact right across our business, supply chains and communities.
FOSTERING A UNIQUE, DIVERSE AND INCLUSIVE CULTURE
Across the UK & Ireland, our ‘Danoners’ are united by a common purpose – to bring health through food to as many people as possible. It’s our ambition for our teams to reflect the diversity of our patients and consumers so we can understand and serve their needs as best we can.
Our ambition is for every Danoner to feel included, heard and valued for the unique contribution they bring. We work with an ecosystem of partners to make all of this happen including D&I in Grocery (part of GroceryAid), the Diversity Standards Collective and Talent Mapper.
We are proud of the strong gender balance in our UK & Ireland business. We continue to evolve our policies, including smart working arrangements, flexibility for parents returning to work, and transparent succession planning. Our Danone Global Parental Policy aims to offer a consistent standard of support to all parents-to-be employed across the world.
A snapshot of our work
We’ve been certified as Living Wage employer in the UK & Ireland since 2023. We’ve worked to embed more inclusive talent practices, working with partners like Talent Mapper to strengthen our processes. This includes inclusive hiring training for managers. And we’ve integrated the ‘Recite Me’ tool on our careers website to support neurodiverse candidates or candidates with visual impairments.
We know that this is a continuous journey and our Employee Network Groups play an essential role in creating an inclusive culture at Danone. We have established a number of Employee Network Groups across a range of identities and topics. Working closely with the business, the groups help identify focus areas and drive change.
PARTNERING WITH OUR SUPPLIERS & PROMOTING HUMAN RIGHTS
Suppliers play a critical role in delivering our Danone Impact Journey, from providing quality ingredients to make our healthy products, to decarbonising our value chain and upholding human rights in the supply chain. To succeed in delivering these ambitions together, we have a responsibility to ensuring supply chain workers are treated with respect and dignity.
Danone is committed to respecting human rights across the value chain: taking measures for their prevention, mitigation and, where appropriate, remediation.
Upholding human rights requires constant focus, especially as supply chains evolve. We have a global Human Rights Policy and are committed to strengthening human rights due diligence(HRDD) across our supply chain.
We published our new Sustainable Sourcing Policy in 2024, setting out the social, environmental and business ethics standards we expect of our suppliers. This updated policy also requires suppliers to cascade these requirements to their own supply chains, fostering improvements across the value chain. In 2024 we established a UK & Ireland Human Rights Task force to further strengthen governance and awareness, ensuring all our employees understand its importance.
We are committed to working closely with our suppliers to extend our impact. So we hold annual Partner Days where we can connect with our suppliers and bring them along on our Danone Impact Journey, fostering a sense of community across the whole ecosystem.
BEING A FORCE FOR GOOD IN OUR COMMUNITIES
As former Danone global CEO Antoine Riboud stated in his famous 1972 speech, “A company’s responsibility does not stop at the factory gates or the office door. Its actions have repercussions throughout the whole community, and influence the quality of life of each citizen.” This philosophy guides our commitment to making a positive impact in the communities we serve. We want to help address the issues people in the UK & Ireland are facing today, including food poverty and social isolation.
Danone launched strategic charity partnerships in 2023 with FoodCycle in the UK and FoodCloud in Ireland to improve access to nutritious food, reduce waste, and foster community engagement. We also redistribute surplus food through FareShare and Company Shop in the UK, and FoodCloud in Ireland. Our employees receive two paid volunteering days annually and we encourage our people to use their time and skills by volunteering with our charity partners and other local causes.
In addition to providing financial support and employee volunteering to support FoodCycle and FoodCloud, we leveraged Danone’s nutrition expertise by developing online training and resources for volunteers and guests, as well as nutritious new recipes. Since 2017 we have donated 8 million meals to our charity partners. In 2024, our Danoners volunteered over 2000 hours.
We provide awareness raising, fundraising and volunteering for GroceryAid which offers emotional, financial and practical help for people working in the grocery industry. Through our Alpro brand we partner with Well Grounded, a social enterprise which supports people who are out of work to start careers in the coffee industry. The programme enables participants to gain technical accreditations and barista experience, as well as providing employability support, job coaching and mentorship.
At our supply points, our colleagues support initiatives in their local areas. For example, in the north of England the Harrogate team support the Great British Spring Clean litter pick.