These events, along with the recent Great Resignation, have shone a brighter light on economic and social inequalities around the world. As a company and as individuals, we realized that we need to listen and learn from underrepresented employees– and then act in a more purposeful way.
We have a duty and golden opportunity to improve the future of work and support historically excluded perspectives. Not only is this the right thing to do for our people and society, it is also the smart thing to do for our business, because diverse teams perform better.
At PPG, we are bona fide believers that in order to say the right things, we first need to do the right things.
We live our purpose "to protect and beautify the world" every day, and our DE&I commitments are an important part of who we are and where we are going. Our vision and strategy involve holding ourselves accountable to the commitments shared in this report - and we are proud to track and share our progress as a company.
We are insightful, dedicated and proactive. We have intimate knowledge of the market and our customers. We focus on practical solutions that make a difference.
We are better and stronger together. We leverage our scale to reach new markets and introduce innovative technologies as we differentiate and disrupt our markets.
We enable and empower our people to make the right decisions. We are inclusive, transparent and respectful. Our feedback is clear and actionable.
We have a passion for winning. We achieve. We deliver with discipline and integrity. We bring our best energy to our work. We decide and act intelligently and quickly.
We continuously learn. We develop our people to grow our businesses.
We respect one another by being responsible and accountable. We always act in the best interest of our company, customers, shareholders and our communities.
We are on this DE&I journey together, guided by our DE&I vision statement and inspired by our motto: You + Me = One PPG. As Dr. Bernice King, daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., so eloquently and succinctly conveyed to our employees during a company webcast, progress “starts with me.”
At PPG, we aim to champion all employees, empowering them to show up as their authentic selves, and allowing everyone to reach their full potential. We know that diverse teams perform better – period. Providing equitable experiences for all our people results in better engagement, increased business performance and more opportunities for all. We will continue to elevate and celebrate underrepresented communities while combating intolerance in all forms, both inside and outside of our workplaces. We do so with a spirit of humility, authenticity and vulnerability. We may not always get it right, but we aim to do better today than yesterday – every day.
Serving as both a roadmap and means to measure our performance, our DE&I commitments and strategy are inclusive across our colleagues, customers and suppliers, and communities.
We believe that what gets measured gets done. We approach DE&I as we do any other business opportunity – with aspirational goals, a strategy, a scorecard and accountability.
We hold biannual DE&I scorecard discussions with each of our strategic business units and functions to identify trends and develop solutions to address any gaps. Our business leaders are held accountable to initiating real, demonstrated progress, and their results are a consideration in their year-end performance evaluations.
Achieve 34% to 36% representation of non-frontline global female professionals by 2025. Achieved 29.6% as of 2021.
Increase the headcount of Black, Latinx and Asian employees by 45% to 55% across our non-frontline, U.S.-based employee population (using January 1, 2021, as our baseline). At the end of 2021, we increased our non-frontline headcount of Black employees by 12.8%, Latinx employees by 9.0% and Asian employees by 8.4%.
Achieve total global employee resource network and DE&I capability-building participation of 50% by 2025. As of December 2021, we had achieved 32.6% of this goal.
Amplify the diversity of our workforce to be representative of the global customers we serve every day.
Engage with our customers and suppliers in DE&I dialogues to learn from one another and advance our collective efforts to benefit our stakeholders.
Through our Supplier Diversity Program in the United States and Canada, actively seek out and include qualified diverse suppliers in our purchasing process for products and services that meet our requirements.
We are investing $20 million by 2025 to address systemic racism and advance racial equity in the U.S. by funding educational pathways for Black communities and people of color, with a goal of helping to address the race and gender gaps in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and career paths.
We respect the dignity and human rights of all people and hold our contractors, suppliers and other business partners to the same commitment.
We will continue to hold COLORFUL COMMUNITIES® projects in areas across our global footprint.
As legislation is introduced at the local, state, federal and international levels of government, we will work to determine if the proposed policies align with our position on DE&I.