Philip Morris International (PMI), is a leading international tobacco company, with a diverse workforce of more than 77,000 employees around the world. Hong Kong is the company’s regional hub for APAC housing 373 employees from more than 27 countries.
INCLUSION AND DIVERSITY (I&D)
Inclusion and Diversity are an essential element in our transformation journey. We believe an inclusive workplace allows us to attract and retain a diverse community of employees, who are at the heart of our growth and innovation and fundamental to the success of our business. At PMI, we are committed to offering a supportive work environment allowing our employees to share their ideas and perspectives freely and openly. Our cultural differences allow us to thrive, benefiting from a diversity of skills, mindsets and perspectives.
Gender Balance
Gender Balance is one of our top priorities in our Global I&D strategy. To achieve it, we’ve adopted new hiring tactics and philosophies to ensure a more balanced gender representation in our workforce, and treating everyone fairly and equally. We always use gender neutral language in our job advertisements to attract talents. We also use diverse interview panels to reduce the risk of unconscious bias in talent assessment. Currently, 60% of our workforce in Hong Kong is female. Across the business, 56% of managerial positions are currently held by women.
Equal Pay for Equal Work
PMI is the first international company to be certified globally for Equal Pay by the independent third-party EQUAL-SALARY Foundation in 2019. We first obtained this verification in Switzerland in 2015, and it has since been achieved in other PMI affiliates including Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Taiwan, China, and in Hong Kong. We are dedicated to offer individuals with equal opportunities to learn, grow and proposer in their career and provide fair and equal remuneration and work between men and women, supported by sustainable policies and practices.
The certification process consists of two parts: the quantitative gender comparison on various HR metrics (e.g. salary, headcount by grade, training hours, recruitment) and the on-site qualitative audit with management and randomly selected employees. During different sessions of focus group interviews, employees openly discuss and share their perceptions of “equal pay” related HR policies and practices to identify potential gender blind spots and recommend actions to mitigate them.
Excellent Employee Journey
To uphold the concept of employee centricity, we are dedicated to map out the employee experience. For example, we revamped our Hong Kong Employee Onboarding Program by adding more interaction and engagement in their experiential journey. We share a welcome video from colleagues and the management team with our new hires so they have a better idea of our company culture and to prepare them for the journey ahead. The Onboarding Journey is a 24-month journey! Throughout the journey, we have identified 14 potential emotional responses and opportunities for intervention and set up a “Human Eco-System” – the manager, buddy and the People & Culture team- to support and collaborate with each other at key moments. We also leverage a personalized online New Hire Portal to trigger follow up actions and ensure new hires’ psychological contracts are being met throughout the journey.
Employee Health and Well-Being
We’ve also embedded the D&I element in Health and Well-being programs to improve our working environment, foster employees’ physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being and enable our employees to have a good and healthy work/life balance. For example, we launched meditation, massage, stretching and yoga classes to help employees manage stress and improve physical fitness. To promote healthy eating and increase awareness of a healthy lifestyle, we’ve invited external professional consultants to hold health talks and share tips on a weekly basis. With positive feedback from our employees, we continue to offer a wide range of well-being activities like Fruit Day, Soup Day, Coconut Water Time, Ice Cream Day, and so on.
In terms of family-friendly policies, on top of our existing FLEXability program and upgraded leave policies with improved or new categories of leaves, we’ve also extended our Flexible Medical Plan to dependents, unmarried partners and Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and Others (LGBTQ+) to make our benefits more inclusive.
We aim to create a safe, inclusive and collaborative workplace. We recently renovated our Hong Kong office, expanding our private Mother’s Room, Prayer Room and creating more open co-working spaces for our colleagues to maximize flexibility and drive collaboration. We also provide office safety training to employees to increase awareness of occupational safety.
External Partnership
PMI is devoted to contributing to the society by partnering with external associations. We partnered with the Women’s Foundation and American Women’s Association of Hong Kong. We participate in their philanthropic activities to help enhance the lives of women. We continue to champion gender equality by sharing our thoughts on work-life balance and family friendly practices via media and industry forums. During this years’ International Women’s Day, we shared 42 inspiring stories from our female role models at PMI. In Hong Kong, Stacey Kennedy, our President of South and Southeast Asia was nominated as one of the inspiring women in celebration of the International Women’s Day.
When explaining the company’s success in achieving equality in salary for both genders, Stacey Kennedy said, “Equal pay for equal work among men and women is the baseline measure of equality and an essential building block for creating a more inclusive, gender-balanced workplace. Unfortunately, pay equity is not something we can take for granted and is still not the reality for many women in the world today. More than just stating our commitment, at PMI we wanted a credible, independent confirmation that our pay practices match our good intentions everywhere we operate worldwide. Our goal to obtain the Global EQUAL-SALARY Certification –which will be a first for any international company- demonstrates PMI’s commitment to equality. Intent is important but you need to put your money where your mouth is to get results.”
