Company: The Estée Lauder Companies
Innovation Title: Value Chain Conscious Inclusion Series
Company Website: www.elcompanies.com/en
Year Introduced: 2020
Executive Summary
At The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC), we are committed to living our values. While we are proud of the overall progress and commitment we have made to inclusion, diversity, and equity (ID&E), we recognize that we all need to work together to continue to foster a culture where every person feels respected and that their uniqueness is supported and appreciated.
At the start of this calendar year, a cross-functional group of Value Chain employees gathered to consider how we could enable a deeper dialogue about ID&E. This led to the creation of the Value Chain Conscious Inclusion (VCCI) Series. VCCI is globally driven, with equal participation from all levels of the organization. Through virtual events, storytelling, and active engagement, VCCI activates hearts and minds to drive conscious inclusive leadership behaviors into daily action. The series is grounded in our company’s purpose and cultivates respect and belonging.
Series 1.0 focused on building awareness of the meaning of conscious inclusion and introducing three inclusive leadership behaviors: Curiosity, Courage, and Connection (the 3C’s). The series comprised seven events held between January and March. Each event included mixed-level panels with virtual engagement exercises to build skills for driving each behavior. We also set a standard for offering each event twice to ensure global inclusivity and developed an internal online presence for sharing event recordings, obtaining feedback, and supporting continuous engagement.
Series 2.0, currently in progress, takes a deeper look at our global diversity and how we all work together to drive inclusion within our teams and in our communities. Events in this series have focused on personal stories of bravery, humility, and allyship from contributors that work at our manufacturing and distribution sites. We also had events on inclusive beauty with a focus on how Value Chain teams use the 3C’s to understand and address the beauty needs of our global consumers. In addition, we increased executive leadership messaging by initiating a video series in which leaders shared their personal inclusion stories and commitment to drive change.
Series 3.0 will focus on leadership-development training and toolkits to further embed the 3C’s into our culture.
To date, more than 60 executives and individual contributors have played an active role in both series, with more than 300 participates attending each event.
