TRAILBLAZER Pacsetter Late Bloomer

Colgate Palmolive, the trusted manufacturer of global household and personal products, has been ranked as a TRAILBLAZER on the Women’s Power and Influence Index.

Colgate Palmolive has achieved pay equity and pay parity while conducting an annual pay analysis within the U.S. for gender and race. Professional development initiatives such as Colgate Women’s Network, Velvet Suite SHE Summit, and Brand Leadership program work to focus attention on improving diverse women’s readiness in the workplace.

As of 2021, there are 42% of women in the workforce at Colgate Palmolive and about 40% of women are in leadership positions.

Public information on subsidized childcare and women-specific healthcare benefits could not be found in Colgate Palmolive’s sources.

Review the comprehensive WPI criteria and methodology.

✓ Does the company demonstrate a clear and transparent commitment to equal pay? 

“Colgate has long been committed to pay equity and its role in fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We pay all Colgate people at a level commensurate with their role, work location, individual performance and experience, irrespective of gender, race, ethnicity or any other category protected by law.”

Ref: Pg. 28, Colgate-Palmolive 2022 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report

✓ Does the company perform an annual analysis of gender pay equity and pay disparities? 

“Consistent with these values, Colgate conducts an annual U.S.-based pay analysis for gender and race.”

Ref: Pg. 28, Colgate-Palmolive 2022 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report

✓ Do female employees earn at least 95% of what their male counterparts earn?

“Our results confirm that in the United States, Colgate has achieved statistical pay equity for gender and race. Globally, there is a less than 1% unexplained difference in pay between women and men, and we are committed to continuing our work to close that gap.”

Ref: Pg. 28, Colgate-Palmolive 2022 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report

✓ Does the company demonstrate a commitment to actively attracting, retaining, and/or promoting women within the organization? 

“While we’ve maintained representation for women and other major ethnic groups at this organizational level, we have been hiring above labor force representation levels for females.”

Ref: Pg. 11, Colgate-Palmolive 2022 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report

✓ Does the company provide professional development programs designed specifically for female employees? 

“Colgate Women’s Network offered a global workshop on how to master the language of leadership to help people more effectively deliver feedback for impact, advocacy and growth.”

Ref: Pg. 25, Colgate-Palmolive 2022 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report

✓ Does the company provide professional development programs designed specifically for diverse employees?

“The Velvet Suite SHE Summit and Brand Leadership program addresses hidden barriers to leadership positions faced by high-potential/high-performing working women with added attention to women of color. Emphasizing personal-brand leadership models the Velvet Suite creates leadership readiness through an understanding of each individual’s own potential and value.”

Ref: Pg. 27, Colgate-Palmolive 2022 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report

✓ Does the company offer a formal mentoring program to support the career advancement of all female employees? 

“We support the advancement of women’s leadership and are proud of our long-term sponsorship of several Women Unlimited Programs, including: Forums for Executive Women (FEW), Leadership Education and Development (LEAD) and IMPower. These programs provide women executives, managers and emerging leaders with mentoring to maximize their talents and skills, increase employee motivation and increase self-awareness and personal impacts.”

Ref: Pg. 27, Colgate-Palmolive 2022 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report

✓ Does the company offer a formal mentoring program to support the career advancement of diverse employees?  

“This program is dedicated to creating opportunities for career advancement for Black and African Americans…ACCEL creates a crucial internal community through networking and mentoring opportunities, and participants engage with Colgate’s senior management to better understand the needs and responsibilities of executive leadership.”

Ref: Pg. 27, Colgate-Palmolive 2022 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report

✓ Does the company have policies and programs in place to actively recruit female candidates?

“Of particular note are our efforts to educate and drive accountability for creating this inclusive culture. As one example, 80% of our open positions start with at least a 50% diverse slate. Last year, in order to hold ourselves accountable for creating a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion, we asked all people managers to set a DE&I objective.”

Ref: Pg. 7, Colgate-Palmolive 2022 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report

“In 2022, women represented more than half (53%) of our global workforce across business functions. We have focused on increasing female representation at the executive level (Vice Presidents and above), where we have steadily increased female positions from 27% in 2018 to 36% in 2022. We are proud of the results of our efforts thus far, and will continue this focus as we aim to reach labor force representation.”

Ref: Pg. 30, Colgate-Palmolive 2022 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report

✓ Does the company have policies and programs in place to actively recruit diverse candidates? 

“To achieve this, we ensure diverse hiring slates and panels. Our goal is to find the best talent, and expanding our recruiting efforts enables us to find a greater range of talents, backgrounds and experiences.”

Ref: Pg. 21, Colgate-Palmolive 2022 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report

✓ Does the company demonstrate a commitment to providing support and/or time off for women with children?

“Achieving our purpose starts with our people— ensuring our workforce represents the people and communities we serve—and creating an environment where our people feel they belong; where we can be our authentic selves, feel treated with respect and have the support of leadership to impact the business in a meaningful way. If we do these things well, when we maintain diverse, open and honest input from each other, our partners and customers, we succeed.”

Ref: Get To Know Colgate-Palmolive

✓ Does the company provide child care support for employees?  

“Parental leave: 8 weeks paid; 12 weeks unpaid”

Ref: Get To Know Colgate-Palmolive

✘ Does the company offer subsidized child care?

Information regarding this criterion was unavailable or incomplete.

✓Does the company offer paid maternity leave for birthing parents?

“Parental leave: 8 weeks paid; 12 weeks unpaid”

Ref: Get To Know Colgate-Palmolive

✘ Does the company provide paid parental leave that extends beyond birthing parents to include surrogacy, adoption, and paternity leave?

Information regarding this criterion was unavailable or incomplete.

✘ Does the company demonstrate a commitment to supporting the health benefits of its female employees?

Information regarding this criterion was unavailable or incomplete.

✘ Does the company offer women-specific health benefits for female employees?

Information regarding this criterion was unavailable or incomplete.

✓ Does the company have a policy listing prohibited behaviors, such as harassment and retaliation?

Harassment Policy: “We prohibit sexual or any other kind of harassment of Colgate people by any person in the workplace or while conducting company business.”

Ref: Pg. 3, Colgate-Palmolive Supply Chain Transparency

Retaliation Policy: “Consequently, at Colgate-Palmolive, no adverse action will be taken against any employee, former employee, agent or third party for complaining about, reporting, participating or assisting in the investigation of a suspected violation of the Company’s Code of Conduct, Company policy, or applicable law, unless the allegation made or information provided is found to be intentionally false or not made or provided in good faith.”

Ref: Pg. 5, Colgate-Palmolive Supply Chain Transparency

✓ Does the company mandate all employees to undergo harassment and discrimination training?

“We regularly conduct bias and allyship training, and are proud to announce that in 2021, 100% of our salaried and clerical employees received this training. This learning helps to provide a common understanding and language as a foundation for our efforts to understand and overcome biases and to create a more inclusive culture.”

Ref: Pg. 18, Colgate-Palmolive 2022 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report

✓ Does the company have a defined harassment policy that includes promptly addressing reported incidents?

“Allegations reported to Ethics and Compliance are grouped into the following categories: Accounting-related, Conflict of Interest, Discrimination, Financial-related, Harassment, Regulatory and Legal, Retaliation, Work Environment, Miscellaneous Issues and non-E&C matters. After a thorough investigation has been completed, if the allegations are substantiated, appropriate remedial action is taken.”

Ref: Pg. 5, Colgate-Palmolive Supply Chain Transparency

✓ Does the company demonstrate a commitment to helping external stakeholders address gender equality issues?

“As part of our We S.T.A.N.D. Together strategy to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in North America, one of our goals is to inspire courageous and inclusive leadership. To accomplish this, in 2021 we started an Inclusive Leadership Series in partnership with CATALYST, a global nonprofit dedicated to accelerating women into leadership. In the first session called “Inclusive Leadership-PRIMER,” we focused on exploring how our differences impact our ability to contribute to our workforce and to learning tangible, inclusive communication strategies to communicate and connect across people’s differences.”

Ref: Pg. 26, Colgate-Palmolive 2022 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report

✓ Does the company offer and support initiatives that promote gender equality in the community?

✓ Does the company demonstrate a commitment to helping internal stakeholders/employees address gender equality issues?

“Colgate is committed to making progress against the aspirations that we set for ourselves with respect to inclusion and diversity representation. We diligently manage, measure and report key performance metrics on our way to reaching the following goals: labor force representation among women across the world at all organizational levels; labor force representation of Black/African American, Latin and Asian ethnic groups in the U.S. at all organizational levels…Through these efforts, we contribute towards the goals of SDG (5.5), supporting participation in equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision making within the organization.”

Ref: Pg. 11, Colgate-Palmolive 2022 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report

✓ Does the company offer equity-focused trainings, speaker programs, or events for employees?

“These efforts go hand in hand with our employee resource groups (ERGs) that host panels and events which feature guest speakers who discuss challenges facing diverse communities, what it means to be inclusive and how to be an ally.”

Ref: Pg. 18, Colgate-Palmolive 2022 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report

*Our Index utilizes binary measurements, where ✓ represents a score of 1, and ✘ represents a score of 0.

*All links are valid as of April 2024