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21
Engage and develop our people
Building a bright future
Heineken N.V.
Annual Report 2020
Introduction
Report of the
Executive Board
Report of the
Supervisory Board
Financial
Statements
Sustainability
Review
Other
Information
Focusing on mental and emotional health
With health and wellbeing a priority, we focused
on supporting peoples' mental health and emotional
resilience. Our employees around the world faced
diverse personal challenges, work situations
and lockdown scenarios, with the uncertainty
of the developing pandemic being a source of
additional stress.
We made confidential mental health coaching
freely available to all employees globally via a
COVID-19 Hotline.
We also shared resources with operating companies
and global teams to raise awareness of the
importance of mental health. They included blogs,
online resource lists, webinars and instructions for
digital talks by local, regional and global leaders.
Finally, we created online development programmes
focused on building resilience, staying connected
and raising morale to protect and support front
line workers.
Leveraging digital learning
With new technologies changing how we live, work
and shop at an ever increasing pace, the COVID-19
crisis has accelerated our digital transformation.
Many of our employees had to adapt to working
remotely overnight. To support their continued
development, we created and launched an online
learning platform, MyLearning. Developed with
a leading digital learning agency, it enables every
employee to access on-demand training via their
PC or mobile whenever and wherever is convenient.
In addition to a global database of content provided
by external digital learning experts, we launched
'DIGIFIT', our own digital upskilling initiative.
Over 20,000 employees have started their on-line
learning journeys and over 10,000 hours have been
completed on LinkedIn Learning courses alone.
Listening to our employees
Listening to our employees was crucial to keep
them engaged and motivated. To understand their
changing needs, we introduced COVID-19 'pulse
check surveys' in over 60 markets. The results found
people considered health and wellbeing as being
crucial to their performance.
This insight was immediately actioned by all
leadership teams with an increased focus on mental
health and wellbeing alongside more flexible
working arrangements.
Our annual Climate survey went ahead in October
to understand how people experience working for
us. More than 76,000 employees from 81 operating
companies shared feedback - a 92% response rate,
up from 91% in 2019.
Both the Global Employee Engagement and
Performance Enablement scores increased or stayed
the same across all global operating companies
compared to 2019, at levels significantly higher than
the global norm.
Points of improvement included a desire for a better
work/life balance and we launched a number of
wellbeing initiatives for employees in response.
We also realised the need for more effective
collaboration between departments and teams.
This will be one of the key initiatives between
management and their teams going forward.
Keeping people working on TAP
We experimented with the HEINEKEN Temporary
Assignment Platform (TAP) at Head Office as a
way to redistribute employee resources during the
initial phase of the pandemic. It allowed employees
experiencing a reduced workload to take on
temporary assignments to support other teams.
As well as supporting the business, employees gained
experience in a different role or function, preparing
them for future career growth and development.
In its first four weeks, the platform reallocated
4612 hours of work involving around 10% of the
Head Office population.
While navigating the crisis, we have maintained
our focus on developing the building blocks
we need to create a bright future, beyond
the pandemic.
'Inclusive vitamins' for all employees
Inclusion and Diversity is one of our core building
blocks. We focused on upskilling our leaders and
employees to develop inclusive leadership practices.
1,000 leaders have now attended the Inclusive
Leadership training programme.
We also wanted to increase awareness on inclusive
behaviours among all employees. To achieve it,
we developed and launched global online Inclusive
Practices training, easily accessible via our new
learning platform.
We have seen a strong focus on inclusion,
gender balance, racial inclusion and LGBT+ across
our global functions and operating companies
throughout the year.
For more information, see page 149
A seamless digital employee experience
We are now in the final phase of the global
EMPOWER programme, which started in 2018
to bring one HR system (MyHR) to all of our
employees worldwide.
MyHR provides the foundation for a seamless
employee experience. It provides reliable global
people data to the business and greater end-to-end
productivity within HR. With European operating
companies due to go live in summer 2021, we will
reap the full benefits of the programme in the
coming year.
Engaging and attracting talent
Even during unprecedented challenging times,
being seen as a desirable employer matter.
Talent with digital expertise remains hard to
attract as demand for these skills increases.
We continue to drive engagement with our employer
brand via social media. Engagement has increased
across many regional and local channels.
Social media has proven the most effective
channel for direct conversations and access
to potential talent. Operating companies have
amplified local activity to keep talent engaged
and our global company LinkedIn page achieved
1 million followers, a 32% increase on 2019.
