Reynolds was recently named as one of America’s Greatest Workplaces for Diversity 2024 by Newsweek. Along with the award, Newsweek did a Q&A with our Senior Vice President, Human Resources and Inclusion, Borgia Walker. Read the original article here.
1. Can you provide an overview of your company’s workplace culture and values, and how they contribute to a positive work environment?
We are committed to creating A Better Tomorrow™, transforming our business, and Building a Smokeless World. We recognize that it is our people who will deliver our strategy. Our values are the thread that must run through everything we do and how we do it – with a clear connection to our strategy and purpose. These six ‘values’ are embedded across the entire global BAT Group as we strive to empower our people and foster an exciting, rewarding workplace, emphasizing inclusivity and collaboration to deliver sustainable growth.
Our Six Values:
- Truly inclusive
- Do the right thing
- Love our consumer
- Passion to win
- Empowered through trust
- Stronger together
2. What kind of professional development and growth opportunities are available to employees? How does your company support career advancement?
Delivering development opportunities for our employees and contributing to the strengthening of our talent pipelines has always been an integral part of our D&I strategy. We offer learning and development resources, and training opportunities for our people to reach their goals, including:
- Tuition reimbursement and student loan support
- Mentorship
- Structured training programs, including Women in Leadership, which aims to support the development of women at middle to senior level as it is a key ambition to grow the proportion of women in management. In 2022, we expanded the scope of this program and launched new Women in Leadership programs for junior management-level women managers. In addition, our Mastering Inclusion training, open to all employees, aims to raise awareness and build skill sets around key D&I concepts.
- Global opportunities – As Reynolds is a major region within the global BAT Group, many of our employees can develop their career ambitions further by taking on international assignments.
- Inclusive Leadership training centered around our inclusion strategy. This training focuses on how we can be more inclusive in the workplace and how leaders can model and foster this behavior within their own teams.
3. How does your company ensure transparency and open communication between management and employees, fostering a sense of trust and belonging?
We are committed to transparency and believe it is important to our DEI efforts. Our organization regularly reviews, and reports to employees, data related to hiring, internal promotions, and turnover.
We are also committed to transparency with salary grades across the organization. Furthermore, our global parent company, BAT, was included in 2023 Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index (GEI) which underscores the BAT Group’s commitment to pay equity.
The GEI helps bring transparency to gender-related practices and policies. This recognition is a demonstration of the global BAT Group’s continued commitment and focus on providing an inclusive work environment and desire to build on the strengths gained through gender diversity, equality and transparency. Our efforts to create an inclusive culture for women by way of our recruiting initiatives, adoption of family-friendly policies, sponsoring programs dedicated to educating employees and support of community programs were identified as strengths.
4. How does your company handle feedback and suggestions from employees? Is there a system in place for employees to voice their concerns or ideas?
Every 24 months we conduct an all-employee survey to gather employee feedback across dimensions and this data is analyzed thoroughly, including by diversity index. The survey is designed to ensure an understanding of progress or gaps related to diversity and inclusion across the organization. This includes a review of the employee feedback through demographic lenses, including gender and ethnicity. The most recent 2023 survey had a response rate of 88% across management levels (2,981 employees).
Our Leadership Teams use this data to create robust strategies and action plans, both across the enterprise and within functions. These plans are focused on ensuring diversity and inclusion outreach, employee development and specific areas of focus.
In addition to the biennial survey, we conduct periodic “pulse” surveys to assess employee’s level of engagement and sense of belonging within the organization.
5. How do you approach fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion within the organization?
At Reynolds, we are proud to be a diverse organization that encourages our people to value their differences. We embrace diversity in the widest sense as those attributes that make us unique. As an organization, we are committed to celebrating all that makes us unique including race, ethnicity, cultural and social background, geographical origin, nationality, gender, age, any disability, sexual orientation, religion, skills, experience, education, socio-economic and professional background, perspectives, and thinking styles.
Our benefits are designed to support our employees’ professional and personal lives. That, coupled with our dynamic people, has earned us recognition for being a unique and outstanding place to work.
In 2020, our global parent company, BAT, launched the 2025 global Group D&I ambitions, and over the past three years, we have achieved some impressive results that reflect great progress. Reynolds has also announced its own even bolder D&I ambitions. Our success is driven by our D&I strategy which is underpinned by three strategic pillars: driving ownership and accountability; building diverse talent pipelines; and creating enablers that support our commitment to creating a diverse and inclusive culture.
6. What strategies have you implemented to ensure an inclusive workplace culture?
Progressive programs and policies have helped cultivate an inclusive culture that supports each employee, including, for example, our support for parents. Our comprehensive parental leave policy offers 16 weeks of fully paid leave for employees who are new mothers and fathers, including adoption, and the ability to take up to eight months of flexible work arrangements.
Our facilities foster inclusion as well. At our corporate headquarters building, Bowman Gray Technical Center, Reynolds Operations Center, and two additional manufacturing centers, we have gender-neutral restrooms available for employee use. Expecting mother parking spaces and lactation rooms are available for employee convenience too.
To support the causes important to our employees, Reynolds offers two paid days off annually for regular full-time employees to volunteer in their communities and the Reynolds American Foundation offers up to $7,000 per year for employee matching donations.
We also have a strong peer recognition program for employees to recognize colleagues who go above and beyond.
7. Can you share examples of successful diversity and inclusion programs or initiatives that have positively impacted the company culture?
Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are one of the ways we foster inclusivity for our teams. Currently, over 1,500 Reynolds employees are members of one of our executive-sponsored ERGs, including:
- B United – LGBTQ+
- Women
- HOLA – Hispanic Origin & Latin American
- Veterans
- B.E. Y.O.U. – Black Employee Network Yielding Outreach and Unity
- Asian American
- ADAPT – Mental Health and Disability
- LINK – Networking
Our ERGs play a critical role in building the culture at Reynolds as we strengthen diversity, equity, and inclusion.
8. How does the company measure progress in terms of diversity and inclusion, and what metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) are used to assess the effectiveness of DEI initiatives?
Our diversity and inclusion (D&I) strategy is well-established across the entire global BAT Group. Globally, and at Reynolds here in the U.S., we have set bold ambitions for 2025 to accelerate the pace of our progress.
Our talent acquisition team is committed to outreach activities that allow the organization the opportunity to engage with diverse slates of candidates. Within the U.S., Reynolds has the following ambitions for 2025:
Achieve gender parity in management roles
- 25% minority representation in management roles
- 40% female representation in senior leadership
- 20% minority representation in senior leadership
9. How do you address unconscious bias in hiring and promotion processes?
We provide inclusive leadership training to line leaders and managers and conduct unconscious bias training.
In 2023, we implemented guidelines for hiring managers, which explain our outreach process and how to combat bias in the interview and selection process. In addition, in 2023, we launched inclusion training , which will expand further in 2024. This training covers unconscious bias to reinforce our belief in fair hiring practices.
We also measure internal promotion rates monthly and analyze them by gender and ethnicity. We have a robust talent review and succession program that is reviewed in depth regularly. We also do a workforce planning metrics review of succession planning across gender and ethnicity for senior leaders over the next 2 years.
10. How do you incorporate feedback from employees to continuously improve DEI efforts?
Every 24 months we conduct an all-employee survey to gather employee feedback across dimensions and this data is analyzed thoroughly, including by diversity index. The survey is designed to ensure an understanding of progress or gaps related to diversity and inclusion across the organization. This includes a review of the employee feedback through demographic lenses, including gender and ethnicity. The most recent 2023 survey had a response rate of 88% across management levels (2,981 employees).
Our Leadership Teams use this data to create robust strategies and action plans, both across the enterprise and within functions. These plans are focused on ensuring diversity and inclusion outreach, employee development and specific areas of focus.
In addition to the biennial survey, we conduct periodic “pulse” surveys to assess employee’s level of engagement and sense of belonging within the company.
Furthermore, our CEO conducted employee listening sessions across all levels of the organization over the past year to hear feedback on opportunities for improvement.
11. How do you address the challenges of retaining diverse talent and preventing turnover?
Our focus on talent development and succession planning is a priority for the organization. To facilitate this, we complete stay interviews, as well as exit interviews, and review turnover rates and analyze them by gender and ethnicity.
12. Can you share insights on how DEI contributes to innovation and creativity within the workplace?
We succeed when our people do. Our people are among our greatest assets, and their unique experiences, knowledge, and ideas inspire innovation and allow us to make amazing things happen. As we transform our business, challenging the status quo drives innovation. Maintaining and building on our diverse workforce is an essential element of our journey. We’re adding talent who are contributing ideas and capabilities to the industry expertise we already have. We’re making space for the diversity of thought that gives us the edge to reinvent our business, reshape the adult consumer experience, and deliver on our sustainability agenda.
NOTE: Reynolds American Inc. (RAI) is a wholly owned U.S. subsidiary of the global BAT Group and the U.S. parent company of, among others, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company; Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company, Inc.; American Snuff Company, LLC; R. J. Reynolds Vapor Company; Modoral Brands Inc.; RAI Services Company; and Reynolds Marketing Services Company. References to “Reynolds,” “we,” “us,” “our”, and “organization” are for convenience and collectively refer to RAI and/or RAI’s independent operating subsidiary companies.
