Leaderonomics

Women at the helm

Winner in the Lean Organisation category at the recently held 12th Women’s Summit, PepsiCo was the first multinational company to welcome a woman, actress Joan Crawford to sit on its board of directors, back in 1959.

Today, this successful establishment is run by Indra Nooyi, a dynamic woman who holds the position of chairman and CEO.

Women made up 31% of the board of directors in PepsiCo. In fact, the current general manager of PepsiCo Malaysia is Jocelyn Ng, the first woman and local general manager for the company in Malaysia.

This clearly depicts PepsiCo’s commitment towards creating opportunities for women to take the lead on a global level and to develop women in corporate leadership.

Here, the amalgamation of culture, emotional and business intelligence is seen as an essential factor that results in successful achievements for leaders. PepsiCo believes that the advancement of women in its organisation is driven by both the men and women leaders.

Retaining women talent

To retain its top talent and to encourage its women employees in reaching the top, PepsiCo has invested in various programmes to develop and nurture leadership qualities as well as for career advancement purposes in their women talent.

Here are some of the programmes:

Powerful Woman, Diamond Edge and OPAL (On the Path to Authentic Leadership) Programmes help women associates to recognise and maximise their potential to develop leadership qualities.
The Asian Leadership Programme focuses on providing support to Asian talent in adapting towards becoming authentic leaders in a western MNC (multinational company).
Asia-Pacific Inclusive Mentoring Programme helps match a pool of diverse, high-potential talent with the 14 members of the Asia-Pacific executive committee.
Various events and career forums are hosted in local offices to celebrate International Women’s Day and World Day for Cultural Diversity.

PepsiCo is fully aware of the challenges faced by women in terms of flexibility and mobility when it comes to accepting international career experiences.

To this end, the organisation provides flexible working hours and work from home arrangements through initiatives such as FlexTime, FlexPlace, part-time work arrangements, summer hours and birthday leave.

Another initiative, One Simple Thing is a commitment between the manager and employee to improve employee’s work-life balance. One Simple Thing encourages employees to request simple arrangements that would make work-life easier, which is in turn linked to the manager’s performance ratings.

“Flexible work programmes not only benefit women in the workplace. Men at PepsiCo also benefit from these programmes by utilising our FlexTime and FlexPlace initiatives, such as adjusting working hours to align with childcare responsibilities.” – Jocelyn Ng

PepsiCo Malaysia general manager Jocelyn Ng

Performance with Purpose (PWP) is PepsiCo’s promise to deliver top tier financial performance by running a responsible, sustainable and inclusive business.

PWP is driven by three pillars: human sustainability, environment sustainability and talent sustainability. Talent sustainability means providing a safe and inclusive workplace globally and respecting, supporting and investing in the local communities where we operate.

A key component of this is our formal and informal flexible working arrangements. “We’re trying for flexibility to be ‘embedded’ into our culture, and an essential component of this is to set the tone from the top and ensure that the senior leadership team are aligned.”

Flexible work programmes not only benefit women in the workplace. Men at PepsiCo also benefit from these programmes by utilising our FlexTime and FlexPlace initiatives, such as adjusting working hours to align with childcare responsibilities.

PepsiCo Malaysia insights manager Alison Chang

Following the birth of her daughter, Ava, Chang utilised a number of different options from our flexible working toolkit. She extended her three-month maternity leave to five months and when she returned to work she entered into an agreement with her manager that she would work from home once a week to take care of her baby.

She also uses the lactation room that is available in the office building. “I am grateful for the flexibility that PepsiCo has provided me following the birth of my first child. Under PepsiCo’s flexible working arrangements, I have been able to balance my work and family responsibilities and I know that this hasn’t negatively impacted my career with the company,” says Chang.