On the back of International Women’s Day in early March, Cebile Xulu, HR director at Mondelēz International, shares how one of the world’s largest snack companies has transformed their workforce to ensure equitable gender representation, particularly at senior management levels.
“A couple of years ago, the company made its intentions quite clear on what gender equality means for the sustainability of our business and for us to really serve the consumers,” says Cebile, who has been at the forefront of transforming the leadership culture within her organisation.
“We are a snacking giant, and the people that are making a lot of these decisions in terms of who buys what we bring to the consumer are women. Thus, we have been working towards 50-50 gender representation, particularly in management, where we needed to correct historical imbalances.”
”Recognising this gap, Cebile says the company set clear goals for its workforce, particularly at the leadership level, as it did not fully represent the demographic it was serving. According to her, Mondelēz Sub-Saharan Africa has been leading the charge in achieving this balance. We have 17 business units across the globe, including markets like Europe, the US, China, India, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. We are a one of the leading business units when it comes to women in leadership representation.”
She proudly shares that Mondelēz Sub-Saharan Africa has exceeded the 50 percent, with 54 percent representation of women at senior leadership levels.
"For quite some time, we were the only BU that consistently maintained 50 percent representation. At some stage we were at 60 percent representation at BU leadership team level.”
“We realised that it's very easy to focus on the executive for gender representation, but if you don't have enough pipeline of talent to backfill those roles when vacancies arise, then you're not really winning. So, we shifted our focus to ensuring a strong feeder pool at levels below the BU executive. It is also embedded in our strategic performance objectives, as an LT; it's not just my objective as the HR director.”
According to Cebile, this commitment has positively transformed recruitment discussions.
“Previously, we would struggle to convince leaders to have a look at a broad and diverse slate of candidates, now we have entrenched the culture of transformation, and we are actually getting leaders asking to see more women or people of colour during our talent acquisition process.”
Cebile shares how Mondelēz has taken a proactive approach to building this strong pipeline of female talent. “I joined the business eight years ago, and a major gap was our weak employer brand as well as understanding of the talent landscape. We didn’t know where the talent was, so we started what we call Talent Connects, which are informal connection sessions with diverse pools of talent,” she explained.
The company has specifically targeted women in general, critical talent across genders, and black female talent through various engagement initiatives. These include hosting connect sessions in the form of various events to proactively engage and build relationships with the talent.
While progress has been strong in South Africa, she says other countries on the continent still present unique societal and cultural challenges that slow the pace of gender diversity in leadership.
“We are still on the journey in West Africa, a region I also look after. Unlike in South Africa, our business in Nigeria is still below the 50 percent female leadership target. I believe this could be ascribed to the cultural nuances of that market. Our focus is ensuring we have the right feeder pools that enable us to grow talent from within, all the way to leadership level. Our experience is that we need to strengthen this pipeline at early to mid career levels because generally, the manufacturing and commercial/sales space is still largely male-dominated.”
‘“A major barrier in some of our markets is security. This makes it challenging for women to travel overnight, especially in shift-based, as well as sales roles. Other societal and cultural barriers for women to enter and stay in the corporate talent pool are still quite prevalent in some parts of our BU.”
Despite these hurdles, Cebile notes there has been some progress happening. “We’ve made good progress, from when we actually established the SSA Business Unit in 2020 .Five years ago we were still below 10 percent representation in other parts of the continent and now we are closer to 20 percent, it's not as fast as South Africa, but there's definitely progress.”
Furthermore, she spoke about the importance of creating a workplace where women feel supported and included. “We had already put in place policies - such as hybrid work policy - that some other companies only introduced as a response to the Covid pandemic. These policies are geared towards making it easy for parents to have a good work-life balance, and we know women are predominantly the primary child-care givers in many countries across Africa.”
As early as 2015 Mondelēz employees were able to start work later or finish early, to carry on working from home if they so choose or take a day off work once a week if they needed to - before it became “fashionable”. “Now, we are a full hybrid workplace that is enabled by technology, to create an environment where flexibility is a way of life. It is very rapidly becoming an expectation from talent across the gender spectrum,” she adds.
As she describes it, securing leadership commitment to gender equality was not easy, especially in a country with deep-rooted historical inequalities. “It’s not an easy change to make, particularly in South Africa where the head office for the SSA Business Unit is located and where the majority of the people that we are recruiting are South Africans that sit in the top two levels of leadership.”
“As much as no one is going to publicly state that they do not want to work with women, we have experienced resistance from some leaders in the past. Over time, you start realising that there is definitely gender bias.”
To counter this, she highlights the critical role of strong HR business partners who challenge biased hiring decisions. “If you’ve got HR business partners who just pander to what line managers want and are not able to call things for what they are and say what is the right thing to do for the business, you have an even bigger problem, in my view.”
She says these individuals need to be more than just HR professionals; they need to be “people who understand the big picture”. Ultimately, Cebile sees Mondelēz’s gender equality efforts as part of a larger societal transformation.
“This is about South Africa, this is about Africa, this is about the world. This is a bigger mission than just ticking boxes or KPIs on a scorecard.”
She also addresses the challenges of meritocracy and diversity in hiring decisions. “You still have people in corporate South Africa to be specific, who say things like, ‘I'm okay with bringing women and diverse talent, as long as we don't compromise on the quality of talent’. I have yet to hear the same statement when a man is being hired, for example. I believe that meritocracy as a concept should not only be reserved for women and people of colour. Hire everyone based on objective criteria,” she says.
“That has also challenged us to be very intentional about supporting and mentoring and coaching women when they come into the organisation. I’ve experienced this scenario many times - where a woman is brought into an environment that is toxic, that is not ready for her, with little or no support in place and she is expected to succeed on her own, and when she doesn’t succeed, there is a very loud ‘this environment is just not for them’ said in silence or at the water cooler.”
“So I think we need to be very deliberate, very intentional about ensuring that when we bring women into organisations, particularly into spaces that have been male-dominated, we support them and ensure they are set up for success. Of course, every individual also needs to take responsibility for their development.”
Cebile also notes that she has been an advocate, supporter and sponsor for women who are breaking into traditionally male-dominated leadership roles. She continues, mentioning the need for other leaders to be more supportive of their female hires.
“I think that’s something that we need to think about more as organisations, as leaders, because sometimes we bring in talent and we just drop them in, and then when they struggle, we say, it just didn’t work, but we don’t look hard enough at ourselves and the role we played.”
When asked about what she would do if given a chance to implement a policy for gender equality, Cebile has a clear answer: “There's so much that I would want to do, but I think we've been talking — and I know this is not just a South Africa problem — but we've been
talking so much about gender-representation over the years, and I'm like, where’s the action?”
“We’ve got so many policies, we’ve got so many initiatives, we’ve got so many things that we say, but where is the enforcement? Where is the accountability?”
“If I were to be responsible for the implementation of all of these policies and targets at a government policy level, I would start holding companies accountable for the targets that they set.”
Cebile also believes that policies should lead to real change. “I think it’s not enough to just say, ‘Oh, yes, we’ve got a policy’, or, ‘Oh, yes, we believe in gender equality’, but what does that mean or translate to in practice?”
“I would put in place measures that hold companies accountable if they do not meet their gender diversity targets. And I think until we start enforcing and holding people and organisations accountable, we're just going to continue talking.”
Connecting her approach to leadership and gender equality to her upbringing, Cebile mentioned that it is part of what shaped her values and drives her to create opportunities for women to reach their full potential.
“My passion for empowering women is embedded in my own values, in my own value system, in the legacy that I want to leave behind,” she reflected.
She further elaborates on this, sharing that , “The very first article I did with CHRO South Africa shared a little bit of my background and where I came from and having been exposed to, poverty - extreme poverty - particularly affecting rural women, where women were prevented from realising their full potential due to deeply rooted systemic barriers and cultural norms that continue to dictate what and who women should be.”
“I was born in a very rural area, a place I still call home. So I know the impact of preventing the majority of your population from realising their full potential and from contributing economically to Africa at large. It’s not going to augur well for our children and the legacy that we want to leave behind once we are no longer here. So that has been my influence growing up.”
Reflecting on the impact of her work, she highlights the importance of giving back. “When I come across messages on LinkedIn and WhatsApp saying, ‘I just want to thank you because I'm here now, and it's because of all of those things that you did or said for women’, that’s when you realise that every little action you take makes a difference.”
“I will continue speaking out against injustice and trying to make sure that everybody gets an opportunity to change their lives or to turn around their situations. Whatever I can contribute to make that happen, I will do it. And I think sometimes we overthink things. You don’t have to be in a position of power to effect change because leadership is about influence. You can be in any position, but if you have influence, and have the ability to bring others along; you can drive change.”
