Foremost non-alcoholic beverage giant, Nigerian Bottling Company Ltd (NBC) has won the prestigious Diversity Champion award in recognition of its sterling role in deepening gender diversity and inclusion in Nigeria. The annual award, which held during the Town and Gown event on June 13, 2020, is organized by the Association of Professional Women Engineers in Nigeria (APWEN).

In his remark, Director of Human Resources, Olumide Solanke, thanked the organisers for the recognition, adding that one of our 2025 Mission Sustainability commitments, as part of the Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company, is to increase the presence of female managers to 50% by 2025.

“Another key objective for us is to build and retain inclusive teams. In order to reach these goals, we are actively deploying recruitment, engagement and retention initiatives across our business. To support our female colleagues, we have an active internal women’s network called the Women in NBC Network (WINN) where we engage our colleagues on a regular basis with knowledge sharing webinars and events facilitated by internal and external speakers and thought leaders.

“Our Talent Development team works hand-in-hand to identify and provide coaching, mentoring and learning opportunities for all employees, also focusing on our female colleagues as we work towards the 50/50 female manager vision. Diversity and Inclusion remains a key focus for us at NBC as we know that diverse teams are six time more likely to be innovative, three times more likely to be high performing and two times more likely to meet or exceed financial targets,” he said.

Our activities this year are backed by leadership and are carefully geared towards building a gender-balanced and inclusive team between now and 2025, and beyond.

Aside a number of initiatives set up to support women within the NBC’s workforce, the company is continually exploring opportunities to strengthen engagement. Earlier in the year, the company held an exclusive career and mentoring session for women as part of activities commemorating the 2020 Women’s Day.

In April, members were exposed to actionable insights for making sense of the new normal while in May, a webinar was organized to empower women with tools and strategies for building and projecting a strong professional brand – both online and offline.