Break the Bias. This is the theme for International Women's Day, a global day to celebrate the achievements of women and call for gender parity. What does it mean to break the bias? For Ecolab, it means turning a challenge into an opportunity to make the company one of the best places for women to work, grow and thrive.

In December 2021, Ecolab President and CEO Christophe Beck became a Catalyst CEO Champion For Change signatory, continuing the commitment former Ecolab CEO Doug Baker last signed in 2020. Together with over 70 other global companies and Catalyst, a leading global nonprofit helping to build workplaces that work for women, Ecolab made strong organizational commitments — and Beck made a personal commitment — to support diversity, inclusion and gender equity at work.

"Building an inclusive environment with strong allyship for women in our workplace is not a nice to do for us – it is a business imperative," said Beck. "Women play a critical role in how we cultivate a truly diverse and inclusive culture, and we cannot succeed without their voices, perspectives and leadership."

Early last year, Beck and leaders from across Ecolab hosted a live event focused on the experiences of women in the workplace, sharing their personal career stories and discussing actionable steps towards creating a more equitable workplace.

During this event, Beck shared his vision for the organisation in terms of achieving its 2030 Impact Goals. That includes increasing gender diversity at all levels of the organisation. For the first time in Ecolab's history, the company set targets for every team in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion. These targets were derived by understanding their current status as an organisation, identifying what is working and not working and pinpointing the gaps that prevent the organisation from reaching their goal.

Since implementing this new business strategy, Ecolab has seen more progress in one year than the previous three years toward reaching its goals. This includes the company's goal of increasing women in management roles to 35%, and it aims to continue this progress by utilizing Catalyst as an accountability partner.

"We applaud Christophe Beck, along with the other Catalyst Champion CEOs and their organizations for their continued commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives through the challenges of the pandemic," said Catalyst President and CEO Lorraine Hariton. "It's critical that we continue to develop the leadership pipeline for women, particularly women of colour, if we're going to see significant gains to build equitable and inclusive workplaces for women."