Vandemoortele is a truly people-driven company. We are dedicated to ensuring healthy, safe and inclusive workplaces. We encourage the development and personal growth of our associates and appreciate the value of a diverse work force.
All our associates are given equal opportunities to flourish in their jobs and to achieve their goals. We also collaborate constructively with our suppliers and reach out towards the local communities around our plants and offices, to create a positive social impact.
Engaging professional journey
Vandemoortele aims to be a great place to work, offering its associates opportunities for their development and empowerment. When people feel valued and involved, they tend to be healthier and more motivated. An engaging work environment also instils a greater trust between associates and leadership. This positive culture has a ripple effect on our profitability, team morale and associate retention.
Our framework for an engaging professional journey is based on sustainable employability, training and development, a unique Leadership Model and numerous efforts to improve our associates’ health and mental wellbeing. We encourage our associates to maintain and develop their knowledge and skills. The Vandemoortele Adacemy is where we provide training programmes, coaching, advice and other learning opportunities. With the well-known Associate Engagement Survey (AES), we monitor and score the engagement and happiness of our associates on various levels.
Diverse and inclusive workplace
Vandemoortele employs over 4,000 people from different backgrounds, plus hundreds of temporary workers. We hire people regardless of age, gender, disability, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion, political opinion or beliefs. For all our associates, we foster equal opportunities and healthy ambitions. We take measures to close the gender pay gap where identified and make efforts to ensure women have the same career opportunities.
A diverse and inclusive environment establishes a sense of belonging among people. By adopting diversity and inclusion practices, we enhance the wellbeing of our associates and at the same time improve our business results, innovation and decision-making.
Safe work environment
Being able to return home safely every day is a basic right for every associate, contractor and visitor. Our safety programme ‘I CARe, U2?’ is based on three pillars: basic safety rules, safety tools and soft skills training. We organise safety days and training sessions on specific safety topics and expected safe behaviour. The prime focus is to encourage all our associates to think about safety before they act.
Our safety tools, like observation rounds and root cause analyses, allow us to avoid risks and manage safety in the workplace. Every year we measure our safety results by checking how many accidents occurred and how serious they were. In 2020, we reached a 1,000 day milestone without incurring any severe accidents.
Fostering wellbeing
We recognise that well-being is a highly personal matter: what brings happiness to one person may not to another. Therefore, we have represented different facets of wellbeing as a lime wedge divided into seven segments: our seven pillars of well-being. The segments represent how each pillar can add flavour to your life. The seven pillars are as follows: culture and values, mental health, the ABC of work happiness, social contact, development, psychical health and the right leaders.
We launched our ‘Add Flavour’ wellbeing concept in 2021. We stimulate our associates to reflect on what makes them happy and to add their preferred elements of well-being to their (work) lives. In this way, they are able to take their personal work happiness into their own hands, with our help and support.
Positive social impact
Vandemoortele is committed to responsible behaviour. We respect our associates and conduct our business lawfully and with integrity. By working together with farmers, suppliers and local communities, we aim to tackle environmental and social problems that exist in the upstream supply chain.
To measure our common progress, we ask our suppliers to adhere to our Supplier Code of Conduct. Per commodity, we take it one step further and adhere to separate sourcing charters for palm oil, soy, cardboard, plastics … Some charters centre on social-cultural aspects, others on environmental issues or both. We also participate in ‘projects on the ground’: local projects that create a positive social impact for local farmers and communities.