Astha Mittal from Wella Company on creating a multinational benefits strategy
Wella is a beauty company that employs around 6,000 people across 32 countries. Our recent history has seen us move from Procter & Gamble to Coty before becoming a standalone company in late 2020. While we inherited our benefits programme from Coty, I am keen for us to develop our own benefits identity where we’re able to say what we want to do with them. We want to get away from the past and find our own path.
To achieve this, we created some principles and a framework for the company’s employee benefits. We spent the last year looking at what we already had in place, benchmarking what was offered in each market, but also exploring what we want to do as an organisation.
It’s essential to understand the regulation in each location to ensure compliance, but we’re also looking to be competitive. We’re aiming to offer at least 80% of what our competitors do to attract the talent needed to drive business growth.
Central to the strategy are our core pillars of benefits including life insurance, retirement and employee wellbeing. Every country has the same core pillars, but the way they are interpreted may vary due to local legislation or cultural differences. They’re like umbrellas: everyone has the same umbrella but what’s underneath is different.
With each country’s benefits mapped out, we were able to address any gaps, using the principles around local compliance, competitiveness and cultural needs to determine the most appropriate benefit. We promote five values at Wella – collaborative, creative, courageous, connected and committed. These help define the company culture, so we always link benefits to these. It creates the Wella feeling.
