Diversity – the key to success

Diversity is an enormous source of strength. Recognizing and incorporating what makes us different gives us a better understanding of each other and leads to better cooperation. Diversity gives us a competitive advantage, at both a business and personal level. After all, monocultures might appear efficient at first glance, but they are rarely sustainable.

Diversity, with all its facets, is key for healthy businesses. We are passionate about the topic because great teams do amazing things but truly diverse teams do impossible things.
Cornelia-Oana Toropoc, OMV Diversity Network

The OMV Diversity Network

As an international company, success is based on a corporate culture in which people with different professional backgrounds and different origins contribute, perform and evolve. Simply put, a corporate culture cannot just be decreed from on high. That’s why we have initiatives like the OMV Diversity Network:

The OMV Diversity Network currently consists of several hundred employees of different genders and cultures and in different locations. And we are growing, also in terms of quality. Every day brings new aspects, experiences and opinions – and this is a good thing. 
Antonia Siegmund, OMV Diversity Network

The OMV Diversity Network was born in 2016, initiated by a handful of female employees in an environment that is somewhat conservative and male-dominated. The motive at the time was primarily to bring together likeminded people and to join forces. Today the network, which is organized in a non-hierarchical way, advocates for raising awareness and appreciation of diversity and inclusion at OMV – and is explicitly not limited to gender issues.

The members of the network promote these issues alongside their actual jobs, driven by their conviction that diversity and inclusion form a basis for better decision-making and greater profitability.

Recently they discussed the topic with our top managers. Here’s what some of them had to say:

OMV Diversity Targets

As an enterprise working in a technology-driven and international environment, the primary focus of our Diversity Strategy is on the fields of gender equality and internationality. After all, we know that only the “best mix” of employees can guarantee us sustainable value added in terms of both profitability and corporate culture.

• Increase the percentage of women in management to 25% by 2025 (currently just over 20%)
• Maintain the high rate of executives with international experience at 75%.