If you're asking yourself "Why Henkel?" the answer is simple: Because of our daring spirit. We are pioneers at heart for the good of generations. Together we strive to make an impact on the lives of billions through our products, services, and solutions. Meet some of your future colleagues and find out what makes Henkel unique to them.
We dare to make an impact.
#1 At Henkel, you can be a game changer.
Henkel has a substantial entrepreneurial heritage. To ensure we are constantly improving, our employees challenge the status quo and act as entrepreneurs, bringing in fresh ideas, accelerating our digital transformation, and changing markets, products, and services.
HOW DO WE HELP ESTABLISH A PROFOUND DIGITAL CULTURE?
We drive digital transformation from the inside as well as from the outside.
Our goal is to constantly develop our core asset: the Henkel products and technologies. Our ever-connected world is changing consumers’ needs as well as their purchase decisions. We go from providing a single product to offering well-integrated services which are easy to use via digital devices.
We make digital knowledge accessible for all of our teams.
Our worldwide Digital Upskilling initiative offers tailor-made training for about 48,000 Henkel employees, clustered by different job groups. Transformation won’t happen overnight – it’s a process that takes time. For us, intuitive and personalized training formats are great motivators and make sure that we are constantly learning and expanding. Through Digital Upskilling, Henkel sets its standard of digital knowledge throughout the company. We cannot transform unless we integrate every manager, every team member and every intern who works with us.
Meet Hao, Head of Mobile App Factory: “Have you heard of the Henkel dx innovation hub? With the development of this organization, they proved their innovative mindset. As Head of Development Factory Berlin, I love when people create from scratch. Being part of this digital transformation and the building of a platform is a great experience, and part of what I value most about my career Henkel.”
HOW DO WE DRIVE TRANSFORMATION AND ENTREPRENEURIAL THINKING?
We foster our entrepreneurial spirit by diving into new technologies, experimenting with new business models, and establishing our digital ecosystem.
With Henkel dx, we are starting a brand-new chapter by uniting Digital, Business Process Management, and IT expertise to solve the most demanding business challenges. Our Innovation Hubs are driven by focusing on megatrends such as Platform Economy, Consumer & Customer gravitation shift, Outcome-based Servitization, and Lean-Fast-Simple.
We collaborate to innovate.
We connect start-ups with Henkel's operating business to drive the development of groundbreaking technologies. We believe that the best solutions are created when disruptive ideas meet the right resources. Henkel Tech Ventures set up a vast network spanning across all areas of the manufacturing industry.
We break new ground with our incubator teams.
To accelerate innovation and develop new business models, our business unit Consumer Brands has established internal idea factory and incubator teams – these think tanks combine agile work approaches with the scale and expertise of a global company.
#2 At Henkel, we play as a team.
With about 48,000 Henkel employees from across the world, we know that our global team consisting of different backgrounds, experiences, skills, knowledge, and approaches to creativity is the foundation for our success.
WHAT DO OUR LEADERSHIP COMMITMENTS MEAN TO US?
We believe leadership is everyone’s business.
Whether you lead a team or not, you can change things and improve collaboration, have innovation power, show full ownership in results but also the people around you and by that build a strong foundation to shape Henkel’s company culture. We support our employees to consider the Henkel values in their behavior and decisions and value feedback to learn and grow. It is on all of us at Henkel to bring the four Leadership Commitments to life.
1. We act as entrepreneurs
We dare to take risks to shape exciting business opportunities. We are committed to drive innovations and day-to-day improvements. We encourage a culture of timely and clear decision making.
2. We collaborate as strong teams
We always act as one team in the best interest of Henkel. We collaborate based on trust and transparency. We value diversity, curiosity and open-mindedness.
3. We develop people with passion
We take responsibility to build and develop the best team. We challenge and recognize our people. We give and take feedback and learn continuously.
4. We own our results
We create the best solutions for our customers. We take hands-on responsibility to achieve ambitious goals. We keep our promises and commitments.
Meet Kerstin, Director Innovation Packaging: “How to become a female leader and inspire others by doing so? Work at Henkel. On my way to leadership as Director Innovation Packaging at Adhesive Technologies, team collaboration and entrepreneurship resulted in great new innovations. My success empowers not just me but other women as well. I take Henkel’s Leadership Commitments very seriously and support my team to grow into their own power.”
HOW DO WE LIVE DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION?
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is deeply embedded in our company values.
For Henkel, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are more than buzzwords or a “nice to have”. To us, DEI is a “must have” and a business imperative, deeply embedded in our corporate strategy and company values. Our employees belong to different gender and generations, have different sexual and religious orientations, come from various ethnic and cultural origins, bring diverse skills, backgrounds and abilities and are diverse in many other dimensions. Our aspiration is to foster a culture of belonging and we strive for equity to release the full potential of our diversity. Therefore, we actively promote inclusive behaviors among our employees, raise awareness, and foster an environment that welcomes and embraces individual differences. Learn more about Henkel’s DEI approach and initiatives: Diversity , Equity & Inclusion (henkel.com)
HOW DO WE SUPPORT WORK-LIFE FLEXIBILITY?
We outline a new concept of Smart Work.
We acknowledge our employee’s need for flexibility and to have a more symbiotic work-life balance. By aiming for a combination of mobile and office work, offering high flexibility for individual needs, we lay the foundation for the productive work environment of the future. While some roles will always require working on-site, and others don’t require a physical presence in the office, many positions at Henkel are hybrids. We believe that mobile work can be possible for up to 40% of the work time for hybrid roles. It could also be one week per month. Our offices have, and always will, play a crucial role in our company culture – they enable collaboration, innovation, the exchange of knowledge, and are a place of belonging and community that shapes the Henkel spirit. We will continue to upgrade our work environments, offices, buildings and make them even more future-ready.
We believe having a career and a family should be possible for everyone.
An essential part of a good work-life-flexibility is giving parents more freedom and the chance to work from home or elsewhere, not just in the office. Infrastructure plays a significant role in this context. At our headquarters in Germany, we have three kindergartens for Henkel employees. In our different countries, we offer or facilitate childcare and other services to support our employees.
#3 At Henkel, you can craft your career.
We love to see our employees grow professionally and personally. We offer many opportunities to learn, receive feedback and guidance, and gain diverse and international experience. We believe that changing perspectives will make us by far more successful than acting and growing in silos. At a multinational company like Henkel, your next step is always right ahead.
HOW DO WE ENCOURAGE OUR EMPLOYEES IN THEIR PATHS?
We offer international opportunities.
Henkel helps you expand your horizon because people with international experience make our global team inspirational, closer and successful. In a company with the dimensions of Henkel, your career path does not have to be linear. Try positions, locations, or even countries. We promote a Triple Two philosophy, which supports especially high-performing employees to work in at least two different areas (e.g., Controlling, Sales), two different countries and two different business units throughout their career.
We count on performance. And reward it.
It is an integral part of our company culture to reward performance and to motivate and incentivize our employees. We believe in setting ambitious targets and rewarding strong and top performance accordingly. This is in addition to locally competitive and attractive benefits offerings.
We support our employees in developing their skill set to the fullest.
Do you want to upskill yourself and expand your knowledge and capabilities? We got you covered with our Henkel Learning Hub! You can access more than 8,000 classroom and digital learning resources on different topics and broaden your professional horizon. Our ambition is to future-proof our employees by helping them to build the vital skills they need and enable them to unleash their full potential through learning.
We believe in the power of feedback for your development. That is why our on-going feedback culture will enable you to give and receive feedback from your colleagues, co-workers or superiors at any time. To make it even easier, we initiated a new feedback tool to foster this, it will also enable you to send and receive KUDOS cards to your colleagues to show appreciation and celebrate each other.
We create opportunities to grow early on.
Our Global Onboarding Program „BE PART” gives you a jump start at Henkel. With digital content and offline activities, BE PART supports our new employees in understanding the Henkel way of working and to get settled in quickly. You will receive all the important information you need for your exciting first 6 months with us.
We strongly believe in early responsibility. Therefore, you will be assigned projects from an early stage to be challenged, learn, create, and move forward.
WHAT DO WE DEFINE AS EXCITING TASKS?
We are always on the move and searching for new and great ideas.
As we stated in our first Leadership Commitment, we act as entrepreneurs. That means you must anticipate future trends and customer needs faster than the market, be proactive and strive for your ideas. We always try to be quick when experimenting, then scale up or let go. We invite you to help us extend our business models from pure product to offering after-sales, new services, and outcome-based solutions. Our Consumer Brands unit launched Choicify, an AI-driven color consultation app. With Persil Service, we added a mobile-first textile cleaning service to the Laundry & Home Care market. Our Adhesive Technologies unit make it possible for paper straws to withstand immersion in liquid for a more extended time.
We create opportunities to grow early on.
With our various programs for students and graduates to explore their talent, passion, and ideas while being guided and mentored along the way, we make sure to look out for talent. We strongly believe in early responsibility and, therefore, create programs where young professionals are challenged and given the chance to learn, create, and move forward. No matter which team, functional area, or business field, we encourage our employees to participate – as an intern as well as an international manager. At Henkel, we believe that this is what jobs of the future are built on.
Meet Nicolas, Regional Purchasing Manager: “I started at Henkel as a trainee in Brazil and moved to Germany six years later. My supervisors and mentors helped me grow and craft my career. I was given responsibility early on and am thankful for the countless opportunities. A favorite project of mine was to reduce our global footprint by changing local power supply contracts from normal to green energy. This company is always on the move. Just like me.”
#4 At Henkel, we offer more than jobs.
As sustainability leaders, we aim to pioneer new solutions for sustainable development while continuing to shape our business responsibly and increase our economic success. This ambition encompasses all our company’s activities – along the entire value chain.
HOW DO WE DRIVE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT?
We are committed to leadership in sustainability.
Our company purpose is to be Pioneer at heart for the good of generations. Pioneering means leading the way. Breaking new ground. And boldly striving for breakthrough solutions. With our pioneering spirit, our knowledge, our products and technologies, we want to enrich and improve the lives of billions every day and shape a viable future for the next generations. We will actively drive the transformation to a sustainable economy and society, help to protect and regenerate the natural environment, contribute to strong communities and to strengthen trust with our stakeholders.
We are committed to becoming a net-zero company.
We act upon our responsibility to help limit global warming to 1.5°C and have therefore set ourselves an ambitious net-zero target that have been validated by the Science Based Targets initiative. By 2045, Henkel commits to reducing absolute greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent (vs. 2021). As an intermediate step, new science-based near-term targets were set for 2030.
We want to advance circularity through our products, packaging and technologies.
Our mission is to include materials from sustainable sources and to design packaging so that it can be reused as raw materials for new products in order to close the material loop. Our goal is to reduce the amount of packaging material we use to a minimum – without compromising the quality, performance or safety of our products – and to provide consumers with all the information they need for safe use and proper disposal. By 2025, 100 percent of Henkel’s packaging is designed and developed to optimize recyclability or reusability. We aim to reduce the amount of virgin plastics from fossil sources in our consumer products by 50 percent by 2025. We will achieve this by increasing the proportion of recycled plastic to more than 30 percent and reducing the volume of virgin plastic.
We actively contribute to people being able to lead a better life through our business and brands.
Our social responsibility is to promote equity, strengthen diversity and respect human rights. We advocate for social progress and access to education worldwide. One example of this is our cooperation with the development organisation "Solidaridad", with the goal of improving the livelihoods of smallholders in our palm oil supply chain. The focus is on training in best practice approaches, including climate-friendly agriculture.
Meet Eduardo, International Packaging Manager: "It has always been important to me to not just work, but to somehow improve people's lives. At Henkel, I found a place that allows me to develop in my field, have fun at work, and make the world more sustainable. As a packaging manager, my mission is to reduce plastic consumption. To me, that‘s more than „just a job“.”
HOW DO WE PRACTICE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY?
We organize our engagement in three areas.
1. Corporate Volunteering: As part of our corporate engagement, we support our employees and retirees in their individual volunteering in education, social, health, culture and ecology and team volunteering for future-fit.
2. Social Partnerships: As part of our corporate engagement, we enter into social partnerships and activities in communities we operate in to support education, driven by Henkel Corporate Citizenship and Business Units.
3. Emergency Aid: After natural disasters, Henkel responds quickly and un-bureaucratically, providing aid wherever it is needed in the world.
We created two foundations.
Since 1958 the Dr. Jost Henkel Stiftung promotes academic diversity and supports ambitious young people in pursuing their studies – in a flexible, unique, and international way. In January 2011, Henkel established the Fritz Henkel Stiftung, which serves as the umbrella for our social engagement and fosters our activities. It underscores our long commitment to social involvement that goes beyond just direct business interests.
Meet Isabella, Regional Diversity and Inclusion Manager LATAM: "I work at Henkel as a D&I manager, and the company's social engagement always inspires me. I joined one of the MIT projects in Uganda and volunteered at an Orphanage. This initiative was started and ran by another Henkel colleague and has positively impacted more than 1,000 people in Uganda in terms of education, health, job security, and safety. By joining projects like this, I can make an impact not just in my professional work but also locally around the world in societies."
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Let’s dare to make an impact together.
A career with us means growing in a vibrant and diverse culture of trust and belonging and bringing your ideas to life.
Do you dare to make an impact? Let's talk.