Care for our people

People are at the heart of SHV. They embody our values, shape our culture, and drive sustainable growth. Caring for our employees involves creating a safe, positive, and inclusive environment where everyone can feel engaged and make a positive contribution. We trust our employees to take initiative, support their professional development, and recognize and reward their impact on our success.

We continue to acknowledge the essential role played by health and safety, diversity, gender equality, equal pay for work of equal value, and training and skills development. These factors are vital for our current and future performance, and we will provide further details about this in the coming years.

To maximize expertise, achieve efficiencies, share best practices, and collaboratively develop solutions, SHV operates several functional workstreams. These workstreams include Talent, Rewards, Learning, Diversity, and International Mobility. Led by the relevant Functional Director of SHV head office, the Groups actively participate in these communities, helping to shape a consistent, future‑ready HR function across the entire organization.

Additionally, we are developing a management traineeship program aimed at attracting the next generation of talented professionals. Throughout the year, we have deepened succession planning discussions with Group management board members, prioritized engagement with key talents across the Groups, monitored readiness levels for critical positions, and ensured that development actions were actively followed up. Each Group adopts a similar approach to succession management. These efforts contribute to building a strong, diverse, and capable talent pool that supports continuity and long‑term performance.

We highlighted the importance of continuous, constructive, and more frequent feedback. By fostering open dialogue and defining sharper, more measurable targets, we aim to maintain a positive culture of clarity, accountability, and focused performance. This approach supports both organizational performance and individual growth, ensuring we remain agile and aligned with a constantly changing environment.

In addition to gender representation, we are committed to increasing international diversity within senior leadership teams. Our goal is for senior management teams to include at least two different nationalities in teams by 2030. In 2025, 82% of teams met this ambition. Kiwa is excluded from this Key Performance Indicator (KPI), as its operational setup necessitates a strong emphasis on local expertise. Senior management teams comprise the Executive Board, Group Management Boards, Functional Directors at SHV head office, and local or country management teams.

As part of our updated DEI strategy, we will deploy a broader range of DEI KPIs and extend the scope of the current KPIs by including a larger group for analysis. These insights will support us in continuously strengthening our inclusive culture and ensuring that people at SHV can bring their full selves to work. From 2026 onwards we will place greater emphasis on generational diversity and inclusion. A balanced mix of ages improves collaboration and drives innovation by combining the experience of long‑tenured colleagues with the fresh perspectives of newer generations. At this stage, however, we will not set a formal target for age representation, recognizing the importance of the natural dynamics of career stages, the diversity of local marketplaces, and our established talent pipelines. Instead, we will focus on fostering awareness and creating an environment where all generations can contribute, collaborate, and thrive.

From 2026, we will also start reporting on the SHV Inclusion Index. This index will provide structured insights into how employees experience inclusion across SHV, enabling us to identify strengths, track progress over time, and pinpoint areas where additional focus or investment may be required. These insights will support us in continuously strengthening our inclusive culture and ensuring that people at SHV can bring their full selves to work.

To support equitable career development, we expanded programs such as Taking the Stage for our female leaders. We supported mindset development with the Management Essentials program, which we began scaling up globally. Throughout the year, we also provided a DEI calendar of learning activities, implemented Sharing the Stage dialogues, highlighted Allyship during DEI Week, and offered online training on harassment.

SHV Energy continued to strengthen DEI by implementing Inclusivity guidelines, enhancing the existing DEI Manual, and creating sets of guidelines for both Harassment and Recruitment. To promote equitable access to development opportunities, the organization provided mentoring for women alongside other employees. This included a specific focus on the Female on the Radar initiative supporting female leadership development. Employee affinity groups, e-learnings and classroom training on unconscious bias, and cultural integration support for expatriate colleagues all served to underpin a culture of inclusivity.

Nutreco

Nutreco made progress on its DEI agenda by integrating DEI-related targets into the reward structure and establishing recruitment guidelines backed by recruitment metric analysis. The Group expanded its talent pipeline by promoting female‑successor champions and reinforcing an inclusive culture through Employee Research Groups (ERGs). These groups help to connect younger generations to the wider organization via the Young Nutreco Program and local DEI councils. The Inclusive Leadership program was rolled out across different leadership levels, reinforcing the importance of inclusivity as a fundamental aspect of effective leadership.

Kiwa

Kiwa focused its efforts on building awareness and strengthening SHV Leadership themes by implementing the Blue Card initiative, designed to foster inclusion and eliminate unconscious bias. The Group also established a DEI Taskforce comprizing local and global representatives, as well as widening the Taking the Stage initiative as part of its female empowerment ambitions.

SHV Fair Pay represents our commitment to rewarding employees in alignment with our policies, ensuring they are fairly treated, respected, and recognized for their contributions.

In 2025, we developed and shared new communication and training materials to increase awareness and transparency regarding our HR practices, policies, and the principles guiding pay determination for managers, works councils, employees, and HR teams. Throughout the salary review cycle, we continued to monitor individual pay equity using analytical tools to identify and address potential inequities.

In 2025, we redesigned our senior leadership development program to better address current challenges and expectations. The updated program will be launched in 2026.

The Being Part of SHV program introduces participants to our history, structure, values, culture, leadership profile, and ESG ambitions to create a strong sense of belonging and a shared purpose.

We continue to offer the Management Essentials program to all people managers, shining a spotlight on a growth mindset, trust, psychological safety, and developmental feedback. More than 200 managers participated in the past year, supported by a growing group of internal facilitators who help embed the program across the Groups.

In addition to these SHV‑wide initiatives, each Group delivers tailored development programs to address specific leadership needs and to strengthen effective leadership during times of change.