“Diversity” and “inclusion” aren’t buzzwords at Johnson & Johnson. From the time of our founding 130 years ago, when eight of our first 14 employees were women, to today, when Johnson & Johnson leaders like Sandi Peterson and Jennifer Taubert rank among Fortune magazine's Most Powerful Women, Johnson & Johnson has long understood the enormous problem-solving potential that is unleashed when diverse minds work together.
That’s why we’re investing in initiatives like the Scientist Mentoring & Diversity Program (SMDP), a yearlong mentorship program that pairs ethnically diverse students with industry leaders. We’re committed to creating a culture that allows our employees to change the world without changing themselves.
There’s still a lot of work to be done, of course, but here are some of the ways we’re making progress toward achieving our long-term diversity & inclusion goals.
We’re Honored by the Accolades, but Committed to Doing More
After being featured in a story like Fast Company’s “How These Top Companies Are Getting Inclusion Right,” some companies would probably pat themselves on the back and call it a day. At Johnson & Johnson, we’re never satisfied with our progress toward creating more diverse and inclusive workplaces. We’re constantly innovating and improving. This approach helped us secure a top spot on the 2017 Thomson Reuters Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Index. Even better, we moved up two spots from our position on the 2016 D&I Index. In other words, we didn’t rest on our laurels in 2017.
The 2017 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity told much the same story: Johnson & Johnson not only made the top five, but leapfrogged three spots from last year’s eighth-place finish. Key factors cited in the improvement included the diversity of our board of directors, which is 38.4% more diverse than the average among top-50 companies, as well as our best-in-class mentoring programs, which features cross-gender, cross-functional, cross-segment, cross-generational and cross-regional mentoring. We understand that our employees are the source of our value and our success, so investing in them is a no-brainer.
We understand that our employees are the source of our value and our success, so investing in them is a no-brainer.
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We Worked to Increase Equality in STEM Fields
Johnson & Johnson has been at the forefront of innovation in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) for over 130 years now, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we’re also leading the pack in preparing women and other underrepresented groups for sought-after STEM careers today. That’s why we continue to invest in initiatives like our WiSTEM2D Scholars Program, which provides funding and mentorship for women in what we call “STEM2D” concentration areas: science, technology, engineering, math, manufacturing and design. In fact, that’s only one piece of a larger program that aims to inspire a million girls between the ages of 5 and 18 to pursue careers in STEM fields by 2020.
Our Great Employee Benefits Recognize Diversity—and America’s Heroes
Johnson & Johnson was named to Glassdoor’s 2018 list of best places to work in part because we offer benefits to our employees that reflect how much we value them. For starters, that means we designed our same-sex partner benefits to align with the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index LGBTQ benchmarks, so we offer transgender-inclusive health insurance coverage and coverage for surgery to change the sex of any employee diagnosed with gender identity disorder.
And did you know that Johnson & Johnson has been supporting members of America’s armed forces for more than 115 years? It’s true. During the Spanish-American War, for instance, we not only helped produce vital supplies to treat wounded soldiers but also held positions for employees and paid their salaries while they served. Today, we’re proud to continue that tradition by providing generous benefits to employee members of the armed forces, including paid time off after military leave to help them acclimate to life back home. What’s more, we’ve recently expanded our U.S. military leave policy to pay service members their full salaries—in addition to what the military pays—for up to 24 months when they are called on to serve.
More Women Are Now at the Top
Finally, much as we’re focused on charting a better future, we also aren’t afraid to look in the mirror today. Right now, we’re making strides toward achieving more balanced gender representation among leadership. That’s why more than a third of our global corporate executive base is female, and in the U.S., over 40% of management positions are held by women. And at JLABS, Johnson & Johnson’s incubator that helps healthcare startups bring their ideas to life, 23% of the startups in the program are led by women and 18% are led by an ethnic minority—numbers that are significantly above industry standards.
Our commitment to diversity is based on our belief that every person has unique and valuable experiences to share.
Our commitment to diversity is based on our belief that every person has unique and valuable experiences to share. By bringing together many different perspectives, we’ll be able to innovate more effectively and continue building a better, healthier world. It’s not an accident that we were recently named a 2018 Fortune World's Most Admired Company for the 16th year in a row, nor that we also placed #1 in the Pharmaceutical category worldwide for the fifth consecutive year—making us the highest-ranked healthcare company to appear on the top companies list in 2018.
Clearly, we’re making great strides toward realizing our diversity & inclusion goals, but there’s still work to be done. In fact, we’re already working toward making 2018 an even more impactful year at Johnson & Johnson.
If you want to launch a fulfilling career that’s tied to real-world, positive impact, see all the ways you can contribute by joining Johnson & Johnson in 2018.