Markus Zittlau, deputy spokesperson for the RainbowNet network, is particularly proud of the European Diversity Award. "Our aspiration is to be a great place to work for all," Zittlau says. "Including our LGBTQ+ brothers, sisters and non-binary persons. It's very rewarding to be part of and contribute to a corporate culture in which no one has to explain, justify or even hide their sexual orientation or identity."

For Thomas Ogilvie, Board Member for Human Resources, equal opportunity is an important selling point for the Group as an employer and service provider: "Equal opportunity is the key to outstanding service and highly satisfied customers. Diverse teams make better decisions. We have some 570,000 employees from around the world all working together, which shows that the active promotion of diversity has a positive impact on company success. In fact, a robust corporate culture of inclusion and diversity is increasingly viewed as a major competitive factor in securing talent."

Deutsche Post DHL Group intends to step up its activities aimed at broadening equal opportunity and diversity in the workplace. At the DHL Express hub in Cologne, for example, an inclusion department was established to better address the needs of employees with autism and integrate them more effectively into the teams. At the DHL Express hub in Leipzig, the company launched a special project for the hearing impaired. There, it uses pagers and blinking lights to create barrier-free working conditions that have enabled the hiring of several employees with hearing disabilities. The promotion of women is also firmly anchored into the Group's Sustainability Roadmap. Logistics has traditionally been a male-dominated industry. Well aware of that fact, Deutsche Post DHL Group has continually increased the percentage of women in middle and upper management positions around the world since 2014, achieving a current rate of 23.2 percent¹.  Moreover, a total of 34.2 percent of all Group employees are women, and more ambitious goals are targeted. The company currently aims to increase the percentage of women in upper and middle management to at least 30 percent by 2025. To achieve this goal, the Group-wide initiative "Shift up a Gear" was introduced - a comprehensive program specifically designed to train and promote the next generation of female leaders for positions in senior management. 

_{¹ As of the end of December 2020}