Celebrating Pride Month

In honour of Pride Month during June, and as part of the Medela Cares People Pillar's 2025 UNGC goals, we want to reinforce our commitment to an inclusive, diverse and equal workplace by generating awareness and introducing activities to support LGBTQI employees and their families in the workplace. 

The last decade has seen important progress in the lives of millions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTQI) people in many parts of the world, benefiting from legal reforms and, in some cases, changes in social attitudes. However, this progress has been incomplete and uneven. For example, 73 countries still criminalise consensual same-sex relationships. Even in countries that have made great strides, LGBTQI people face high barriers. Studies show that they are more likely to be bullied at school, treated unfairly at work and denied access to basic services. Aligned with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the mutual pledge to "leave no one behind", collective efforts of governments, society and businesses are required to tackle social and economic discrimination and marginalisation.

“Companies like Medela can play an important role in curbing discrimination and making equality, diversity and inclusion a reality. As a global family business, an enabling environment is essential to Medela's culture and sustainable growth. Therefore, we commit to our people to foster an inclusive culture that supports equality and diversity and promotes their personal development and well-being.”

Martina Radzanowski, Chief People Officer at Medela

At Medela, we are committed to observing Pride Month by raising awareness of the issue and introducing activities that will allow us to create a more empowered work environment together: This includes providing background information, rolling out an eLearning to raise awareness on inclusive language and promoting the building of an inclusive culture that values respect, diversity and equality for all, tackles our unconscious biases that may be holding us back.

Celebrating Pride Month is part of our overarching approach to combat unconscious bias in the workplace and create a more inclusive culture and nurture a diverse and equal working environment under the framework of our 2025 Medela Cares goals; including:

• supporting and empowering women and gender equality within our organisation and beyond, achieving a 50% gender diversity, including our leadership team, by 2025.
• raising awareness for unconscious bias across the entire company by training our DE&I agents around the globe and conducting focused sessions with our leadership team to tackle the issue and implement the strategies in our daily work to overcome the biases.  
• launching a dedicated 12-month mentoring programme called LINC (leadership, inclusion, networking, connecting) to promote inclusive leadership and guide the next generation of Medela leaders. 
• redesigning our recruitment process at HQ to ensure greater sustainability, recognising a more diverse workforce and enabling inclusive leadership. 
• introducing an updated Code of Conduct to include for the UN Standards of Conduct for businesses, respecting the rights of all people and ensure fair treatment up and down the supply chain.