Driving purpose and performance through inclusion

I am a Belgian citizen. I was born in India. I live in Germany now, and have lived in England, Finland, and Holland. I’ve visited more countries than I can count, many of them in my role as CEO of Software AG. Fostering diversity isn’t a campaign: It is simply how our world should work.

At Software AG our people bring real energy and passion to our diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) efforts and, with each action, contribute to a much bigger, bolder journey for us as a firm – and as global citizens.

In just the past week, we have joined The Valuable 500.The movement is marking a historic milestone: Reaching its goal of securing commitments from 500 global CEOs and their companies worldwide to put disability inclusion on their business leadership agenda.

We have also celebrated Diversity as signatory of the Charta der Vielfalt in Germany. And today, as we celebrate World Day of Cultural Diversity, we invited employees from around the world to share photos representing their countries. While these are individual snapshots of our colleagues and, in some cases, their families too, collectively they depict a Software AG culture that is vibrant, kinetic and proud.

Our diversity journey

Each of these activities are single steps on a journey to grow and transform our business and our culture. Our success will largely be determined by embedding DE&I across the business because we know that our ability to innovate is powered by anticipating the needs of customers and seeing around the corners our different markets.

Our efforts to foster a diverse, forward-thinking culture is not new. At Software AG we have been nurturing an inclusive culture for over half a decade with over 4,700 employees in 41 countries representing 77 nationalities, who are unified around our values of trust and responsibility. Today women comprise 30% of our workforce. While we’d like more of a gender balance, we also recognize that across the tech sector this is notable- and we’re proud that there are women who have a significant voice in shaping our future.

In recent months, we’ve asked hundreds of our employees to share with us their views on how we can foster better DE&I globally. Again, this is not something new. Just as we believe great products, campaigns and ideas should come from within our organization—the same is true about our culture. From this feedback, we established a dedicated DE&I leadership position and have appointed a global team of DE&I Ambassadors. Together we are defining our DE&I priorities to ensure that we are fostering a culture that is diverse and better able to identify risks, summon big thinking, challenge each other and help our customers not just anticipate the future but thrive in it.

While the past week is only one moment in time—these recent activities reflect Software AG so well. Why? Our commitment to the Valuable 500 unites us with The Nippon Foundation and The World Economic Forum and industry leaders across all sectors. Our commitment to the Charta der Vielfalt aligns us with 3900 other companies advocating for diversity to be embedded into German business culture.

And the photo collage we’ve created to support World Day of Cultural Diversity is comprised of individual images of our people from around the world.

Across these seven days, our efforts span work we are doing as a global citizen, a German-based tech leader—and as individuals. From person-to-planet we are working for a smarter and better tomorrow.

We are inspired by each other and in our work with customers, suppliers and partners. The challenges we’ve all faced in the past 12 months have sometimes isolated us—but ultimately brought us closer together. Within the Software AG ecosystem, we will do things that matter. We will do things that are hard. And we will do them together. Join our journey.