Diageo has developed and implemented a comprehensive and inclusive benefits strategy, offering a wide range of benefits that support employees’ physical, mental, financial, and social wellbeing.
At the Benefits Expert summit, Tolu Osho, head of reward for continental Europe & MENA, presented Diageo’s approach, emphasising the company’s dedication to providing all workers with equitable access to benefits and resources to promote a welcoming and encouraging work environment. The strategy focuses on equality and inclusivity, providing both standard and aspirational benefits tailored to the needs of a diverse workforce across various markets.
Osho said that Diageo provides “Standard Benefits” that address essential needs in all markets, such as life insurance, health insurance, family leave, and wellness support, in addition to “Aspirational Benefits” that are introduced according on market maturity and include adoption support and sophisticated medical care.
She said: “The standard offerings are benefits that we expect as a minimum for each country to introduce for their employees but this is subject to availability within the market or legal offering as well.
“Aspirational benefits, for example, can we provide adoption or surrogacy support or annual wellness check for all of this is subject to the maturity of the market because it will vary from market to market.”
According to her, Diageo’s benefits strategy offers solutions that consider a range of lifestyles and family configurations while addressing social, mental, financial, and physical wellbeing.
Osho said: “There’s a lot of focus on leveraging our benefits to challenge bias, to make sure we’re promoting equality and ensuring no one is left behind so everyone feels like they’re getting access at whatever points they are in their life.”
According to Osho, Diageo’s strategy is centred on giving staff members the tools and options they need to attain stability and security in their lives.
She said: “Choice is another important thing for us. People go through various life stages so giving people flexibility and choice to adapt to whatever benefits they need and to meet them at every stage of their life.”
Osho clarified that Diageo’s eligibility standards include employees and their dependents, with provisions for same-sex partners and disabled dependents where relevant.
“We have a standard where where the dependents are legally recognised. We provide them with the same access to benefits.”
She outlined Diageo’s eight benefit categories: health, wealth, vacation/PTO, diversity, education, disability, product allowance, and wellbeing, with no distinctions based on role or age.
“Within each of these benefits we have the standard and the aspirational. So using wealth category as an example, we have a life insurance. There is no differentiation by age, everyone has equal access to the standard benefits.”
Osho noted that Diageo uses a global tracker to monitor benefits alignment, identify gaps, and plan solutions, supporting consistency across regions.
“What we did is we created a global view as well as a global view where you’re able to see how you’re tracking against the standard of care and it also gives me visibility from a regional perspective as well.”
“By having this single tracker you’re easily able to see by country, by benefit category how we’re tracking from a percentage perspective. It also helps to easily identify where we have gaps.”
She emphasised that Diageo has implemented improved fertility and psychiatric treatment in Belgium and has attained over 70% alignment with its standards in nations like Portugal and Spain. Additionally, the business satisfies all regional minimum life assurance requirements.
She said: ” Having this single tracker has helped us achieve a clear overview of alignment. It also provides cross-benchmarking against other regions.”
