A strategic approach to getting more women promoted into leadership roles

Providing equitable opportunities for all genders is a core pillar of Zalando’s D&I strategy. Zalando’s commitment has been reflected in the target of increasing the share of women in each of our five¹ top leadership levels to 40–60%. While the average percentage of women in the top five levels of leadership at Zalando is still below this target (35.6% at the time of publication), we’ve achieved an increase to 40% representation among VPs and on the Management Board. We have also renewed our commitment to reaching our target across all five of our top leadership levels in 2025.

Veronica Schilling, Head of Workplace Culture, D&I, and Well-Being, introduces the new and updated strategic framework for promoting more women into leadership roles at Zalando.

Hi Veronica, what’s your role at Zalando?

I’m the Head of Workplace Culture, D&I and Well-Being. Together with my team, I work on creating an inspiring and vibrant culture at Zalando. We do this with fact-based insights from our diverse workforce to design solutions that solve problems for our colleagues. My day-to-day work includes guiding my team on progressing on our priorities around culture, D&I and well-being.

We embed D&I in our people policies and approaches and set the direction to progress on our D&I commitments. As an example, we set up an inclusive leadership program, created and implemented the Disability Inclusion Action Plan and continued to develop the family friendliness offering. I’m glad that we take our culture seriously and that we are intentionally shaping it so that colleagues can work in an environment that supports growth, flexibility, well-being, and belonging.

What D&I-related challenges are you and your team solving at the moment?

For us, inclusion is a main goal. We have very diverse teams and a very dynamic environment. I like to say “No Zalando [employee] is alike, still we feel bonded and inspired”. At the moment, we are working toward achieving Zalando’s target of increasing the share of women in our five top leadership levels to 40–60%, to achieve a more balanced representation of all genders in leadership roles. For instance, we are implementing a 50/50 gender balance in the candidate pool for shortlists of senior leadership roles, organizing allyship workshops for men leaders and enabling senior HR professionals to intervene and mitigate gender bias during the promotion evaluation process.

Over the last year, we compared various data points to analyze and better understand not only the - sometimes structural - issues, but also the actions we can take to achieve our gender equity target in full. We understood that, to reach our target of including a greater share of women in our senior leadership teams, we need to strategically drive inclusive hiring and promotion initiatives and invest in building a more inclusive culture. To be more effective going forward, we identified four focus areas: hiring, promotion, development, and leadership enablement.

¹ We included the Supervisory Board level in external communication relating to the goal of achieving a share of 40-60% in each of the top six leadership levels. We’re focusing at the moment on those leadership levels within Zalando that we have hiring influence over.

Can you go into more detail about the specific steps you’ll be taking for each of these pillars?

On our focus areas for hiring, our talent acquisition teams have set new standards for candidate pools. We track closely what our pipeline looks like, seek feedback from women candidates, and improve the diversity of our interview panels.

To improve our promotion process, we trained a team of Diversity Champions to actively mitigate bias in our promotion evaluation and we developed additional growth opportunities for women. One specific initiative for the advancement of employees is our Stretch Assignment Process. A new program specifically for women, “Triple Steps”, aims to increase support for stretch assignees with personal coaching, regular intimate conversations with senior women leaders, and a peer support network. Lastly, for an inclusive workplace, we encourage Zalando’s leadership to be active advocates of women’s development by fostering understanding through our allyship and leadership programs.

Can you tell us more about the Stretch Assignment Process and how it contributes to the Women in Leadership commitment?

The Stretch Assignment Process² is Zalando’s formal way of recognizing an individual’s potential or acknowledging that the work someone undertakes goes beyond their role’s original scope. We are embracing this as an opportunity to guide women in preparation for a promotion and to be successful in their new roles. It also allows us to focus on the individuals' intersectionality needs, keep track of their development, understand broader challenges, and create new support measures. I think careers are very personal and unique to each person and we need to understand and craft jobs that talent can succeed in.

What else can we do to support equal promotion opportunities for employees?

I’m a huge advocate for bringing objectivity to performance evaluation, providing clarity on how things get done – for example, how decisions are made, and what is expected from a role. Clarity and access to development feedback is an equalizer and our leads should be enabled to provide this to their teams. Equally essential is to develop ‘allyship’ in the workplace to create a safe environment for exchange and continuous learning for people of all backgrounds. We believe that we must set up all employees for success in their roles, because there is a place for everyone.

What are your hopes and dreams for D&I at Zalando?

I hope that Zalando will continue to be the place that embraces and makes space for people of all backgrounds and identities. We can be proud of having attracted people from more than 140 nationalities and allowing the space for a very authentic group of individuals to thrive and bond together. I hope we will continue to foster understanding, respect, and appreciation for each other's talents, skills, and experience. I am confident these principles will help us to motivate everyone’s personal goals and Zalando's success.

²Stretch Assignments are a development opportunity for employees who want to apply for a job at a higher job grade. The program ensures that employees have the appropriate development support to identify any skill or knowledge gaps before they are expected to fulfill the requirements of their next role. The program aims to ensure candidates are promoted within one evaluation cycle.