Clariant Culture

A World of Possibilities

Transforming

Reshaping the company remained a focus in 2022, when Clariant continued its transformation process and the course it had set in the last two years. While Clariant has a long history, in recent years, the company has transformed itself into a focused specialty chemicals company and significantly reshaped its portfolio. With 2022 the time had come to initiate and foster significant changes also in corporate culture. These changes will eventually enable an exceptional workforce to achieve even greater outcomes in the ongoing efforts to overcome the challenges and »side effects« of crisis and uncertainty caused by political and economic developments. Turning challenges into opportunities is key for Clariant in preparing the ground for the next generations to come.

On this transformation journey, in 2021, Clariant reached an important milestone with the introduction of the purpose »Greater chemistry – between people and planet,« distilling the essence of Clariant’s license to operate and expressing what Clariant strives to contribute to this planet and the people living on it. Clariant’s purpose puts customers, employees, and the planet at the center of every business activity. The statement was defined by the Clariant leadership team together with colleagues from all over the world and with key customers. It stands for Clariant’s

• distinct customer focus;
• strong innovation capability;
• profound commitment to sustainability in its operations and products;
• uniquely talented people in a culture of empowerment and inclusiveness.

016GUIDED BY THE PURPOSE

As the chemical industry touches on more than 90 % of all the products that society uses in its daily life, it has the opportunity and the responsibility to create a truly meaningful impact. Clariant has an attractive innovation pipeline that is strongly linked to customer requirements. Interactions between uniquely talented and highly motivated employees with an entrepreneurial spirit drive a high-performance culture. This enables Clariant to deliver products and solutions with outstanding technical and sustainable performance. Innovative and customer-driven chemistry, paired with people empowerment and leadership in sustainability, serves the interests of Clariant’s key stakeholders. It leads to greater chemistry – between people and planet – and thus provides for a long-term approach to sustained value creation.

Bringing the purpose to life by activating its underlying rationale resulted in various further steps throughout 2022. Regarding organizational changes, 2022 was essential for the implementation of a new global company setup with a new leadership team, less layers on management levels, a reduced number of business units, and simplified structures and processes overall, as the chapter Core Processes describes. The new operating model will foster greater accountability, speed up decision-making processes, and enhance customer proximity. It will support the implementation of Clariant’s purpose-led strategy and long-term sustainable growth to the benefit of all stakeholders, including employees, customers, and shareholders. While organizational changes are scheduled to be completed by January 2023, it will take more time throughout 2023 and beyond to set up revised ways of working together.

Q&A

Tatiana Berardinelli

Chief Human Resources Officer

Member of the Executive Leadership Team

Clariant is in the middle of a significant transformation. In your view, what is most important to make this transformation a success?

We need to make sure that all our colleagues at Clariant understand why we started this transformation and what impact it has for everyone. We also need to make sure that everyone knows how to contribute to this change, which goes far beyond adjusting an organizational structure. The cultural component of this change is even more important. That is why it is crucial for us to bring our new values to life in the best way possible.

As CHRO, the value »empower and include« is highly relevant to your work. What does that value mean to you?

Empowerment means trusting the teams and trusting that everyone in our company is able to deliver on their jobs. Inclusion means that everyone has a voice in the company, and that we want to hear every opinion. It is not always possible to implement a suggestion, but it is obvious that we will achieve much better results if we consider different ideas.

Making yourself heard as an employee can be challenging. What is Clariant’s plan to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion?

That is why we developed a roadmap to make Clariant a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace. We want our people to reflect the world’s diversity and create a workplace that engages everyone. When everyone is welcomed, considered, and appreciated, we build an environment that spurs forceful innovation. Our aspiration is to ensure that everyone feels valued and respected as an individual. Thanks to inclusive leadership we empower our talents to think out of the box and share their experiences and perspectives, which in turn is a key driver for development and engagement.

Clariant aspires to attract the best talents in the industry. Why choose Clariant as an employer?

We foster an empowering, inclusive, and performance-oriented culture where everyone feels welcomed, included, and appreciated. We create an environment where you can perform at your best and thrive. We think of our people as the true magic behind our achievements. Our ambition is to be an employer of choice for talents across the globe and create a distinctively great place to work.

The next phase of Clariant’s change journey will consist of customized measures, leveraging employee groups to maximize the positive impact of this transformation while building and strengthening individual and group engagement. Across employee groups, the company will focus on three areas to build momentum: communication, building new capabilities and focusing on the enablers. Additionally, Clariant will continue to move forward on the DE&I strategy as well as creating effective, yet simple, people processes for managers and employees.

Leaders, managers, and employees can count on multidimensional support that enables them to stay focused on delivering the goals for 2023 while strengthening engagement in their teams. From the organization’s side, employees may count on: a clear communication and dialogues with the ELT through the year to share Clariant’s new values and behaviors, progress, direction, actions and seek feedback. Leaders will provide mentoring as employees navigate new charters, ways of working and new cultural expectations, and resources to acquire needed know-how and capability development to equip with the right skills. There will surely be opportunities to contribute to the change and the enablers to strengthen performance such as the New Performance Management Process and incentives (long- and short-term). Human Resources aspires to be a partner enabling business results and Clariant’s culture via impactful, simple, and people-friendly processes and enhancing employee experience and engagement through the employee life cycle.

017CLARIANT'S VALUES

018ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS OF OUR JOINT PURPOSE-LED JOURNEY

Evolution of Clariant’s new values

As the company is transforming and the external environment is changing, it is crucial to continue to evolve, which is why existing values were critically assessed. Starting in November 2021, the Global Management Team examined the Clariant values and discussed their validity and what they would change considering the newly developed purpose statement of 2021. Several groups of Clariant employees from different regions also provided their input. The result was not a revolutionary change in existing values, but an evolutionary change. In September 2022, Clariant unveiled new values, which are considered the new cornerstones of the Clariant culture. They reflect the growth mindset of the people working at Clariant and what each individual at Clariant should expect from themselves and one another. They serve as a compass, providing orientation and guiding the way to deliver on the company purpose.

Based on the aspiration to live up to the values, the next steps in 2023 will include actions to help move from poster to practice and embed the values in all people-related processes in order to grow people awareness. The values as of 2022 are:

• win with our customers;
• act with integrity;
• empower and include;
• perform with agility;
• innovate for sustainability.

Reshaping continued: more diverse, equitable, and inclusive

Another milestone concerning corporate culture was reached in June of 2022, when Clariant launched its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) Roadmap along with corresponding DE&I objectives. Continuously developing Clariant into a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace is essential for the Clariant people to represent the world´s diversity. This is the goal on the Management level as well as throughout the entire workforce. When all people and social identities are welcomed, considered, and appreciated, an environment within the organization can be built that spurs powerful innovation and attracts opportunities for employees, customers, shareholders, and ultimately society. For this goal, Clariant will continuously review progress on its DE&I journey, for which leaders at Clariant will be held accountable.

Read more in the Review on Performance, People, and Planet, in the chapter Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

019DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION ROADMAP OF ACTIONS