São Paulo, May 2021 - O iFood, a leading foodtech in Latin America, announces a new front of social commitment. The focus is to advance diversity and inclusion, not only at home, but in all components of its ecosystem – delivery drivers, restaurants and consumers. “We want to feed the future of the world. We will only achieve this with a plurality of people, experiences and ideas. iFood is for everyone, so it needs to be done by everyone”, he explains Gustavo Vitti, vice president of People and Sustainable Solutions at iFood.
The company has set goals for diversity and inclusion of race and gender among its employees over the next three years. iFood wants, by December 2023, to increase the number of women in leadership positions in the company to 50%, in addition to expanding the number of women in senior management positions to 35%. In terms of racial equity, the company's objective is for the number of black leaders to reach 30% and for the total number of black employees to reach 40%.
“Inclusion means listening, respecting and empowering without distinction. At iFood, we are working to increase social inclusion and feed Brazil's future, contributing to correcting historical debts, providing training opportunities to those who need it most, to make the world fairer and more prosperous for all people”, explains Gustavo Vitti.
To achieve this, the company started by looking at home. Since January last year, iFood has promoted a series of education and awareness campaigns with content and educational lives on diversity and inclusion with the aim of promoting the topic among employees. The campaigns, called “Beyond”, bring relevant discussions about diversity and inclusion throughout the year, in order to reinforce the importance of constant and continued debate beyond the honored dates. In 2020, iFood promoted campaigns such as Women Beyond March, LGBTQI+ Beyond June, People with Disabilities Beyond September and Black People Beyond November.
The company also develops programs and training to raise awareness about privileges, unconscious biases and inclusive leadership. In addition, it also has acceleration programs for minority groups seeking to boost careers and empower people. Two of the programs are “Mentoring for black people”, which accelerates development through exchanges, experiences and practical training, and “Now is that they are them”, which boosts women and accelerates their careers, preparing them for leadership.
Technology is also being used to support iFood's diversity and inclusion commitments. To bring more salary and progression equity among its internal public, the platform created an algorithm that corrects distortions in employee performance evaluation, remuneration and promotion, based on gender and race. The algorithm, which has already been used twice, was able to identify and correct gender and racial biases in evaluations.
When adding all iFood initiatives in relation to diversity and inclusion to the created algorithm, the company advanced 71.43% in the number of women in senior leadership and 17.6% in the number of black people in leadership positions in the company during 2020.
In addition, iFood has also had affinity groups for employees since 2017, called Pólen, aimed at women (“Empodera Elas”), people with disabilities (“Sem Barreiras”), black people (“Black Pride”), people LGBTQIA+ (“LGBTQI+Love”) and to break social stereotypes linked to the body (“Free Body”). Based on the themes raised by the Pólen groups, iFood creates initiatives to build a safe environment and promote awareness and engagement of FoodLovers (as iFood employees are called) with diversity themes. The company also captures the topics raised by the committees and qualifies them into concrete actions, such as subsidies for language courses, adaptations to parental leave as part of iFamily and legal and psychological support for transgender employees.
And to be even more assertive, the company, in partnership with Ideafix, applied a census that aims to map relevant information for the team responsible for the topic, including: gender identity, sexual orientation, race, whether they are people with disabilities, marital status , if they have children for whom they are responsible, if they are single mothers or fathers, among others. In order to monitor the evolution of iFood's D&I goals, the census maps the representation of minority groups and acts based on the company's indicators.
Out of the house
As a way of making public its commitment to the values of equality and respect between genders, ensuring the promotion of diversity and authenticity, iFood signed UN Women's gender equality commitment, which was transformed into a multidisciplinary action plan for the year. In addition, the company sponsored the Forum and the ID_BR Award (Yes to Racial Equality), the main event in Brazil responsible for connecting black professionals and companies that work in favor of Racial Equality.
Foodtech also participates in Empretece, a selection process program at the Mobile Group, of which iFood is a part, which allocates senior analyst and leadership positions to black people and also has consultancies specialized in attracting candidates with different profiles, such as Mais Diversidade, Transempregos, Indicate a Preta, Empregue Afro, among others.
Looking at the surrounding ecosystem, iFood has several education initiatives, such as Vamo AI, a data analyst training program, in partnership with Resilia, aimed at delivery people, women and black people, and Reprograma, a professional technology training for cis and trans women in vulnerable situations, so that they can face and overcome social, economic and gender inequality in the Technology sector.
“The social commitment front has initiatives that cut across the other pillars — education and the environment. Our inclusion goals are in direct dialogue with our commitments to train 25,000 professionals in the technology field and impact 10 million people, prioritizing minority groups, with education and opportunity.”, concludes Vitti.
Social calendar
The diversity announcement is the company's third this year, focusing on social commitments beyond the technology sector. In February, iFood committed to impacting more than 10 million people with education, training and training opportunities, prioritizing delivery drivers, partners, black people and the periphery. Over the next five years, the company's initiatives should impact 5 million students and teachers in the public education network, 5 million people with training opportunities focused on income generation, in addition to offering technology training opportunities with a focus on employability for over 25 thousand people from the periphery.
A month later, in March, the company announced iFood Regenera, a plan with a positive environmental impact on two major fronts: (I) end plastic pollution in its delivery operations and (II) become neutral in carbon emissions until 2025. Diversity actions come to strengthen the company's increasingly relevant work with society.
About iFood
iFood, a reference in online food delivery in Latin America, has 60 million monthly orders. Having been on the market for ten years, the Brazilian company is also present in Colombia. It works together with partners with initiatives that bring together business intelligence and management solutions for the approximately 270 thousand restaurants registered in more than a thousand cities throughout Brazil. iFood has important investors, such as Movile, a global leader in mobile marketplaces, and Just Eat, one of the largest online ordering companies in the world.
