Employee & Supplier Diversity

Employee Diversity

We value our workforce at Pilgrim's, and we respect each employee as an integral part of our team. Our diversity is our strength, because we know that our growing workforce reflects the increasing diversity of our customers, suppliers, vendors and consumers.

In 2010, approximately two-thirds of our U.S. workforce was Hispanic/Latino, African-American, Asian or other minorities. Approximately 47% of our first- and mid-level officials, managers and professionals are women and people of color.

In order to assure we continue to meet our goals for diversity in the workplace, we regularly monitor our performance and evaluate our affirmative action plan to analyze promotions by gender and ethnicity.

In recent years, we have renewed our focus on diversity and compliance, to enhance the strategic direction, development, implementation, communication and ongoing administration of our workplace diversity and equal employment opportunity (EEO) programs, objectives and compliance standards.

Pilgrim's continually reaches out to attract and retain minority employees, working with career sites to help us achieve this goal. We have created diversity partnerships with job boards such as CareerBuilder and Monster, which have diversity affiliations that post our open positions, and we have partnered with Bilingual Staffing Solutions, LLC, a woman-owned business that specializes in minority-targeted recruiting.

As a part of our continuing outreach to our Hispanic employees, we offer English as a Second Language (ESL) classes in selected areas of our company, and hundreds of our employees have participated in this program over the past several years. We translate all important communications into Spanish in order to promote an atmosphere of open communication among all employees.

Supplier Diversity

Our company is continually working to expand the diversity in our supplier base, and our minority vendor base continues to grow. We have a corporate position dedicated to monitoring and reporting vendor diversity. In addition, members of our procurement team attend conferences such as the National Minority Supplier Development Council to meet minority suppliers with whom we can partner.

We work with our vendors to be sure they report the appropriate classification as minority-owned business enterprises (MBEs) and women-owned business enterprises (WBEs). In 2010, Pilgrim's spent approximately $230 million on MBEs and WBEs, and we expect to increase these purchases by 25% in 2011.