Celebrating International Women's Day

At SAP Concur, we know when our people are at their best, our business is at its best. Foundational to our efforts in achieving this is how we drive and support diversity, inclusion, and belonging across our business, in every region, at every level. This is a topic I am incredibly passionate about and committed to driving across our entire business – for our leaders, employees, and customers. We know diverse and inclusive teams are happier, more engaged, and more innovative, which leads to a more positive experience for our customers. We also know that diversity is only part of the equation. Inclusion and belonging are essential elements that must be in place in order to see the power of diversity come to life.

Today we celebrate International Women’s Day with the theme #PressforProgress. It’s a day to pause and reflect on how far we have come towards gender equality, and more importantly, a day for collective dialogue and commitment to stand up and say “We still have a long way to go.” Today is a call-to-action. Now, more than ever, we need to come together to support and act on gender inclusion and equality in our workplaces and communities.

I’m proud to highlight some of things we have been working on to #PressforProgress on gender equality at SAP Concur and offer these insights in the hopes it will inspire others to act. Within SAP Concur we have solid representation of women in leadership overall (38%), and although this puts us in a leadership position in our industry, we aren’t where we want to be. As is often seen in most organizations, our numbers towards the top tier leadership levels aren’t good enough and we are committed to taking a variety of actions to change that. As part of SAP, we have leveraged career development resources for women such as LEAP, a program that aims to empower SAP women to expand their knowledge and skills and achieve career success while positively impacting our business. We also foster thousands of connections through our employee network groups, such as the Business Women’s Network (BWN) and PRIDE@SAP employees.

One program I am particularly proud of is our Activating Men for Parity initiative – what we refer to as AMP. This program invites senior male leaders within SAP Concur to take a more active role in our diversity, inclusion, and belonging efforts, particularly across gender inclusion, intelligence, and equality. I am the executive sponsor of this first-of-its-kind program at SAP, and am thrilled with the open dialogue, the awareness the group is gaining, and the actions that are being taken across the business. The genuine focus and partnership across genders that we’ve seen through this effort has been fantastic.

What’s even better is that, within the coming year, this program will be rolled out across SAP in various functions and regions. There is absolutely no way we can continue to press for progress without everyone getting in the boat and rowing together – gone are the days where gender diversity efforts are thought to be the responsibility of everyone else but men.

As we look to the future we know diversity, inclusion, and belonging will be the differentiator for us as an employer and as a business. I’m committed to furthering our efforts in this area and know that as we #PressforProgress within SAP Concur, and across SAP as a whole, we are doing so as a team.