Kenya Breweries Launch Commercial Graduate Program to Bridge its Gender Gap

Kenya Breweries Limited has enrolled 10 women into its new Commercial Graduate Program aimed at bridging the gender gap within its commercial department from the current 33% to 50% by the year  2025.

The programme, a collaboration between Commercial and Human Resource – Commercial & Marketing will also create a pipeline of future commercial leaders within the business.

KBL Commercial Director, Joel Kamau, said that developing inclusive leadership skills at KBL has become more important than ever before.

“Across our business, we are investing in a variety of ways to help our people identify potential blind spots and biases, deepen their emotional intelligence, demonstrate empathy and create allyship as core leadership skills. We envision these efforts to continue into FY22 and beyond as part of our ongoing commitment to cultivating a culture of inclusion,” explained Mr Kamau.

KBL which is a subsidiary of the Eastern African Breweries (EABL) has been lauded for promoting policies towards gender equality.

EABL operates across East Africa through the following subsidiaries: Kenya Breweries Limited (KBL), Uganda Breweries Limited (UBL), Serengeti Breweries Limited (SBL) in Tanzania, UDV (Kenya) Limited, East African Beverages (South Sudan) Limited and East African Maltings Limited (EAML) in Kenya.

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In 2019, EABL was ranked 10th and leads the way for parental leave, with the most generous programme of paid leave for primary and secondary careers (26 and four weeks respectively.)

The brewer champions diversity and inclusion through its partnership with Sight Savers to ensure people with disability are included across the value chain. It also has the Spirited Women and STEM mentorship programmes that promote career development for female employees.

“Our focus on diversity and inclusion takes various forms – from supporting and empowering graduates and female leaders within the business to this parental leave policy change. We believe it is a truly forward-looking decision to accelerate our work inequality for employees and their families,” EABL says in its 2020 Annual Report.