Our people

Danfoss’ foundation is our high-performing and diverse teams. We strongly believe that taking care of our people and our working environment – where everyone feels engaged, respected, and included – is essential for Danfoss’ growth journey.

The diversity of our employees drives high performance, accelerates innovation, enables creative solutions, and optimizes agility in an evolving world. This is especially relevant with our expanding global footprint and our strategic intention to lead the green transition.

At Danfoss, we aspire to foster an inspiring and inclusive workplace that unleashes the full potential of our people and empowers them to thrive in a purpose-driven career. We are committed to delivering an engaging employee experience that values and respects all aspects of diversity and creates an environment of belonging. Our policies on people, health, and safety ensure that our efforts are systematic and supported by processes and action.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) is one of our three ESG step-change initiatives. We are committed to creating sustainable and long-term impact through a comprehensive Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion roadmap and key performance indicators that cover the entire employee experience. We have defined what success looks like when we deliver on our three focus areas:  

• Recruitment: Recruit diverse talent by continuously improving our attraction, selection, and hiring practices.
• Retention: Retain diverse talent by creating an environment of belonging through communities of shared identity, experience, and interests, as well as providing resources that empower leaders and teams to foster inclusion.
• Representation: Increase diverse representation by optimizing our talent-management practices and digital platforms and accelerating development through impactful learning experiences, including training and mentoring. 

To achieve our strategic objectives and accelerate our ambition, we integrated equity into our employee experience. As a result, we enhanced our focus on addressing possible barriers in processes and practices related to recruitment, retention, and representation. This includes diversifying the composition of our management teams to accelerate innovation, enable creative solutions, and optimize agility. 

Danfoss recognizes that diversity comes in many forms: visible and non-visible, education, work experience, skills, gender, age, nationality, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability status, religion, and more, depending on local adaptations.

Since 2020, we have focused on increasing the share of women in leadership. In 2023, the share of women managers increased to 22.1% from 21.0% in 2022. We remain committed to reaching the 30% target. To fuel the pipeline of women managers, Danfoss invests in different development initiatives for women's talents. One example is our global women mentoring cohorts, enabling women to grow through coaching, having a strong network, and access to senior leadership levels. We also aim for a minimum of two genders and two nationalities in management levels 1 to 4, covering our President and CEO and three levels below. Our target is to reach an index of 80% by 2030. In 2023, we reached 75.5% index, a significant increase from last year’s level of 67.4%.

Danfoss ERGs provide employees with an outlet to help shape the organizational culture and create an environment of belonging through communities of shared identity, experience, and interests. Our ERGs provide access to community building, personal and professional growth, mentoring, and networking.

Each Global ERG is sponsored by two executives, including a member of the Group Executive Team (GET), emphasizing that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is strongly embedded in Danfoss’s purpose and strategic priorities.

Alongside our ERGs, we established ten new Regional Inclusion Councils. The councils represent a global perspective providing solutions by identifying and eliminating systemic barriers to be able to provide an even more inclusive workplace for everybody.

Launched global ERGs include:

• Danfoss MULTICULTURAL & NATIONS – focusing on employees of all ethnicities/nationalities and allies
• Danfoss GENDERS – focusing on employees of all gender identities (i.e., women, men, non-binary) and allies
• Danfoss ABILITIES – focusing on employees with mental and/or physical disabilities and allies
• Danfoss GENERATIONS – focusing on employees of all age groups and allies
• Danfoss PRIDE – focusing on employees of the LGBTQ+ community and allies

Externally, Danfoss has been recognized by global media outlets for our efforts in fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. 

• The Financial Times ranked Danfoss on the “FT – Diversity Leaders 2022” list. Results reflect the fields of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, LGBTQ+, and general diversity.
• Forbes listed Danfoss among “The World’s Top Female-Friendly Companies in both 2021 and 2022.” The survey recognizes companies that lead the way when it comes to supporting women inside and outside the workforce.
• Forbes named Danfoss among the “World’s Best Employers” in both 2021 and 2022, acknowledging our efforts to create a great workplace. 
• Time listed Danfoss as one of the World’s Best Companies of 2023. The award ranks companies on employee satisfaction, revenue growth, and sustainability.
• Forbes named Danfoss among the “World’s Top Companies for Women” in 2023, acknowledging our efforts to create a diverse and inclusive workplace.

Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) priorities include increasing the representation of women and supporting their career development at all levels. Ensuring inclusion and representation of women in STEM is important because diversity of thought drives innovation and will support Danfoss’ ambition to lead the green transition. Women represented only 28% of engineering graduates and 33% of all researchers in STEM worldwide in 2022 [1]. We are working towards closing the gender gap across all roles, including in STEM. Currently, 29% of our workforce with a science background are women. In line with our ESG ambition and targets, we aspire to have at least 30% women in leadership positions by 2025.

Succession planning and people development are ongoing priorities at Danfoss. By developing, and rotating colleagues across the organization, we foster an inclusive workplace of continuous learning and knowledge sharing. In 2023, we saw record nominations for our flagship global programs for postgraduates, mentoring for mid-level trainee programs, as well as strategic excellence programs for executives. These programs help our teams develop a growth mindset, manage change, and create safe and inclusive environments. To support our employees in development, we combine the expertise of international organizations like INSEAD and the Institute for Management Development (IMD) with our internal teams to deliver programs that prepare our colleagues, leaders, and executives for their current and future roles.

Danfoss’ Global Mentoring Program accelerates talent development to enable a purpose-driven career path for our pipeline of executive talent. We’re committed to mentoring because we know it boosts employee engagement, strengthens Danfoss’ culture, and increases retention of high-potential employees.

In Danfoss’ Global Mentoring Program, Group Executive Team members and other senior leaders mentor high-potential employees from across the business. They share their personal experiences and insights to support mentees’ professional development, build competencies, and accelerate their careers.

Danfoss’ CEO Kim Fausing has been a mentor to talented women over the years, investing in the mentoring program for women and supporting our strong D&I agenda at Danfoss.

The foundational principles of fairness, equity, and transparency are fully embedded in our DNA. To ensure equitable, bias-free, and transparent practices, we initiated a transformation of our pay equity framework covering colleagues across Danfoss. We took steps to investigate how to address new pay gaps from opening. As a result, we reviewed all current total rewards policies and processes. Our objective is to ensure that we reward all our colleagues fairly and competitively. We strive to make all colleagues feel valued and have equal opportunities to unleash their full potential in a safe and supportive environment.

Our integrated annual report gives our stakeholders a holistic view of Danfoss’ business, value drivers, strategy, governance, and performance. It combines key information on our financial, sustainability and ESG-related performance.