Everyone is familiar with Ikea (of the Ingka Group) in which it operates in 31 markets, employing 160,000 workers and its core achievement is being named among Forbes’ World’s Top Companies for Women (Top 5 Globally)
Executive Summary
The Ingka Group has established itself as a global benchmark for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in the retail sector. Through sustained, systemic initiatives that range from inclusive recruitment to continuous gender pay gap audits, the organisation has achieved 50% female representation in management roles and 48% among Country CEOs, while narrowing its unadjusted gender pay gap to just 4% globally.
Ingka’s values driven culture, coupled with deliberate operational strategies, have allowed the Group to treat diversity not just as a HR metric, but as a core business driver for innovation, decision making, and long-term performance.
The challenge
In large scale retail operations spanning dozens of international markets, achieving genuine workplace equity is fraught with structural obstacles:
- Unconscious bias in compensation & recruitment: Traditional hiring practices (e.g., asking for salary history) often perpetuate existing pay disparities.
- Leadership pipeline leakage: Women frequently encounter career plateaus before reaching top tier executive roles.
- Inconsistent workplace psychological safety: Scaling a cohesive, inclusive culture across 160,000+ workers operating under different local laws and cultural norms.
The Ingka’s group strategy & key initiatives
Ingka Group’s EDI strategy rests on its foundational ethos, “for us, it’s good business to be a good business.” Driven by its Chief People & Culture Officer, Ulrika Biesèrt, the organization implemented a multipronged approach focused on structural reform, leadership development, and psychological safety.
- Removing bias from compensation & recruitment
- Abolishing salary history requests: To prevent systemic pay inequity at the point of hire, recruitment teams stopped requesting past salary data.
- Annual pay audits: Ingka Group conducts regular, structured pay gap reviews, which there is currently less than 1% of the workforce requiring monetary adjustments to maintain equal pay for work of equal value.
- Inclusive succession planning & leadership by all
- Democratic leadership: IKEA promotes the philosophy that leadership is not defined by titles, but by daily choices and actions.
- Early career acceleration (the ‘Bloom’ program): Targeted development initiatives encourage workers, especially women, to step into challenging leadership opportunities early in their careers.
- Gender balanced pipelines: Succession planning mandates balanced gender representation across candidate pools for leadership roles.
- Fostering belonging & health normalisation
- Global menopause guidance: Implemented global workplace standards to destigmatise health discussions and support workers navigating life transitions.
- Psychological safety focus: Fostering a corporate climate where workers are encouraged to share ideas and learn from mistakes without fear of judgment.
The results & impact
Through cultural change, the Group’s strategic workplace metrics has identified:
- Leadership parity: 50% of all managers and 48% of Country CEOs across Ingka Group are women.
- Pay equity: Unadjusted global gender pay gap reduced to 4% (with <1% requiring adjustment).
- Employee sentiment: In an internal survey of over 134,000 workers, 84% reported feeling they can “be themselves at work.”
- External recognition: Ranked in the top 5 globally on Forbes’ World’s Top Companies for Women.
Business value
According to Ingka Group leadership, maintaining a workforce that directly mirrors the diverse customer base strengthens market insight, fosters innovation, and enhances operational decision making across its 31 markets.
Key takeaways
- Fix the process, not the people: Equity is achieved by auditing internal processes such as removing salary history requirements, rather than relying solely on diversity training.
- Target the talent pipeline early: Programs like Bloom demonstrate that building executive parity requires engaging diverse talent early in their career journeys.
- Culture drives performance: Treating inclusion as a business strategy rather than a compliance exercise directly impacts employee retention and brand equity.
