Senior management’s commitment to promoting diversity across Total is reflected in the April 2003 creation of the  Diversity and Accountability Department, the May 2004 creation of the Diversity Council and the October 2004 signature of France’s Diversity Charter.

Created in April 2003, the Diversity and Accountability Department is part of the Human Resources Department. It manages all the processes related to corporate social responsibility and translates Total’s commitments in this area into human resources policy. In addition, the Department measures and assesses employee relations practices across the Group, organizes partnerships with universities to provide training to young graduates from non-OECD countries, and coordinates our health policies—workplace health, the health impact of operations and our involvement in major global health issues, such as HIV/AIDS—in cooperation with the stakeholders concerned.

The Diversity Council was created in May 2004. Chaired by a member of the Executive Committee, its 11 members of both sexes are drawn from different nationalities from across our businesses. As identifiers and ambassadors of diversity practices and policies in their environments, the Council members initially focused on identifying in-house obstacles to the career development of women and non-French people and submitted their preliminary recommendations to the Executive Committee in 2005, who accepted them. Some of the management diversification measures were integrated into the agreement on  diversity and equal opportunity signed with our European unions in November 2005.

Total signed the Diversity Charter in October 2004, alongside approximately 40 other French companies, highlighting our commitment to diversity in all its forms, and not just hiring more non-French and women employees. Developed at the initiative of the Institut Montaigne, a French think tank focusing on research and sociology, the charter combats discrimination, in particular inequality of opportunity for the children and grandchildren of immigrants to France.