2011: Bayer Healthcare’s Women’s Leadership Initiative (WLI)

The WLI was established and grew organically as a grassroots effort to foster women’s leadership at Bayer. It was not a company mandate or directive, rather it is an initiative that took hold as a result of a significant amount of time, energy and resources put forth by a small number of leaders. Today, the values of the WLI are becoming an integrated way of doing business for the organization—helping to shape organizational “thinking” with tangible and highly supported programs.

Bayer HealthCare’s WLI has a clear mission to “ignite the power of diversity by cultivating successful women leaders to strengthen business results.” The program provides networking opportunities, educational and mentoring programs, tools and other resources for female managers within the company. Its objectives are to identify talent within current organization while attracting top female talent; foster the advancement of women through targeted personal career plans, leadership skill building programs and support networks; and cultivate an environment and build competencies to ensure that high performing women have compelling reasons to stay and grow with the company.

The initiative has grown significantly throughout the past two years to become a value added resource for women within the company and is demonstrating clear success and business value in assisting women to move into more senior leadership positions within the company.

Read a profile of Tim Hayes, as he discussed the ACE award winning Bayer Healthcare WLI featured in HBA's media partner publicatoion MM&M.