Culture and Belonging

Elevating a Culture of Safety, Belonging and Community

Our employees are the foundation of our success. We believe that our employees deserve to feel valued and appreciated for who they are and the unique perspectives they bring to our workforce and workplace. Since 1866, our culture has continued to build on the ingenuity, passions and talents of our team members.

Fostering a Culture of Belonging

At Sherwin-Williams, we welcome, appreciate and celebrate differences, and believe that belonging has a positive impact on our people and business. We believe that strengthening our culture is a moral and business imperative. This is reflected in our policies, including our Code of Conduct and reinforced through our actions and approach to conducting business.

Our continuous efforts to create a supportive, welcoming environment for everyone across our global footprint are the shared responsibility of all employees. We are committed to embracing and leveraging the broad range of skills of our global workforce.

Our Belonging and Culture Goals

We have set the following goals to ensure we are making good on our commitment to fostering a culture of belonging.

Attract: We take action to attract the best talent pool that reflects a broad range of skills, perspectives and capabilities.
Engage and Retain: We build on our values to create a culture of belonging for all — where every employee feels seen, heard, supported, connected and appreciated.
Develop: Employees within our global workforce have the possibility to take on and succeed in leadership roles.

We remain committed to attracting, developing, retaining and progressing the very best talent to become the employer of choice for a strong pipeline of talent.

2023 Workforce Demographics Data

38%

underrepresented racial/ethnic groups (U.S.)

25%

women in workforce (global)

30%

underrepresented racial/ethnic groups in management (U.S.)

26%

women in management (global)

Our Culture of Belonging

Over the past year, we have focused on creating a culture of belonging — one where all employees feel seen, heard, connected, supported and appreciated. Programming throughout the year reinforced this theme. For example, we held sessions designed to help leaders at all levels create a positive employee experience and be intentional in learning and embracing differences. As of year-end 2023, all senior leaders have attended one of these learning sessions, and we continue to roll out these opportunities across the enterprise and provide leaders with actions to create and lead more high performance teams.

In 2024, we are strengthening our focus on education, training and our employee-led communities to drive ways that leaders and team members can show up and step up for one another. For example, we are conducting sessions at all U.S. national sales meetings and conferences where leadership teams can learn about the different types of allyship and how to harness differences for business impact.

Engaging Employees

We believe that an inclusive and collaborative workplace drives engagement. During our most recent employee survey, we learned those who are members of employee-led communities are more engaged, on average, than those who are not involved in one, and scored higher on items related to career development and well-being. We currently offer employee-led communities across our global footprint.

In addition to building connections, employees engaged in these communities have opportunities for additional exposure and professional development. For example, one of the teams organized a mentoring program, professional development series and summits featuring global leaders with virtual participation across 27 countries. To foster engagement on a more regional basis, Europe, Middle East, Africa and India (EMEAI) employees formed a Regional Council and Ambassador Network comprised of local leaders responsible for creating and executing strategies to drive belonging. Based on these efforts, Sherwin-Williams received recognition from the British Coatings Federation.

2023 Employee-Led Communities

300+

chapters of employee-led communities

5,000+

employees leading employee-led communities

We also make available our most recently filed Federal Employer Information Reports EEO-1, representing employees as of 2023. Please note the EEO-1 report uses federally mandated job categories that are broadly applicable to U.S. companies across a variety of industries and that differ from how we categorize jobs and measure our progress. We believe the data presented above and elsewhere on our website provide a more useful and meaningful reflection of the Company’s workforce diversity as it is more tailored to our organizational structure.

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