Culture for Performance

Our business is purpose-led, values-based and people focused.
We create good through who we are. Through our mindset and behaviours - how we think, act and feel. Through what we talk about and how we go about it.  Our values, like our people, work together to make us better today and tomorrow.

 

Our Values. We are all writing Fonterra’s story. As individuals, we are shaped by different cultural, professional and personal experiences. 

Our shared values enable us to combine our personal strengths with those of others to make Fonterra stronger, better, more innovative and more successful. 

We could write a novel about our values. We’re a company that spans many countries and cultures, and values are hugely important to us. 

But when you boil it down, there are just four simple things that guide us. 

And it doesn’t matter who or where we are within Fonterra.

These are the values we share

Challenge boundaries
Co-operative spirit
Make it happen
Do what's right

Psychological Safety

We believe that psychological safety is just as important as physical safety in workplaces. That’s why we’ve named psychological safety as a key enabler of our business strategy – we know we can’t be sustainably successful without it.

Research shows that when we feel safe, we acknowledge mistakes, ask for feedback or even fail without severe consequences. Not only does this lead to greater team success but teams with psychological safety have a higher chance of innovation, growth and learning, and better collaboration and inclusion.

Over the last few years, we've been deliberately building the communication and collaboration skills of our leaders and their teams to build psychological safety with the skills for candid and clear conversations that are based on care and respect.

Flexible Ways of Working 

Flexibility is an essential enabler for managing the pace of change in today’s working world.

It helps to attract and retain the best people, achieve increased productivity and foster an agile response to our customers and our environment. 

We pride ourselves on trust, and give and take. Fonterra values flexibility for everyone which is reflected in our Ways of Working.  We're continually talking to our people to get input on their needs so we can co-design our Ways of Working together - on when, how, and where we work. 

 

IWS across our business 

We leverage the scale and the resources of our global Co-op. Always with an eye on efficiency and effectiveness, we relentlessly remove duplication and waste in our business, making it easier and more sustainable for our people to do their best work.  

We're driving operational and financial value through top-down leadership and bottom-up capability development and to achieve this we have implemented Integrated Work System (IWS). This will help us improve manufacturing reliability, reduce costs and elevating productivity. The end goal is to drive to zero losses and 100 percent employee ownership.