Vielfalt und Global Opportunities

Today we bring together people from 70 countries around the world — with no one country dominating — and actively seek to realize the benefits diversity can bring.

Cross-functional teams, a mix of nationalities and a collaborative approach to projects, have created an environment where everyone is encouraged to share their different experiences and opinions. We know from company experience that this kind knowledge-sharing develops our people and produces fresh perspectives that can have a major impact on our success.

With expanded horizons our employees grow and our company grows too.

Nurturing diversity encourages employees to see things in new ways.

It ensures they develop more subtle insights into different cultures and can transfer that knowledge to comparative markets.

It gives them exposure to different viewpoints, meaning they are better prepared to engage with a wider range of stakeholders.

It improves the quality of their decision-making, since knowledge of different challenges and ways of tackling them, produces more rounded appreciation of what the consequences of decisions will be.

Most of all, for our business it means we have an extensive mix of ideas and influences to draw upon, ensuring valuable innovation and continuous improvements in all that we do. 

The way JTI embraces diversity has significant benefits for employees pursuing both local and international careers.

Everyone has access to cutting edge international practices and opportunities to collaborate with people from diverse backgrounds, therefore broadening their knowledge and developing personally.

Diversity is as much about the range of career opportunities offered within one country as the chance to develop an international career that involves living and working in multiple countries. Flexible working schedules that take into account the cultural differences of each location we operate in and a focus on promoting talent from within, mean that diverse work experience is available without changing country. But for those with the ambition and flexibility to move, it can be a life-changing experience. Like the South African HR manager who moved from Tanzania to Moscow to Hong Kong via our headquarters in Geneva, and the factory manager who began her career in Turkey and reached Sweden via Japan and Geneva.

The national borders that inhibit movement within some companies have been broken down at JTI. The predominant factor influencing the extent of an international career within our business is professional capability.

An international career can take you to the very top of JTI’s business. Today, on our Executive Committee, there are 17 people of 10 different nationalities many of whom have built their careers working across a large range of markets.

Of our 49 General Managers around the world, 35 are non-nationals of the markets they serve and between them they carry passports of 21 different nationalities.

We support diverse careers through a number of key programs. They are targeted at talented employees from within the business and quality graduates who are new to our business.

Short Term Assignments are one route JTI employees have to living and working in another country. Roles are advertised internally that need filling on a short-term basis and employees are chosen based on their ability to fulfill the role, regardless of  their nationality.

We ask whether the employee would gain from the experience and if our company would benefit from the transfer of their particular expertise to the role and location in question. 

MORE is a program that focuses on fully-mobile early-career professionals and graduates that are looking for accelerated career progression. The scheme incorporates three, eight-month assignments for graduates. The first is in the graduate’s native market, the second in JTI’s headquarters in Geneva and the third in a market that contrasts with the employee’s home country.

We invest in the careers of our employees who are content with a single location.

It’s important we have a strong set of talented local people working for us as they sustain and build our local market knowledge and expertise. The benefits of working for an international company such as a diverse range of tasks and projects, enterprising approaches, career opportunities and stable employment are apparent in each of JTI’s locations. This means that employees have access to the benefits of an international environment even when they choose to stay in their home country.

We offer a diverse range of careers at JTI, whether employees are focused on a particular specialism or motivated by experiencing a range of our business functions.

However it benefits all of our employees to gain as broad knowledge of the business as possible, which is why we've developed cross-functional training initiatives.

One example is our Finance for Non-Finance training program which helps everyone to understand the numbers that matter most to our business. 

Exposure to the activities and purpose of our different functions creates an empathy and understanding across the business and forges a commitment to working better together.