Air Products Successfully Achieves U.S. Minority Representation in Professional and Managerial Roles Objective and Sets a New Goal for 2025

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Nov 16, 2021, 11:00 ET

LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa., Nov. 16, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Air Products (NYSE: APD) is not resting on its success in achieving a publicly-stated 2025 goal for minority representation in its professional and managerial population in the United States. Continuing its pursuit to become the most diverse industrial gas company in the world, Air Products has set a new goal to further increase the percentage of U.S. minorities in these roles by 2025.

In October 2020, Air Products announced it wanted to achieve at least 20 percent minority representation from a 17 percent base level in its U.S. professional and managerial population by 2025. Having already reached this objective in 2021, Air Products' new goal is to achieve 30 percent minority representation in these U.S. roles by 2025.

"We are very pleased to have met our initial goal for U.S. minorities in the targeted roles. We realize there is more work to do in order to achieve our aspirations, so we are setting this new, ambitious goal of 30 percent by 2025. We had tremendous success in our overall minority hiring rate for this targeted population, and many of those hires were at the manager level, thus creating further momentum in our diversity strategy," said Victoria Brifo, senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Air Products.

Also in October 2020, Air Products announced a goal to achieve at least 28 percent female representation in its professional and managerial population globally by 2025, from a 25 percent baseline representation at the time of the announcement.

"Our 2025 global female representation target of 28 percent is an exciting and challenging goal for our growing company. We made some incremental progress this year, and we continue to take strategic actions to see our global female representation target realized," said Brifo.

Ongoing actions and practices integral to meeting the company's diversity goals include:

Talent acquisition transformation practices and policies to drive standardization and increase hiring of diverse candidates.

Additional Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging culture efforts, including hosting Air Products' Day of Understanding/Week of Inclusion in which over 5,000 employees participated.

Refining its talent and diversity giving strategy, The Air Products Foundation is partnering with organizations that directly drive diverse representation in the broader chemical and manufacturing industries.

"We are pleased with what we accomplished in the last year but are excited to expand and grow our efforts in 2022. We are committed to building our strong, inclusive culture where all employees know they belong and matter," added Brifo.

With a broad operating scope and growing cultural landscape of more than 20,000 employees in over 50 countries, Air Products established its diversity targets following analysis of its global employee representation metrics and future talent needs, as well as assessing industry benchmarks and peer companies.

Air Products will continue to report progress towards these goals. In its 2020 Sustainability Report for the first time, Air Products published 2019 metrics on the representation of U.S. minorities and added additional metrics for females in executive roles.

About Air Products
Air Products (NYSE:APD) is a world-leading industrial gases company in operation for 80 years. Focused on serving energy, environment and emerging markets, the Company provides essential industrial gases, related equipment and applications expertise to customers in dozens of industries, including refining, chemical, metals, electronics, manufacturing, and food and beverage. Air Products is also the global leader in the supply of liquefied natural gas process technology and equipment. The Company develops, engineers, builds, owns and operates some of the world's largest industrial gas projects, including: gasification projects that sustainably convert abundant natural resources into syngas for the production of high-value power, fuels and chemicals; carbon capture projects; and world-scale carbon-free hydrogen projects supporting global transportation and the energy transition.

The Company had fiscal 2021 sales of $10.3 billion from operations in over 50 countries and has a current market capitalization of over $65 billion. More than 20,000 passionate, talented and committed employees from diverse backgrounds are driven by Air Products' higher purpose to create innovative solutions that benefit the environment, enhance sustainability and address the challenges facing customers, communities, and the world. For more information, visit www.airproducts.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on management's expectations and assumptions as of the date of this release and are not guarantees of future performance. While forward-looking statements are made in good faith and based on assumptions, expectations and projections that management believes are reasonable based on currently available information, actual performance and financial results may differ materially from projections and estimates expressed in the forward-looking statements because of many factors, including risk factors described in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2020. Except as required by law, we disclaim any obligation or undertaking to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in the assumptions, beliefs or expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances upon which any such forward-looking statements are based.

SOURCE Air Products