Volvo Car Switzerland AG employs around 50 people between 25 and 65 at its Swiss site and has a presence throughout the country with over 70 Volvo agencies. Some gender equality initiatives are already being put into practice from its Swedish headquarters, and family-friendly working conditions (e.g., six-month parental leave) have been created.
As part of the pilot for the Toolkit: Women & Diversity in Innovation, Volvo Car Switzerland AG has set itself the goal to promote diversity and innovation in communication and to increasingly share existing knowledge to use it for innovation. With the “random lunch” initiative, the company aims to strengthen informal exchange and networking among employees as part of its innovation culture. The initiative was first announced via the internal communications app Beekeeper. All employees at the site were each divided into groups of four people from different teams who rarely meet in their day-to-day work. After receiving contact information, each group scheduled a time to meet for lunch among themselves. Some groups posted a picture of their meeting on the communications app and tagged it with the hashtag #randomlunch. The number of posts was recorded, and individual feedback was collected to track the impact of this initiative. There was very positive feedback in response to the Random Lunch throughout the company.