Beautiful People

Douglas stands for diversity. We make no distinctions in skin color, origin, sexual orientation or personal pronouns. Douglas sees itself as a democratic and inclusive brand that stands for an open and diverse society. As an employer, Douglas lives by equal treatment, tolerance and equal opportunities across all levels of its employees. Through internal formats and external campaigns, we take a stand against discrimination and for the inclusion of women, the LGBTQI+ community, various ethnic and age groups. We want to encourage everyone to be the way they want to be. We always strive to inspire our customers and employees to express their individuality.

As a customer-centric company, we also want to improve our shoppers’ satisfaction across all markets and touchpoints by providing events, product recommendations, agile customer services and a loyalty programme with real rewards.

Our employees

Diversity, equity and inclusion

As an employer, we intend to take action to include women, the LGBTQI+ community, and different nationalities and age groups in our internal initiatives and external campaigns. The fact that DOUGLAS was the first company to receive full BeyondGenderAgenda (BGA) certification pays testimony to these efforts. But we are not done yet: in 2022 and beyond, DOUGLAS intends to facilitate the development of its first Employee Resource Groups and will establish a diversity, equity and inclusion policy and a programme of in-house events. We want to hold diversity training sessions, talks and meetups that focus on issues such as unconscious bias and gender-sensitive communications.

DOUGLAS is proud to have raised the proportion of women in the top three tiers of the company by more than half. With around 50% women in leadership positions, we have already passed our original goal of 30% by some margin.

We also want to provide equal opportunities for employees with disabilities. To that end, we are working to better accommodate employees’ needs within our workforce. A disability representative is involved in all employee-related processes to make sure that their voices are heard.

Employee engagement

We care about our employees so we intend to put in place a continuous listening strategy to get feedback on their wants and needs in the workplace. DOUGLAS recently launched the #failforward initiative, which aims to create a positive feedback culture surrounding risk-taking, mistakes and feedback. As part of this, we shared initial stories where we encouraged managers to talk about their errors and what they learned from them.

Recent sample surveys showed consistent improvements in our employees’ satisfaction with their personal growth, their happiness and well-being and their relationships with their peers and managers. In fact, employee satisfaction increased across all categories. DOUGLAS plans to conduct the first employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) across the whole organisation as a basic indicator for a data-driven approach to employee satisfaction.

To build community, DOUGLAS created a private social media channel, @wir.sind.do., during the first COVID-19 lockdown to enable direct communication, information and training updates with our in-store beauty experts.

Employee development

DOUGLAS is passionate about training the next generation of employees. We are proud of our apprenticeship programme. DOUGLAS is already providing jobs for students and interns in all departments. We are offering dual-course studies at our headquarters, where secondary school graduates have the chance to combine a 3.5-year bachelor’s degree with practical work in different parts of our company.

We are working on new development programmes starting at our headquarters and  cascading throughout the company. Connected to our company purpose, we defined core competencies focusing on both functional skill-based training and behaviour-based development and growth.  

To ensure that our in-store beauty experts are up to date on our latest brands and products, we have​ created an e-learning platform. We hold regular (virtual) events with our strategic partners and brand representatives to keep our store employees abreast of the latest developments and maintain motivation during local lockdowns.

Our customers

DOUGLAS customers know that a premium beauty experience awaits them the moment they walk through our doors, visit our website or open our app. Our beauty experts engage our customers and supporting them with outstanding service. As a customer-centric company, we aim to achieve high customer satisfaction. In this, we want to constantly improve in all countries and points of sale.

To ensure high customer satisfaction, we have implemented comprehensive tracking systems, such as the Net Promoter Score (NPS) for transactions and the cohort analysis of customer lifetime value (CLT) and repurchase rate across consecutive periods.

Going forward, we intend to develop the NPS system continuously by rolling it out in more markets and customer touchpoints and by leveraging best practices across markets and channels. While incorporating customer feedback and implementing solutions to their problems.

We want to provide the best customer service, so we also offer our beauty consultants in-depth training, and they give feedback to headquarters if they have suggestions for improvement.

With our omnichannel strategy, we want to continuously improve our customer experience. To achieve this, we also rely on modern technologies and new digital solutions. Every DOUGLAS store becomes part of our data-based beauty platform. Examples for this are our Scan & Go system, which allows customers to scan and pay for products in-store from the convenience of their own phones, or our new DOUGLAS App.