Q&A: Enabling our employees to succeed
Marcus Seelbach, Chief Human Resources Officer
To attract the best talent and engage positively with our employees, we continuously listen to our employees and respond to their needs. Here Marcus Seelbach, Chief Human Resources Officer, explains how our efforts have led to Great Place to Work certifications in Brazil, Uruguay and Porto, and what this means for our business and employees.
How do the company’s human resources and sustainability strategies evolve to respond to socio-economic challenges?
Through our human resources strategy, we must respond to current and evolving challenges such as geopolitical tensions, the cost of living, rising prices, gender equality and skills shortages both for highly qualified talent as well as in rural regions. Inflation has been continuously rising in the past years which particularly affects low-income individuals. We prioritise the human and labour rights of our employees, which is one of the most material topics in the company’s sustainability strategy, and seek to deliver equal opportunities for all. This means providing high quality learning and development offering for every individual, enabling them to flourish.
Additionally, by delivering our sustainability strategy, we are helping to establish COFCO International as an employer of choice, develop local economies and address local community priorities, securing our social licence to operate. In this way, we are able to attract and retain talent, particularly with regard to young people and in rural regions, where we continue to see the next generations migrating to cities, with more than 80% of the global population now living in urban areas. We also observe that the younger generations value our commitment to sustainability, which in turn attracts more people to our company.
Overall, our human resources strategy seeks to find and retain the best talent to help the company succeed and deliver its sustainability goals.
How do you perceive the role of the Human Resources department in creating a diverse, inclusive workforce where every employee can thrive?
We have dedicated Human Resources Directors and teams in each region to help ensure we tailor our offering to employees according to their local situation. Together, they support a highly diverse workforce of more than 13,000 people of 66 nationalities across 35 countries. It is worth noting that this is the culmination of three companies merging together to create one consistent and supportive workplace culture.
Importantly, ‘inclusion’ is one of our core values and we celebrate the performance and innovation advantages delivered by a diverse employee community. Our leaders continue to demonstrate respect and empathy for their teams. And we have remained true to our diversity, equality and inclusion strategy by striving to empower women in the workplace and ensuring that we advertise roles appropriately to include people with disabilities, for example.
We strive to promote diversity and inclusion by leveraging non-discriminatory recruitment practices, encouraging merit and competence-based career progression, and implementing discrimination prevention measures. We also provide regular training to our employees to help raise awareness of these topics.
What programmes has COFCO International rolled out to attract and retain the best talent?
We seek to attract and retain the best talent, including through our global Commercial Graduate Programme, which empowers high performing graduates to develop their potential so that they can succeed in our organisation and become leaders, taking our business into the future. It is particularly important that we offer these promising young people the opportunity to rotate around different departments and countries, and experience every stage of the supply chain. And we know that many of these graduates are attracted by a career with purpose. In 2025, some 14 of our participants graduated from countries including Brazil, India, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland and the UK.
Similarly, we have helped to provide more than 100 young people in situations of vulnerability or social exclusion with the skills to succeed through our Citizen of the Future programme around our sugar operations in Brazil, enabling them to apply for company apprenticeships. In Argentina, our Jovenes Lideres programme also helps college and university students to become future leaders.
Beyond this, we stimulate career growth by encouraging internal mobility, with all employees able to apply for new roles before they are advertised externally. We evaluate every application according to merit to help ensure that appointments are made fairly, and some regions may also offer employees priority access to career development opportunities.
Through our Sunshine Awards, we seek to recognise and celebrate professionals that embody the company’s culture and deliver exceptional results. And more broadly, we continuously seek to support the personal and professional development of employees in every region.
Could you elaborate on the learning and development opportunities the company offers and how equality is ensured?
We seek to provide high-quality, equal learning and development opportunities at every level of our company. For example, we re-launched our Global Talent Review & Succession process in 2025, which evaluates employee competences and potential, assessed on the basis of four fundamental values and observed performance. We advise how best they should progress in order to manage their career development, with talent review meetings on senior management level to discuss growth potential, future assignments and international mobility.
We have also created Individual Development Plans for employees to better promote a growth mindset with a shared accountability for an employee and the respective manager. This enables employees and managers to create career plans, record development objectives and identify relevant learning opportunities for effective performance in the company’s 70:20:10 approach (70% of learning through hands-on experience, 20% through social interactions and 10% through structured training). Similarly, we support early career professionals through our Next Generation community, and empower our leaders through our Global Leadership Programme.
Overall, we are committed to promoting equal access to development opportunities, regardless of employee background or characteristics. This includes the way in which we seek to include employees with disabilities through initiatives such as ‘Efficient just like you’ training, which reached nearly 2,000 employees over the past year.
How do these opportunities help enhance employee satisfaction across the company?
We strive to help employees fulfil their potential, personally and professionally, within a dynamic, multicultural environment. In particular, we observe that employees feel satisfied when they are given the autonomy, learning opportunities and tools to succeed and grow as individuals and professionals. People also want to feel that they are working towards a common purpose that reflects their values, which creates a strong workplace culture, with employees working together towards a shared vision. For us, this also means creating a positive, sustainable and long-lasting difference for all our stakeholders. And our employees’ support is fundamental in delivering this mission.
In addition to learning and development opportunities, we seek to improve employee engagement levels in multiple ways, such as wellbeing initiatives, equal pay initiatives, behavioural development programmes and community volunteering projects. I am pleased to share that through employee satisfaction surveys, we have discovered that more than 80% of employees in Brazil, Uruguay and Portugal believe that COFCO International is a great place to work. Even more, in Brazil, the country where 68% of our workforce is located, some 91% of employees are proud to tell other people that they work for us, and the same percentage would recommend the company to their families and friends.
These strategies have led to achieving Great Place to Work certifications in Brazil for the fourth consecutive year, Uruguay and Portugal, as well as Great People Mental Health and Lugar Incrível para Trabalhar (‘Amazing Place to Work’) certificates in Brazil. We believe these certifications help to differentiate our business in the employment marketplace, as they are recognised by employees globally, in parallel with the company’s sustainability achievements. For our current employees, they are also a source of pride, and a reason to recommend the company to potential new joiners. In addition, it feeds the company’s continuous improvement process by taking the temperature of the organisation and capturing elements for further development and improvement.
Where do you see opportunities to improve? Could you describe any measures you’ll be taking to address these issues?
Looking ahead, we will continue to address talent and labour shortage, and particularly the shortage of young people interested to work in the sector. We aim to take action through initiatives such as our Citizen of the Future programme in Brazil.
In general, we are contributing to human capital development in the regions where we operate through for example the new port terminal in Santos, which has created hundreds of construction jobs, boosting the local economy. We have also established a partnership with the Buhle Farmers Academy in South Africa, through which we build farmers’ capacity to become suppliers and gain access to international markets.
I believe we must diversify talent beyond traditional industry profiles, as we continue to seek opportunities to support current and future employees in developing their careers in the agricultural sector. We must continue to engage our employees and build loyalty by promoting a sense of belonging. This should also be supported by stronger succession planning.
How will you continue to ensure employee satisfaction in the future, and establish COFCO International as an employer of choice?
This is about being competitive and continuing to invest significantly in our people. We’re always benchmarking against our peers to help ensure that we remain competitive globally and locally. And we know that sustainability is a key differentiator for the company. Our employees are pleased to support our efforts to help promote global food security and proud of our achievements. This in turn will continue to maintain our good reputation in the marketplace and attract further talent to the business.
