MERLIN Properties Annual Report 2024

MERLIN Properties | 123 Diversity and equal opportunities MERLIN promotes equal opportunities, especially in access to employment, training, promotion and working conditions. As stated in its Code of Conduct and its Protocol against Sexual Harassment, MERLIN rejects any and all discrimination in the workplace on the basis of race, colour, nationality, social origin, age, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, ideology, political opinions, religion or any other personal, physical or social condition of an individual. The Group provides professionals with a whistle-blowing channel to report any discriminatory conduct or harassment in the workplace. In terms of gender equality, in 2021 MERLIN worked on its Equality Plan in compliance with Royal Decree Law 6/2019. The Equality Plan was finally approved after a process of analysing the Group’s situation in terms of equality and the negotiation and drafting of the Plan by the Negotiating Committee, and came into force on 18 January 2022, with its validity extended for a period of four years, until 17 January 2026. The Equality Plan was registered by the Directorate General for Employment on 18 August 2022. The Equality Plan applies to all MERLIN Properties employees and lays down the guiding principles of the Group’s conduct in this area, along with a series of objectives and metrics, some of which include addressing the under-representation of women throughout the organisational structure, promoting women’s participation in training activities to enhance leadership and compensation by MERLIN for sick leave and parental leave. MERLIN is also committed to promoting equal parental leave for both parents. Objectives of the Equality Plan:: In the area of Selection and Recruitment: • Review the selection criteria and avoid the generalisation of criteria that could be an additional obstacle for women, such as availability to travel, requiring it only for positions where it is necessary, but not in general. • Review of all documents related to the selection and recruitment procedure (applications, forms, website, job offers, etc.) to ensure that they contain inclusive and non-sexist language in content and images. • Adopt positive action measures for recruitment , so that, under equal conditions, merits, suitability and capacity, the candidate from the least represented group in the corresponding group or category is recruited. In the area of Training : • Implement a register of workers’ requests for training , disaggregated by sex, detailing those granted and those rejected. • Promote the participation of women in training actions that foster their leadership or their insertion in male- dominated areas of work. In the area of Professional Promotion: • Provide up-to-date information on internal vacancies , with the necessary requirements and competences, using means and channels that ensure that the information is available to the whole workforce.