DS World 2026 - September 24-26 Save the Date

Healthy Smiles

Bringing Out the Best in Others

People are central to our business, be it our employees, customers, or the communities where we live and work. Every day we seek to enhance people’s lives through the delivery of improved and accessible oral health care.

We understand this starts with looking after our employees and we strive to bring out the best in them by creating an inclusive and respectful workplace alongside a culture that fosters learning and growth. We work tirelessly to improve oral health care globally and support our customers to bring the best possible treatment and care to communities through innovative products, high-quality Clinical Education programs, and impactful partnerships. We are proud of this work, while recognizing the ever-growing need to do more.

We have set a number of goals, demonstrating our commitment to our people, our customers, the patients they serve, and the communities in which we operate. We are pleased to report that we took action to achieve more than 5.8 million smiles in 2021, meaning we have made solid progress against our target of achieving 25 million smiles by 2025.

Supporting our Communities 

  • Supported as many as 730 cleft surgeries by providing cash donations as part of our Smile Train partnership
  • Launched significant strategic partnerships with the FDI World Dental Federation and Smile Train in 2021 to drive change towards a more sustainable dental industry
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Supporting our People 

  • In 2021, women made-up the following proportion of our global employee base: 45% Entry Level, 38% Manager, 29% Senior Manager, 26% Director, 27% Vice President and 18% Executive Team
  • We hired 21 employees as part of our Emerging Talent early career program, 57% of hires were women or people of color
  • Our 2021 global Director and above employee base was 26% female, and in the US our Director and above employee base included 20% people of color
  • In the US, our employee base was 70% white, 6% Asian, 10% Black or African American, 10% Hispanic or Latino
  • We established 6 active ERGs in 2021, increasing to 7 in Q1 2022. Employee participation doubled in 2021 to >10% employee population
  • In 2021 we achieved above average participation of 82% in our employment engagement survey, exceeding our participation target of 75%
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Supporting our Customers 

  • Provided 7,687 clinical education and training courses across 80 countries, a 5% increase compared with 2020
  • Reached 281,134 participants through global trainings
  • Increased R&D expenses by 39% to US$171m in 2021 vs US$123m in 2020. R&D as a percentage of sales increased to 4% in 2021 vs 3.7% in 2020
  • Accelerated the pace of innovation delivering digitally focused solutions
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Exploring Our Other Sustainability Pillars

Healthy Planet

We pledge to protect the planet with our sustainability program.

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Healthy Business

Our employees are the backbone of our business, which means we're working to keep them safe.

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